Dan Jones and Andrew Siddall are civic Architects Ltd – a process based architecture and arts practice concerned with demand-led projects and the advocacy of user engagement in the use of and development of the built environment.
civic was formally established in 2005, with a long background of practise involved in collaborative working with other creative professionals and an ethos of strengthening the links between lay stakeholders and their built and natural place.
A key difference between what civic is practising and more conventional ideas about public involvement in the design process, is that in this case, user groups are neither soft partners in the consultation process where they are simply shown the design outcomes, nor are they being asked to design their own projects, rather they are being enabled to lead the design process by their own experiences and from their position as lay people. We call this process demand-led design.