The presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of the reality of the world and of ourselves.
Sidewalk Series is a series of proposals for New York sidewalk interventions inspired by Antenna´s observations in the city. The interventions, in the form of street furniture and fixtures, resonate with people´s obscure yearnings and facilitate odd actions and temporary relations amongst strangers. The presence of these objects in the particular context invites (inter)action and shifts the perception and experience of various places. They pick up on current habits, give a new spin and encourage encounters: Shrink Bench, Hugging Tree, Exercise Stop, Escape Loft, Gum Sculpture and Sidewalk Exchange.
"We love wandering through the city, sometimes without any particular destination or reason. Streets are usually filled with people busy going about their routine or immersed in their own world. The city consist of psyches as much as materials. From an observer´s point of view, it appears to be kind of continuous theater with everyone being a performer or amongst people mediated by the artifact. The interactions and artifacts shape the impression of the city and become part of the urban experience."
"The stupidity of people comes from having an answer to everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything... it seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than to ask, so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties."
Milan Kundera, Interview on the Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Fixed feature space is one of the basic ways of organizing the activities of individuals and groups. It includes material manifestations as well as the hidden, internalized designs that govern behaviour of man. One common example of fixed feature space is spatially organised inside of the western house. Not only there are rooms for special functions - food, entertainment, socializing - even the artifacts associated with the activities are related to that specific space. In some standards people who live in a mess are those who fail to classify activities and artifacts according to a uniform, consistent and predictable spatial plan. The internal layout however is quite recent.
Philippe Aries points out in a book
Centuries of Childhood that rooms had no fixed functions in European houses until the eighteenth century. Members of the family had no privacy as we know it today nor there were spaces that were sacred or specialized for one function only: "...strangers came at will, while beds and tables were set up and taken down according to the moods and appetites of the occupants". In the 18th century the house altered its form, rooms started to be arranged likely to street and named after its function - bedroom, living room, dining room etc.
Some aspects of the fixed-feature space however are not visible until one observes human behaviour. It is important to note that fixed feature space nowadays acts like a mold into which great deal of behaviour is cast. As Churchill has noted: "We shape our buildings and they shape us".
It has been discussed lately that people do not think of their relationships with other people by kinship or emotions any more, but they have also started to name people by functions.
Futuro house by Matti Kuusia, 1968
After some musings it has become clear to me that I am arguing about the use of "public space" as a word. Everything that is not private we label as public. In reality the space inbetween the buildings - the so called public space - is a mixture of interwoven socio-spatial processes in everyday use. Not only do I find the term "public space" too abstract, I also disagree with its ideology. In most cases the public space doesn´t belong to public and its use is regulated by higher authorities. So instead of calling it simply "public" we could define new words, segregate functions and meanings of these spaces. I have so far come up with 3 concepts - public space, open space and social space... If you have better words or examples in mind, or you agree/ disagree with me, post your opinion in the comments!
It is found out by the LDC (Local Data Company) that Britain has the worst rate of shop closures this year, with one in four shops closing down. Three times more shops are now closing across the country´s town centres than did last year, with 19 000 shops shutting so far in 2009. Most of these were independent stores. While shopkeepers admit that the recession has not helped, the overwhelming feeling is that the town´s problems cannot be blamed on the financial crisis only. The impact of the new-out-of-town shopping complex is the principal gripe.A stroll down the local high street currently might be a devastating view - clusters of empty shop facades outnumber the surviving businesses, an array of charity shops and pound stores that has filled some of the vacated units. Faint lettering leave the reminder of shops moved out. However there are attempts to try to counter the high street´s appearance. To lessen the visual impact of rows of vacant stores, some of the local councils have installed artworks in some windows and painted the shop fronts bright colours. It seems a temporary solution though. A city, a local high street should be a living organism that contains more than one function. I admire the enthusiasm of local council workers in Margate who have come up with the idea "... to prepare the high street for an age in which it is not solely a shopping centre, but one in which former stores might be used as university classrooms, community centres or art installations..." The end of the retail-dominated high street looms in the horizon, finally...
The paradox of the new open space in housing ensembles is its ambiguity: it attempts to be both public and private. For what and for whom are these little squares intended? Who actually uses them and in what ways? Newcomers who stroll around these layouts feel slightly confused: Is this a public park? A private garden for the residents of the villas? Or is it other way around, and are passers-by invited to look at the residents on their terraces? Sometimes such paradoxical experiences are what makes these spaces so fascinating. The old meanings of private life and public domain shift and lose their unequivocalness. The new open space brings urban life into traditional housing block through visual links with the city and by permitting entry to other users.
At times private and public seem to seamlessly flow into one another. Crucial elements in the organization and experience of the public and private domains are the boundaries and transitions: entrances to the dwellings, back sides of the buildings, gardens and the place for cars. The logic of the perimeter block however gets reversed: the inner side becomes its formal side and front side to the entrances.
An important consequence in the reversal is that the "backs of the houses" are on the outer side and therefore eventually in a public area. The reversal of the block principle also means that the car cannot be parked right by the door and this in some opinions creates a feeling of belonging to the community. However the ambiguous status of the new open space is not a collective one: most of these kind of spaces created in the Netherlands for example are public property. These new ensembles can be seen as experiments. They are hybrids, the sense of public-private spaces is being sought anew.
The social sciences as well as architecture tend to speak of public and private in binary terms: it is either or. But in fact it is a question of constant shifts from public to private. Spaces therefore need to be designed as ´open spaces´ - to accommodate the shifts between public and private interactions. And designers should not describe them as one or the other, not restrict, but rather invite social explorations. The significance of the public space lies not in the degree of its expanse, its quantitative predominance or its symbolic role, but in connecting private, enclosed spaces, turning these spaces into collective memory.
