Uniperifa collective joined Laboratory of Design against Oppression students to plan community actions in Condomínio Residencial Parque Iguaçú III. This slum-upgrade urban project relocated people near the city center to the city outskirts, leaving people disconnected from the city and having little sense of community. We identified several sustainability issues that required increasing this sense of community, for example, lobbying for public garbage collection.
After running a codesign workshop, we decided to focus on renovating the community center as a sign of the power of mobilizing. Design students joined Uniperifa collective to renovate Iguaçú’s community center, making things that are not usually associated with design work. The students learned that they needed to identify with the oppressed to design and make things with the oppressed, by the oppressed, for the oppressed.
Through this engagement, teachers learned that we need to increase access to design education in the peripheries to make the things needed to overcome systemic oppression.
