Effrosyni Roussou
ESR9

Host university
B6 - Department of Architecture, University of CyprusSupervising team
Nadia Charalambous (Supervisor) Carla Sentieri (Co-Supervisor) Andreas Savvides (Co-Supervisor)She has worked as a research assistant in several projects as well as a course assistant, coordinator, and project manager for the design-and-build summer course “Dare to Build” at Chalmers University of Technology.
She advocates for bottom-up processes, collaboration and participation in architecture and strongly supports community-building practices through and in the design fields. Her main interests in her field revolve around the interplay between politics, social perspectives, architecture and sustainability and its impact on the shifting role of the architect. Her master thesis at Chalmers (“Co-existing in a crisis-ridden city: Exploring architectural ways to induce commoning practices within an economic crisis context”) aimed at questioning the role of the architect within an alternative way of space production; the architect as an instigator and crossbencher, as an active and equal part of the process, alongside the community.
April, 11, 2022
September, 17, 2021
From creator to enabler: the underpinnings and implications of the co.design.build studio
Despite the significant proliferation in the understandings of an architect’s role within a multitude of (spatial) agencies, architectural education remains relatively isolated and impermeable to a radically political interpretation of architecture within the real world. While affordable and sustainable housing & neighbourhoods (ASHN) become an increasingly pressing need towards a sustainable future, the neoliberalisation of strategic visions for the future, such as sustainability, provides a fertile ground for the fragmentation of contemporary challenges in ASHN, leaving room for vague, disconnected and ultimately ineffective responses. In this neoliberal context, rethinking architectural education and bridging the gap between design practice and studio pedagogy becomes imperative.
Praxis, as opposed to a traditionally simulative approach, in the form of design-and-build and/or co-creation studios, have been exploring alternative approaches in an attempt to break the isolation of architectural education from contemporary challenges and (re)introduce architecture schools as crucial actors in local communities, especially in northern European and north American contexts. Exposure to real contexts, through co-creation (people needs) or design and build studios (construction/material needs), has aided students in gaining a better understanding of the implications of design for ASHN. There is, however, limited research on the theoretical and methodological underpinnings, as well as the impact of a co-creation and co-design and build studio, especially in the European South.
Drawing from critical theories mainly on urban commons, (commoning), participation (cross-benching) and social ecology, the main questions explored through this project are as follows:
- What are the underpinnings and pedagogical impact of an effective, engaging and impactful transdisciplinary studio that combines critical co-creation methodologies with a design and build learning environment (co.design.build)?
- How can a co.design.build studio become an important actor within a more radical understanding of affordable and sustainable housing systems/networks especially in the context of the European South?
This project will adopt an action research methodology consisting of four main components: (1) planning, i.e. positioning the project idea within the literature, identifying and analysing relevant study cases, understanding the context and developing the components, strategies, methods and structure of the (2) action, where the idea/pilot syllabus will be tested. During this part (3) systematic data collection will take place, through e.g. observation, interviews, questionnaires in different facets of the process, which will be followed by (4) reflection, analysis, evaluation of the collected data, and the subsequent synthesis into a revised syllabus to be re-tested.
The expected outcome of this research is a theoretical and methodological framework for an effective, engaging and impactful co.design.build studio that promotes a radical understanding of sustainability through transdisciplinary, direct action from co-conception to co-construction, and also insights both on the opportunities and implications of its implementation in a southern European context, but also on its applicability in others. Finally, this project aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion on the role of architecture schools -and academic institutions in general- within the affordable and sustainable neighbourhoods vision; as active co-stakeholders, able to achieve a direct and positive impact with and for the communities they are situated in, universities could provide high quality and meaningful education while contributing to a paradigm shift towards a sustainable future.
Reference documents
From creator to enabler: the underpinnings and implications of the co.design.build studio
Contemporary architectural education, especially in southern European contexts, remains widely ineffective in addressing the increasingly complex and ever-shifting realities that urban dwellers are called to face. While economic fluctuations, climate change and the various political agendas are spawning challenges that are profoundly transforming living environments and reshaping contemporary housing provision, architectural education remains widely unchanged. Persisting normative approaches result in the architect as a detached figure, operating top-down, in a purely theoretical plane and completely cut off from the socio-cultural aspects and implications as well as the end users of their work.
Even though design-build courses, as part of architectural curricula around the world, have shown promising results in challenging the archetype of the architect as an omnipotent creator the current focus is -to a large extent- on the development of students’ technical and managerial skills. This project aims to explore the opportunities for radical change within architecture schools, especially in the European south, through the implementation of transdisciplinary, collaborative/multistakeholder co.design.build courses within a social and environmental sustainability framework and a focus on acupuncture interventions on the neighbourhood scale.
The research approach that will be followed is community-based participatory action research (CBPAR), which will unfold in two stages: (1) co-creation of the course structure, aims, objectives and approach through workshops with faculty and prospective students and (2) course implementation and testing in two separate iterations (spring & autumn 2023). The second part will involve close monitoring of participants’ (students, teachers, local stakeholders) views and perceptions on the course and their own involvement, before, during and after the completion of each iteration.
The expected outcome of this research is a set of strategies in creating and running a transdisciplinary, multistakeholder co.design.build course that “thinks globally but operates locally” as well as a thorough and reflexive evaluation of the experimentation process.

Kick-off of a new adventure!
Posted on 18-07-2021
Workshops
Read more ->
DARE to Build, Chalmers University of Technology
Created on 16-09-2022
Co-creation
Sustainability
Area: Community participation
Created on 16-02-2022
Read more ->Area: Community participation
Created on 08-06-2022
Read more ->Charalambous, N., Panayi, C., & Roussou, E., (2022, August-September).Community-engaged design: learning through live projects in residential environments [Conference presentation]. European Network for Housing Research (ENHR) Conference 2022. Barcelona, Spain.
Posted on 30-08-2022
Conference
Read more ->Charalambous, N., Roussou, E., & Panayi, C. (2022, August-September). Co-creating urban commons through community-engaged pedagogies [Conference presentation]. EAAE Annual Conference, Madrid.
Posted on 31-08-2022
Conference
Read more ->Roussou, E., & Charalambous, N. (2022, December). On becoming a spatial agent: A comparative analysis of transdisciplinary design and build studio pedagogy in Cyprus and Sweden. RE-DWELL Conference: Housing co-creation for tomorrow’s cities conference, Grenoble, France.
Posted on 08-12-2022
Conference
Read more ->Posted on 29-05-2023
Conference
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