Search

This article proposes an integration of methods and sources from the field of architectural design, on the one hand, and evaluation disciplines, on the other. By analysing some emerging trends in the residential demand, highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic but referable to phenomena characterised by much longer trajectories, the research aims to highlight certain criticalities and shortcomings in the current design and evaluation practices and to shed new light on the potential value of spaces that are typically underused – and underestimated – but highly transformable. The text thus introduces a critical-methodological reflection, which offers a new perspective for the study of neighbourhoods characterised by a high level of “peripheralisation”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting with Makiguchi’s vision of education as “value creation”, we examine the meanings attributed to “value” in education and learning contexts and consider them in view of capitalist forms of production predicated on the tradable value of intangible assets. We go on to outline the competing perspectives of value creation as a humanising vehicle of personal development (pedagogy of social creation), and the biocapitalist exploitation of our increasingly commodified lives and careers (pedagogy of capital).Drawing on a series of multi-year studies exploring work and learning in different (or alternative) economies, we then present a number of illustrative examples of how women and men are transforming the act of learning in work and production contexts. We also look at forms of work in such economies and the meaning attached to them, wherein life and the relationships between living beings is set at the heart of the value creation process.