Public Sector Building, May 2025

Public Sector Building’s May 2025 issue features DSDHA Director, Tom Greenall in which he argues that, in the context of Labour’s housing policy, co-design has a critical role to play.

In the piece Tom insists that, too often the process of co-design is undermined by forms of community consultation, conducted at a superficial or tokenistic level, and that it can often be misunderstood or even conflated with terms such as public consultation or community engagement. These failings have brought on the development and launch of a new website: Co-designing Space, which forms a comprehensive online resource to help others integrate participatory methodologies within their practice.

Tom highlights a current DSDHA project, Central Somers Town, in which an exciting collaboration with feminist architecture collective EDIT resulted in workshops with Somers Town Community Association Youth Group to develop and design a space that caters to teenagers’ diverse needs.

He concludes with the hope that the tool can help local authorities, architects and commissioners alike to better understand the value, objectives, challenges, responsibilities, and the time and resource commitment of co-design.