On-site participation linking idea sketches and information technologies - User-driven Customised Environments

The paper introduces the methodology related to the topic of citizen-driven urban design and revises the idea of on-site participation of end-users, which could prospectively lead to customisation of architectural and urban space in a full-scale. The research in the first phase addresses the engagement of information technologies used for idea sketching in participatory design workshop related to local urban issues in the city of Chur in Switzerland by means of the Skity tool, the sketching on-line platform running on all devices. Skity allows user, which can be individual citizens or a community, to sketch, build, and adapt their ideas for the improvement of an urban locality. The participant is the expert of the locality because he or she lives in this place every day. The content of this paper is focused on the participatory design research project conducted as a study at the ETH Zürich and the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft HTW in Chur in collaboration with Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore, mainly concentrated on the first step of the methodological approach introduced here