MoHo - Architects for co-creation
Architects for co-creation
Work with the users while developing design & architecture directed at them
About You
Background Information
First Name
Moa & Heidi
Last Name
Dickmark & Lyng
Twitter URL
Facebook URL
The competition is only open to people between 18-34 years-old and resident in UK, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark or the Netherlands. Does this apply to you
Yes.
Country of residence of entrepreneur
Denmark
Tell us about your personal background. Why are you passionate about this issue? Making an idea a reality takes innovation, dedication and strong leadership. Do you have the necessary entrepreneurial skills to realize your vision?
MoHo Architects for Co-creation was founded in 2011 with the aim of designing learning environments using co-creation processes with user involvement. MoHo consists of Moa Dickmark and Heidi Lyng – both master students at the Architecture School in Aarhus, Denmark, where they are working on their final thesis at the moment.
About Your Organization
Organization Name
MoHo
Organization Website
moho.biz/
Organization Country
Denmark, AR, Aarhus
Country where this project is creating social impact
Denmark, NJ, Glesborg
Is your organization a
Not registered
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Innovation
The Need: What problem are you trying to solve?
Our society has changed dramatically during the last 100 years, but the education system and facilities are lagging behind. When designing schools today, Danish law stipulates that teachers must be involved, but students have not got this right and are hardly ever asked. This is something we are working hard to change. Together with students and teachers we co-design solutions for their school. This can be anything from furniture to re-designing an existing building. We call it co-creating since we work with the users throughout the entire process, which we believe will lead to better and more sustainable solutions that not only make the school a better place to be, but helps nurture their creativity and enhance the teaching methods.
The Solution: What is your solution? Be specific!
While working with students from different schools we are developing a guide for architects, designers and teachers to help them create a process intended for working on projects that include students of different ages. With this project we aim for a design process which involves the users when designing schools for future generations.
The Model: Walk us through a specific example of how your solution makes a difference; include your primary activities
Right now we are developing and testing the design of the process guide, and we are doing this through best practice. For example have we tested a process with a school in Denmark, Vejle where the students where supposed to develop concepts for new learning environments in four days. We planned five days for the test of the process. Day 1: The students adopted an attitude to their existing spaces, and expressed what worked particularly well and described why building the spaces in models. On day 2: we observed how students and teachers used the spaces during a day in school. Day 3: Here the students generated new ideas for learning spaces and expressed those in models. Day 4: Together with 3 students we had a design day, where we used all the previously work and with this as a starting point developed 5 different concepts. Day 5: All students adjusted on the draft concepts, and form the concepts once more. If this progress where to continue the students should then build 1:1 models and refine the concepts so that they fit into the existing spaces. And if the project is not too complicated the students can even build the new learning spaces themselves…
The Marketplace: Who are your peers and competitors? Identify others also working to address the needs you are and what differentiates you from them. What challenges could these players pose to your success or growth?
The ones we are mostly competing against are some of the Big Boys like IDEO, but they are not focusing on changing the paradigm in the education system.
In Denmark you find the architect Ulla Kärvang, who is directing her attention to working with kids in the design process, but who has decided on not building up a process-guide.
The field we are focusing on is more or less an untapped source, which makes it so much more interesting to explore.
What makes us different is that we are specifically focusing on doing more then just designing a interesting looking school, we want to design a frame together with the users as to help develop a better education in a whole, and in that way end up with happier and better educated students.
Select the stage that best applies to your business
Operating for less than a year
This Entry is about (Issues)
Social Impact
What is the social impact you have had to date and how you measure it?
We see it as a success when:
- We experience how students are developing creativity, and express it through newfound skills discovered in the co-creation processes.
- When our methods resonate with and transform the environments we are working within, creating better conditions for the everyday learning.
- School officials, architects and designers adopt our methods
Sustainability
How does your model address financial, social, and environmental sustainability?
We believe that better education facilities can, should and will develop the education system in the right direction. And we believe that the way to a better world is through better education.
There is a shift in the field of education today towards the concept of 21st century skills (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Century_Skills). Not only do these include core academic subjects but also skills such as problem solving, communication and critical thinking.
To support this vision we believe that we must start creating learning environments that run parallel with this line of thinking. Education and the space in which it is conducted must be entwined, in order to create a positive synergy enabling the optimal learning output.
The process does not address these factors. Each facilitator of the process must take sustainability on all levels into consideration.
Awareness & learning
How do you see social entrepreneurship contributing to the improvement of developing countries?
Our process will create more entrepreneurs because the creativity that we encourage will spread from education to other areas e.g. business. Furthermore supporting small entrepreneurs with business and entrepreneurship education and guidance, will connect local entrepreneurs with local and global businesses and likeminded people.
To help start and generate change from within is what we believe to be the only way to establish a sustainable change!
What aspects of your stay in Uganda as part of the competition do you think you will find most challenging and rewarding?
We are full of preset ideas (mostly build up by the media) about how the people of Uganda live and what they do on a day-to-day basis. Most people’s views are mostly built up on stereotypes, and it is our own stereotypical view we are trying to break.
We want to go to Uganda with an open mind, and get as much real insight into how people live and what joys and challenges they encounter in their daily lives as possible
We are looking forward to meeting and talking with people who have a vision about how they too can make a difference and what they want to change. We want to listen to what other entrepreneurs and visionaries have to say, and be a part of the dialogue and get inputs concerning how to develop their and our own projects.
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 | 11 weeks agoMoa Dickmark updated this Competition Entry. |
| 13 weeks agoMoa Dickmark updated this Competition Entry. |
| 15 weeks agoMoa Dickmark updated this Competition Entry. |
| 15 weeks agoMoa Dickmark submitted this idea. |
