Designing With, Not For: CatalyticAction’s Participatory Practice

Architecture is often evaluated through finished forms, yet some practices operate in a different register, one where design unfolds through relationships, time, and use rather than through a single outcome. For CatalyticAction, participation is not a parallel social activity, but the means through which spaces are conceived, constructed, and sustained over time.

Wall-Less Gallery / Sepide Elmi

The old Biston factory is located approximately forty kilometers from the city of Kermanshah, where many workers spend their entire workweek and have limited opportunities to participate in the city's cultural events. Furthermore, Kermanshah itself has very few cultural spaces. Within the factory, there is a space between the production halls that was once used as a kitchen but has been unused for many years.

The Light and Black Workplace / MODO Designs

The owners wanted to consolidate all the scattered offices at different places in the city into a singular corporate office where the ground level would have a showroom on the main roadside and a double-height entry from another road.

Tie-Ma Cycling Station at Dapo Pond / Studio APL + Lin Ko-Fang Architects

Floating above the ground of Dapo Pond in Taitung, a public space of a metal "lotus garden" creates a sanctuary for cyclists traversing Taiwan's East Rift Valley. Designed by Studio APL and Lin Ko-Fang Architects, the Tie-Ma Cycling Station reimagines the infrastructure of rest. Stones discovered during foundation excavation were transformed into breathable gabion walls and shaped steel into organic canopies; the project dissolves the boundary between the bicycle station and the wetland ecosystem. Currently in its first completed phase, this resilient landscape architecture acts not as a barrier, but as a porous interface connecting the local community with the rhythms of the water.

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