GAC as a group grew out of our first engagements with the village of Masoro, in Rwanda, and the larger question of how design effect the world. Over the years our projects have varied in scale and complexity, but each has focused on collaborative design practices through community engagement, research, and education. Our exhibition at the Seoul Biennale, Playing Well With Others, describes an approach to design that has grown from the relationships we have made with other people, places, environments, materials, cultures, and techniques. It is an approach that has allowed us to develop a unique form of agency for designers and those we work with.

“Playing Well With Others” presents three outputs from this approach: Relationships, Products, and Processes. Relationships are illustrated through a Project Map, where four projects are used to reveal the connections between individuals, organizations, institutions, governments, and modes of practice. Products show the projects that have resulted from this network through scaled diagrams and drawings. Processes is a series of films which show the people we have worked with and the various ways they have participated in these four projects.

Together these three lenses through which to view our work takes a slightly different view of the biennale’s theme “collective cities” and understands collective as conscious and intentional choice, and cities as constellations of communities, groups of individuals bound together by common context, interests, histories, and desires.