Mark Lakeman is a nationally recognized architect and urban designer dedicated to regenerative public spaces. As the founder of The City Repair Project and lead designer at Communitecture, Inc., he has facilitated over 600 community-driven projects in Portland, Oregon, and influenced urban permaculture initiatives across North America.
Since returning in 1995 from seven years immersed in indigenous communities, Lakeman has championed participatory design, transforming urban spaces into vibrant cultural hubs. His work has been featured in Dwell, Architecture Magazine, Yes! Magazine, and more.
In 2003, he received the National Lewis Mumford Award for his role in Dignity Village, a pioneering self-organized community for the unhoused. His designs have also been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. Lakeman’s vision continues to inspire communities to reclaim and revitalize their public spaces.
Helena Costa: What initially drew you to architecture, and how did you come to focus on community-centered design?
Mark Lakeman: My parents are both architects and teachers, and the aspirations of modernism were a kind of design spirituality of our family. They have both been very driven in their careers, both advocates for the key role that design can play in designing a better world. He founded the urban design function of our city planning bureau, and oversaw the emergence of the signature public spaces of Portland. She has been a professor, world traveler, and author investigating the geomorphic development of villages and the way they emerge in response ecological conditions. So, their focus became mine to expand upon, and so I have broadened and deepened that focus, particularly in terms of subverting and transforming the Roman colonial grid that forms the framework of the western hemisphere.
HC: Communitecture emphasizes "community design for the public good." How did this mission come to define your practice?
ML: I was compelled to close the early phase of my career when a huge toxic waste cover up was jokingly disclosed during my work on a new Bank of America office tower in the urban center of Portland. I was very upset at both the fact and manner of the disclosure, and so I abruptly resigned. I spent the next seven years traveling to investigate geomorphic village-based cultures in order to revise and evolve my understanding of how individuals and communities can relate to their own designed urban form and landscapes. I saw that in the best cases, and in most cases, place based communities thrive and experience fewer dystopic issues when they are integral to the history and development of their own environments. They are also more design-literate, and are more likely to support their own community generally. Of course, all of this stands in stark contrast to design in the western hemisphere where most of the built environment is conceived of and created as a development practice for profit. In the USA in particular, we persist amidst a design emergency of omission, to say the least.
HC: What guiding principles shape your approach to architecture and urban planning at Communitecture?
ML: Great question! Here are a few answers.
HC: How do you balance the needs of communities with the aesthetic and functional aspects of design?
ML: Understanding that we as designers have been conditioned to be elitists, we enter the process as facilitators and listeners as we seek to find the balance you are asking about. For working communities, of course accessibility, attainability, public health, youth spaces, multigenerational spaces are at the highest order of priority. Our goal is to see an outstanding and inclusive process directly result in an integrated design. This nearly always happens, and if it doesn’t then it is most likely because of internal team dynamics. Of course, scale, complexity and other considerations always modulate how the process will unfold.
HC: Can you share a project that significantly impacted a community and explain why it stands out to you?
ML: Certainly. Our most famous prototype, that transforms street intersections from barren space without a social function into activated, community-driven public crossroads, was configured to not only spread rapidly and without limit, it was initiated in a radical way that would inspire ongoing transformative effects within the city leadership and bureaucracy. It stands out to me because it is the most “stealth” project, appearing innocent and friendly while we actually consider it a systemic counter-attack upon the imposition of the colonial grid that isolates people from each other. It’s smallness is actually gigantic, while the largeness of most building projects ends up appearing quite “small” in contrast.
HC: What are some of the unique challenges you face when working on community-driven projects, and how
do you overcome them?
ML: Many people consider a budget to be a prime constraint, but we do not. When we are working to heal communities through design activism our focus is upon unleashing their inspiration, releasing their collaborative potential. So, we get them excited about a vision for a better world right where they live. Then the project at hand becomes a means to a larger goal that they all can aspire and relate to. Once we have the vision, their own skills, talents, resources begin to emerge into a collaborative economy.
HC: How does Communitecture incorporate sustainability into its projects, and what innovations are you most excited about?
ML: So many ways. Firstly, because of our active public advocacy, most people that we work with come to us because of what we stand for, what they have seen and heard. We almost never need to persuade anyone to care more about ecological considerations. The most exciting sustainability innovations to us are that our projects always feature a long-term commitment to place, and a social/power configuration for equity and inclusion.
HC: Jane Jacobs once said, "Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody." How does this statement resonate with your approach to urban planning and community design?
ML: This statement has been a guiding philosophy for us, and as we’ve applied it over and over we’ve also found that each story of participation is unique. We have had to grow as we’ve learned that the reality is more complicated that this statement might suggest. For instance, though every person in a community should have equal access, they really don’t want to contribute or participate to the same extent. People care more about some things, and less about other things. Many care about the values embedded in the Big Picture, but less about how the details are created.
HC: What drives your passion for community-focused architecture, and how do you see your work contributing to broader societal change?
ML: The work is endlessly satisfying, entertaining, helps me keep sane, leads to increasingly more interesting and satisfying life experiences, and is so personally transformative. I am passionate about a more equitable world, and this is the means by which I can best support it’s realization.
HC: Looking to the future, what legacy do you hope to leave through your work with Communitecture and the communities you’ve helped design?
ML: Unlike the ruins of so many cultures, artifacts that litter the land, I hope that our work helps build a the continuity of cultural life-force that will persist in an ascending curve over time. With less disruption and implosion, more decentralized satisfaction and realization.
