City of Domains

Traditional typology of urban design creates a strict division between private and public space - between the courtyard with private gardens and the street. The new open space according to DASH (Delft Architectural Studies on Housing) should open up the residential block. But the intervention is not aimed at creating room for a collective domain, but accommodating a new relationship between the public and private.

Parochial space according to American sociologist Lofland is a space that is indeed accessible to the public but clearly forms the territory of a particular group: those who walk in as strangers often feel themselves to be unwelcome guests. Public domain presumes on atmosphere of exchange and confrontation. The question then becomes: how open are these dominated domains, what relation do they have with other domains and to what extent can they be designed? Is the involvement of residents one of the main conditions for experiencing a space as public?

Public is Claiming Space - Play

Lately I was intrigued by Quentin Stevens article on "Why Berlin´s Holocaust Memorial is such a popular playground?". In the article he highlights the people´s need for proactive role in exploring landscapes and appropriating spaces to suit their varied desires. He argues that individuals´ needs and interests for remembrance (or self presentation?) are more varied and less understood and therefore harder to support or control through design.

Four basic forms that play takes - competition, simulation, chance and vertigo - emphasise different ways in which play provides escape from the seriousness, conventions and limits of everyday behaviour. The public realm presents spontaneous and dynamic configurations of place, events and people. Through various kinds of play, people develop themselves as individuals, and they test the limits of what public space can offer rather than merely receiving spaces as designers intend.

Peter Eisenman´s Memorial to the Murdered Jews, opened 2005 in Berlin, is 2 hectare field of 2711 concrete pillars. There has been a lot talk about the politics of its creation, but less talk about how visitors have appropriated the setting for many unanticipated activities. The Memorial lacks clear symbolism and obvious function and therefore invites free interpretation.


The MMJE´s scale and omni-directionality reduces formality: unlike many memorials, there is no focal axis or "front". Its pillars provide a multiplicity of audience seating and stages where people can meet their needs to see and be seen. Security staff only patrol the perimeter and act only to prevent dangerous uses, not uses which are merely undesirable. Eisenman intended this memorial to induce clautrophobia, disorientation, isolation, confinemet and unsteadiness. Without moral guidance such direct sensory arousal often instead stimulates play.

It is interesting to find out that not having been designed to suit particular functions or bodily gestures, this memorial´s abstract simplicity maximises usefulness. The expansive, complex field of pillars enables wide range of secondary, unplanned, yet-to-be-discovered uses. The MMJE illustrates ways public spaces can promote freedom and variety of public action beyond any definitions of function or meaning.

Design cannot necessarily enable or prevent play. Encouragement to free, playful behaviour can never be coersive. It is probably partly because playfulness was not among Eisenman´s intentions that people´s behaviour around this memorial is so creative and diverse. Designer´s role is to establish possibilities for meaning and use.

source:Quentin Stevens article on MMJE, 2009

Before Public is Claiming Space - Self Presentation

Over the course of centuries we have seen a progressively stronger and subtler management of impulses and emotions within and between people. Spontaneous outbursts and behaviours such as spitting, drooling, vomiting, ranting and raging; pissing, shitting, sweating, screeching etc, have become increasingly embarrassing. This process started in courtly circles, followed by upper class and bourgeois, until finally by everyone else. Norbert Elias outlines that this process brought along an on-going privatisation of living quarters, a reduction of accessibility, not only physical but also reduction of visibility, audibility. From this fairly recent trend of privatisation people too quickly conclude that privacy is timeless and ubiquitous human need.

However people do not need seclusion as much as they need adequate self presentation. People are keen to present themselves at all times as competent, morally adequate. They expect others to accept them as they are, observe and respect their "space". In order to present oneself, they need to work on their self-presentation, away from prying eyes... before getting into costume and applying make-up for the next scene. As long as people can take care of their self-presentation without being seen, as long as nobody violates their "space", the public space can accommodate anything.

Successful public space is more than an area accessible to all: it is a space that includes, excludes, conceals and displays, raises and lowers at the same time. Some argue that this kind of environment cannot be designed, one can merely facilitate it - inviting to careful social explorations.

"To create such settings which are central, public and open is to recognise and invite diverse, new and unpredictable behavioural possibilities rather than serving narrow, predetermined instrumental activities. These gathering points imply and stimulate social interaction and ´transfunctional´ usage, transcending the orderly routines of everyday life. " (Henri Lefebvre in Writing on Cities, 1996)

Public Space in London?

