Environmental gerontologist Emi Kiyota thinks architects have to learn to not “over-design”,

“Spaces should be flexible and should include intentionally inconvenient places. When we strive to create a perfect place, we strip away the possibility of authentic community, in which people negotiate with one another to make their environment workable for all.”

In Ibasho, the community development platform Emi helped set up in disaster-stricken areas of Japan, Nepal, and the Philippines, flexible spaces make room for changing needs and negotiation between end users. Community members make design decisions, such as building their own storage space, or constructing cafes to cultivate the kind of relationships they want with customers.

In School of the Arts Singapore, ‘’negative or non-spatial’’ spaces were intended as social and informal learning spaces. WOHA, the school’s architects, regard the rotating rosters of students – the end-users – as part of their design process. Accounting for 220% of the building’s community plot ratio, the exaggerated circulation spaces, sky gardens and roof terraces are intentionally left incomplete. Mun Summ Wong of WOHA says, “You can say they are left incomplete so that the students can do what they want with them.”

Ample white walls that curve around the school’s performing arts venues and the classrooms provide blank canvases for students “to communicate – paint, draw, and project on them.”