Learning from? Situating the dialectic roles of professionals and dwellers in the city-making process

In Yona Freidman’s book “l’architecture de survie”, the communicational difficulty between two counterparts - who build and use was signposted as an opening question for formulating the discourse of survival habitat. His philosophy is realistic rather than utopian, as the majority of architectures have been constructed without the intervention of professionals. The dialectic roles of professionals and dwellers in the urbanization process, presented by the juxtaposition of control and various learning from movements throughout the modernism/post-modernism era, also by the highlighted (insurgent) participatory approach that under the slogan of “right to the city”. Can dwellers escape from what professionals have envisioned and develop everything spontaneously? How do we (re)calibrate the mutual relationship between freedom and control, need and being needed in the city-making processes? How may these features influence the actual configuration of conceptualization that represents the spatial, social and cultural construction to contribute to the discursive emergency that not only leads to intellectual recognitions but also reach to and coming from the dwellers as well as the general public? This paper draws on the critical reflection attached to abovementioned questions based on the literature review, the analytical reading of Yona Freidman’s concept of Survival habitat, as well as several ethnographical materials in Turkey and Iran. The conclusion accentuates the importance of symmetrizing the intellectual knowledge and the ordinary language through vertical exchanges. Meanwhile, documenting and assembling the existing know-how through horizontal exchanges should be developed as well. Furthermore, the guarantee of accessibility of such collective knowledge and integrated collaborations among professionals, public audiences and inhabitants may facilitate potential transformations of aforementioned roles.