Horizontal exchanges as a design method. Africa urbanisation as a case study

Within a globalised world, it is easy to find community problems, especially outside our boundaries, in countries that are growing up quickly. Therefore, there is the tendency, not only for architects, to direct their efforts for the benefit of society; from it, the participatory approach became a tool in the design process. There are different ways to understand participation in the design process, and each of them can lead to different results: in terms of effects on the building and its grade of acceptance. All of it is directed by the mutual exchange of competences and information between the actors inside the process. In all of these dynamics, the architect is playing a role. Moreover, what happens when the community is one of the main actors inside the urbanisation of a country should be the point to address this research. Through the observation of the urbanisation of subSaharan countries and the study of European based studio projects inside the continent, is possible to explain how the participatory approach is not just a manner of design but a process ruled by different interactions. The question is not how to involve the community inside the process but who is driving it out, which role the architect is playing. The core issue is localising in which stage of the process the community is taken into consideration. Meanwhile, the bottom-up method is going to be overlaid by a horizontal exchange became essential to question the reason why this kind of method can be useful inside the process of design. Is it the community approach led just by willingness or it is the result of a complex process of interaction? The main issue remains how much this kind of participation may contribute to a useful involvement for the community inside the project. It can be an opportunity for the community to recognise its identity inside the building, or instead can slip into a mere way to publicise an elusive ethic approach.