For the recent Blueprint (August 2009) editors of the magazine teamed up with the Manifesto Club to test the limits of freedom in London. They carried out some experiments in public spaces such as Trafalgar Square, Paternoster Square and "Scoop" - area around Rodgers City Hall. Here are some quotes they were told in "public squares" after having picnic in deck chairs and playing football.

Area: Scoop
Guard: Sorry to interrupt your lovely picnic, but I have been asked by the management to move you along. You know it´s health and safety.
P: Health and Safety?
Guard: Yes, it´s a public walkway, and it gets busy down here with cyclists and skateboards who come past.
P: I thought you weren´t allowed to cycle here...
Guard: No, you´re not but kids come racing through on their bikes - we try to stop them but...

Guard: You can´t play football here guys. It´s all private property. This whole grey area is private property. It´s a stupid rule, if we don´t do it, though, then someone in the offices will call Boris Johnson and he´ll tell us to stop it.

Area: Trafalgar Square
Guard: I´m going to have to move you.
A: What are the rules?
Guard: I´m sorry but you will have to move. You know that St.James´s Park is just around the corner. GLA (Greater London Authority) owns this area.

Guard: Why are you having a picnic in a private space? What you like it here on the hard concrete? Is it a performance?

Area: Paternoster Square
Man passing by: You have found a great spot here. It´s getting like St Mark´s Square!

Guard: I am sorry I am going to have to stop you. There´s no throwing or kicking of anything here. If you hurt someone they´ll get sued. This is private property, not public, so you can´t do anything that might endanger public. There are 50CCTV cameras covering this area.


source: Blueprint article: How much public is public space?

Public space? Social space? Open space...

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.

Studies - rhythms and movements 2

My vision for this design is a continuous line of light that is varied by the rhythm of the supporting posts. This light line would create a virtual roof above the street. Unequal and “choppy” in rhythmic character, the posts also serve as a distraction of traffic in the village. Lighting posts vary in angles and finishing.

With the design I invite people to interact with the street lighting by allowing them to change the angle of certain posts. This interaction could also be seen as an independent and playful guiding system, where people - locals and travellers alike - leave messages for one another.

Studies - rhythms and movements 1

Looking through the material collected in fieldtrips I realised that due to the constant rhythm of the village, it is hard to make a decision for car-stops. To create interaction (more close experience of local identity) one needs to be guided off the main road to smaller tracks. I became fascinated of the rhythm of electricity posts. It was almost meditating. I wonder if was able to change the rhythm and/or angle of these posts, would I be able to create a surprise in visitors? Would it be enough to guidance? What kind of image would such environment create for the village?

I imagine this environment as a stage where people can improvise with streetscape, highlight various places in different times, guide people or leave a message behind. Change, movement and interaction are main keywords for the design proposal.

Local identity - tourism artifact?

My primary interest with this design research was to discover relationships a person could establish with the local community and the environment. Focusing on the villages of Lake Peipsi district in Estonia, I formulated three approaches to experience a place- the tourist, the traveller, and the visitor. Through these distinct role plays, evolving fieldwork and literature research, I was able to translate my observations and findings into appropriate design proposals.

The process of my the design was not linear. Rather than premeditatedly taking steps forward, I sometimes took several steps backward consciously. The documentation made through videos, photography, and sound recordings allowed me to experience the place time and time again. This constant review of the experiences often revealed new insights and understandings that I had missed at first sight.

Though, all my travel experiences to the village were informative, none of them seemed to completely reveal the essence of the place. Therefore, my design proposal seeks to establish a fourth experience, one that could combine the qualities and highlights of each prior experience. In that fourth experience, I wish to guide travellers unconsciously throughout the village by using functional street lighting as a tool for that.

VISITOR - sketches for design

guiding visitors off the main street by using reflections the use of reflective surfaces gives a possibility to combine views and multiply elements.sidewalks in the village
Sidewalk emphasizes people and their movement, road tightens for vehicles.

sidewalk for adventure

Sidewalk leads to off-road tracks, creates comfortable surface to walk and highlights viewpoints.

places in the street for people

With different materials, colours and heights, I create smooth obstacles on the road.

2ND TERM PRESENTATION

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.

1ST TERM PRESENTATION

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.

PORTFOLIO 2006 - City Picnic