In the beginning of the master course we were asked to create a newspaper article on any findings about Eindhoven - we called it The Eindhoven Zoo - or in my intepretation - to see and to be seen. "Eindhoven at first gets your attention as being open and friendly city. Walking along the streets, I find it surprising how many people leave their curtains open in the dark. Almost as showing their way of living - open-minded, tolerant, welcoming... Almost as saying: you are always welcome to come inside... Their homes seem to be designed fashionably. But you hardly ever see someone really living there. I wonder whether they may have just gone to the other room, and left the light on... Empty spaces behind the glass windows look like a stages designed for show(off). I feel strange looking into someone´s home without letting them know. As if I was an intruder to forbidden areas - their private life..."In our homes we create spaces that are meant for us and those for outsiders; but"public" is the place to see and to be seen. A place that is accessible to everybody, where nobody can be barred from, but nobody has special rights either. At least in theory...
After setting the rules for YouCanPlan brand (mostly still in 2D) I tried to come up with concept that would become exhibition design - a 3D brand. These first images are from chosen design 3D model that we later on realised in SPRUCE plywood with CNC-cutting technology.
Printed material for CIH Housing exhibition in Harrogate, UK
TALLINN CITY HALL, EE
architectural competition 2009, entry
in collaboration with Slider Studio Ltd
VILJANDI CULTURE ACADEMY, EE
architectural competition 2008: entry
in collaboration with Vincent Saulier, Vladimir Doray
I remember that in the movie American Beauty identity was satirized as ´sold´ and reduced to prepackaged lifestyle. Life was something shallowly constructed on the ´I am what I consume´. If it is about consuming goods, services and places that generate pleasurable experiences then could the concept of identity be reduced to ´I am what I experience´? Could a place in that case provide the basis for individual identity as always embodied, housing the possibilities of seeing, feeling and smelling the surroundings?
According to John Urry people will gain less satisfaction from continuing to do what they have always done. Their daily life will become less to do with collective memories and experiences and they will look more for immediate pleasure. Being a tourist is an exception of time, a period of (self)explorations and differences. The tourist is kind of pilgrim, seeking authenticity in other ´times´ and other ´places´ away from everyday life.
A place depends first and foremost on information about the way people perceive, remember and talk about surroundings. The relationship that people develop with their home surrounding is intensely personal and relational to the passage of time. It is not the question of right or wrong, or better or more valuable, more significant, more important. Ask ten trained and experienced urban/spatial professionals to record their space perception of a particular setting and you will get ten different results. This also applies when you ask the same thing from ten inhabitants of the same neighbourhood.
Lacan has described identity as “[...] something that is not always already present but comes into being ´from the place of Other”. To describe local identity one needs to know something about what aspects of the lives and surroundings of people lead them to identify and perhaps come to value particular objects, features or locations in their daily routes, both consciously and subconsciously.
Or how do people experience, remember and communicate about identity? Does the spatial setting and timing affect narratives of identity? How can planners/ designers identify local narratives of place identity and use them in urban design? What is the importance of a public space and urban design in small communities? Could designer give form to objects/ public spaces that bring out locality?
The design of the environment is a physical and three-dimensional manifestation of place identity. It is the relationship between all these individual elements - site, space or building - that gives places their character and identity. In my opinion the purpose of spatial design is to create, reproduce or mould identities of places through manipulation of activities, feelings, meanings into place identity. It is a selective way of imagining, acting and communicating about the place.
This thesis project focuses on the questions of identity and tourism.
In my research question: how to reproduce identity through public space?, I would like to emphasize the words reproduce and through. Because I believe that identity is not something fixed, but rather placing itself among the variety of behavioural patterns; and it must be played out (lived).
Everywhere throughout the world local people in response to the opportunities afforded by the global tourism industry (mostly moneywise) are putting their culture on display. Instead of talking, living it out and starting the dialogue with tourist, the host population is actually trying to fulfil the expectations of a traveler. Tourist is kind of a pilgrim, who is seeking authenticity in other times and other places away from home. He shows particular fascination in the real lives of others.
Traditionally people have traveled away from their residence and work in order to participate in tourism. The tourism however does not start nor end with the physical departure and return. Anticipation and daydreaming, remembering and reminiscing are equally part of tourism experience. But if one does not need to leave the place of residence to become a tourist, then tourism and therefore also search for identity or comparison with others, cannot be described as a quality of place and time only. It is rather quality in the minds of people. Or the relationship between person and a place/ environment that makes the identity. The ways in which people experience that environment (and themselves), is not merely instrumental, but often exploratory, unsystematic, wasteful of energy and fun. They do not want to use only their vision; they need to hear, to touch, to taste and gather these five perceptions in a world.
My context is based on a village in eastern border of Estonia, known as a settlement of russian old believers. This one of the places where villagers gain mostly from tourism, but that only for up to 4 months a year. This village is extraordinary from its layout compared to historical estonian villages. It is 7km long one streetvillage. Houses are built very close to each other, there is no pavement to differentiate car area from pedestrians, and people tend interact just on the doorsteps.The citizens of the village are mostly old people; therefore it is believed that in less than 20years there will no longer be authentic village as such for tourism industry.
MONTON RETAIL ENVIRONMENT UPGRADE, EE
brandbook/ interior project for shop in Moscow: 2006
in collabrotion with Oliver Soomets
completed shops:
2006 - Monton Ülemiste in Tallinn, EE
2007 - Monton Europe centre in Moscow, RU
TALLINN MODULE, EE
international street furniture competition
entry: PROFILIUM
in collaboration with Renee Puusepp
RETHINKING PUBLIC AREAS IN SCHOOL, EE
reconstruction of Audentes high school hallways and staircases
in collaboration with Katrin Kalju
