YP: Kind of research and design together. There's no way to know this is a research or design. The output is not as interesting as the process. Participatory means there's a lot of things that will change throughout the process.
So we are trying to have a speculative direction, in the example of a market upgrade, you want to upgrade the place physically, letting the people feel more comfortable. It needs mutual understanding, and definitely leads to the part of design - we work with architects who will actually work on that - yet we do the soft side, we talk to people, what are the materials, how is the space, how they would like to interact.
That is what we call research. Research is not just looking at other countries' standards or what is the best practice. Instead, it looks at what is the need, whether it could be adapted to this particular site. The same idea might not work in a different community.
We need to go into it a bit more. I mean what we usually call research is to study people's behavior, people's responses in the use of space, responses... There are things that we don't define so clearly. Research could be done by mapping and doing it together.
KJ: In the case of a market upgrade, you already have a clear goal: you want to upgrade facilities. But for some of the sites, you may not have a clear goal, then how do you deal with that?
YP: In the case of arts workshops for young people, it's about linking the young to make meaning with the sites that they always pass by. They don't even know how to initiate the conversation.
That's where the workshop comes in as a tool. By having things they want to do, and by having a group of say 10 people, they are braver and more motivated. That's where they open up the conversation. If there's no such goal, they don't have reasons; so we open the workshop, set the goal, and the workshop findings are part of the research.
S: With myself, I would maybe summarize it as Research-led and Design-led. I would love to see for every project that we start with research-led, start off-site, before we embark. But the reality in Singapore is that a lot of our project timelines are very tight, sometimes we start to embark on research and design together, so we put it as a People-led approach.
The core of the issue lies in the community, what's missing, how it benefits, and that sums it up, because e.g. the Podscape project was built in one week. We had concerns that the project may cancel because of COVID, etc. We don't have the luxury to say, "let's go and talk to the people first, find out what about it."
That being said, we have been working on the ground for some time, so we also say "let's go out and design something, but bear in mind all our experiences." We have certain ideas of who is observing and how people interact, but again it's not a clear linear process. And we are tweaking the methodology every time we go to different sites.
KJ: I really like the podscape. I personally listened to it on Podcast too, especially with the Kekou Mien - you feel as if you really are in Singapore
S: Yeah, the sounds of a city is something that could really tell you certain things, and bring up certain feelings and memories. It's something we might not be conscious of, but it recalls the neighborhood, like the example of the sound of a school bus in Singapore, they make a very particular sound "Boop-boop" like this. Upon hearing it, you feel that you are either in the early morning or late afternoon.
YP: I think, in Malaysia and Singapore, maybe other places too, Food, to ask like "Jiak Ben Bui (did you eat)?" Again with the example of the market, the people are busy traders, so in order to ask them to spend 5 min to look at the plan, we put the table with a Teh Tarik. With that, we could start a conversation, and they end up spending 15 min or even 20 min. So such gestures like "yum cha (have tea)" means to chit-chat. With that, they usually open up.
But building trust is not simple. For the most, faces have to be seen there. You can't just hide behind the camera, you need to be at the same level, to let them feel you aren't higher than them, and really to do and engage. In the example of throwing rubbish, they really get to throw the rubbish, and get to know the weight, etc. Through this, they could empathize, and understand not from a top-down point of view. The community can see and feel it, then they open up a bit more to share with us.
Also, time is where you see whether you are sincere or not, if you spend 10 years in the same site, and ask about their son and daughter. They understand that it's not just a project, but something between you and me.