From the most essential functions, both “environment” and “architecture” can be explained as the habitats for life. So the construction of environment or architecture should be given to the professional or shall return the initiative to the occupants is a controversy worth thinking about. Doshi’s proposal of merging architecture and lifestyle provides a research angle for environmental architecture that attaches great importance to the occupants’ usage of the territory. The Participation may be an opportunity to hear the ordinary people’ voice for urban villages, and also an opportunity for the wisdom of the masses to be valued and recognized. Therefore, I hope to play a role of spatial agency based on my previous understanding of urban villages and the three migrant women. On the one hand, it helps me to explore their understanding of urban village, on the other hand, it helps migrant women to enhance their cognition of environment and architecture.

 

For many migrants, especially young people just entering the city, the urban villages play the role of "home". Lujiang Village, for example, one of the largest urban villages in Guangzhou, is carrying about 150, 000 urban migrants. In order to avoid mass migration of the population from urban villages, the demolition policy will gradually withdraw from the historical stage and be replaced by the old-building-renovation from 2020. The renovation specifically focuses on repairing, upgrading and upgrading the infrastructure such as water, electricity, gas, heat and network, as well as solving the age-old problems such as parking spaces, barrier-free facilities and elevators. However, the community layout, main architectural construction, interior decoration and structure cannot be changed. Therefore, in general, there is no need to move, which largely avoids the resettlement of urban migrants. The most direct target of the improvement of the living environment in urban villages is the current residents in the villages, and migrant women account for a large proportion.

 

The participatory research is specifically implemented by co-drawing. First, I conducted an online interview with Tang, Chen and Yang about their living environment in the urban villages, including private space and public space and extracted the key spaces mentioned in their description. Then I showed the three immigrant women and their husbands or boyfriends the photos of the key spaces, and asked them to rate (1-10) each space according to their preferences, also to mark anything them like or dislike. According to the feedback from each participant in the first co-drawing, I modified the photos through Photoshop, the purpose of which is to make the participants not be disturbed by the existing spatial order in the second painting, so that they could play more. In the second co-drawing, I encourage them to try their best to express their opinions on space renovation with paintings instead of words (the scope of renovation references the National Urban Old Building Renovation in 2020). Compared with the written description, the painting can visualize the participants' understanding and preferences of the urban villages more intuitively, and it is more readable without the limitation of language. Finally, I interviewed the participants again about their views on the renovated space and their reasons for doing so.

 

In addition, I also invited three urban women of the same age as the three migrant women to participate in the co-drawing experiment. Due to privacy concerns, I only invited urban women to participate in the painting of the public space in the urban village. The co-drawing experiment involved 33 Spaces. For the two-times co-drawing experiments, a total of 182 drawings were received as feedback.