Creative environments focus on research activities that are organised in cross-disciplinary projects mixing interactive media, space and activity. The projects are grouped into three different themes: (a) Architecture and interaction technolgies, (b) performance and dramaturgy, (c) design and learning.
Monthly Archive for November, 2003
Page 2 of 4
Sometimes technologies drives us crazy, this is an example (a picture in a picture)
Meeting with Pierre
Of the 5 elements that Lynch describe in his book, Pierre believes that some of them are better represented into the 2dimensional map and some of them are more suitable for being understood on the ground.
MAP (2D) | FOOT ON (3D)
———————————————————————-
Paths X |
Limits | X
Nodes X |
Landmarks | X
Districts ?
Maybe we can find a way to move from the flat representation to the three dimensional world and vice versa. Using this system we can track down the most common paths of people and to appreciate the ‘height’, the ‘interest’ and the ‘slope’ of a place in the formation of the image of the city.
This is an unknown domain so we need to formulate very simple hypothesis.
-> understanding city/ reading the city
The goal of the project is not to build on the city but we need to focus on the first step: the ability of reading the city, to analyse the city and to make sense of the city. In doing so we want to use a very structural analysis with the elements proposed by lynch and with a very simple grammar which can be [drop] or [remove], … and a simple group of adjectives like [shape] or [colour].
Through the system the users can collaborate in defining paths and all the other elements and the way they constructed the relation of these elements. The goal will be to reach an emergent and shared meaning for the image of the city: its spaces, its features, its elements.
The image of the city is constructed psychologically by everyone.
Every person construct socially the mean of the places where we live.
Sharing these spaces is a collaboration and a communication in which we exchange directions and intentions in place assuming a common ground of understanding of space as entity.
Sometimes our perception of space may differ and the implicit communication of place is corrupted. Is when we lost ourselves or we do not co-ordinate properly in the space.
I propose a framework where people can share and construct the idea of the city reflecting on their own reasoning process in a metalevel of learning.
I consider urban planning as a communication between the designer (the architect) and the user (the citizen). If this communication flow smoothly, the designer has accomplished the goal. In the other case any mismatch of perception the user can experience should provide a deep insight to the designer.
From Lynch, The image of the city, p. 28:
“… environmental image is the result of a reciprocal process between the observer and the environment: environment suggests differences and relations, the observer, with great adaptation, and with personal reasons select, organise and give meaning to what s/he sees. …”
1. What are you trying to highlight with your walking tracing at the WEnd of Vancouver?
2. What are the elements of the analysis you are conducting (what are you looking for)?
3. Can you give me your definition of the following key ideas:
a. Imageability (in the K. Lynch definition)
b. Relation between Public/private places
c. Mixed Functionality’s Zones
4. What do you think of the empirical analysis of the implemented urban interventions to a city plan? Interviewing people and/or any other methodology you may think about.
Meeting with Silvan Malfroy
Today we register the problem of the “surfing” or “zapping”, which is related with the tendency of the persons to reach the goals without suffering, immediately, without personal involvement.
So, it is important to describe the temporal scale of the project, defining in which point it time it locate itself, while in the data collection period or in the personal elaboration (which is usually longer). In my vision, the tool will be in between the data collection and the elaboration, as it will be a bridge between the virtuality of the map and the physicality of the actual world where people walk.
SPACE for the urban planner is like GOD for the teologist: everybody call his name but nobody can see him.
The is a difficulty of conceptualising the space and for this problem there are different school of thought:
1- the “phenomenological” school which tries to discover the city as a pure object with an actual outcome which reflect in the way people use it.
2- the “historical” school, where the city is studied in the evolution it had during different periods of life. Every element of the city, then, is described in a evolution process.
3- the “inter-rational” school, where the city design is described as an ensemble of objects that are connected by relations in a net of meanings. (this approach present the problem of the perception of relations)
The Constructed Environment is a semiotic object which is loaded with communications intentions. Sometime is difficult to decipher is there is an intention or not.
Malfroy thinks that the information you can get from the field are not enough to decipher or to give meaning to the city design. For him the city is essentially anonymous.
If we concentrate on the basic communications intent, like finding a door of a building, then is possible to envision a empirical method of deciphrate the city design. So we can envision a 4th method for the space definition: an experimental method, where a stimulus question, drives the discussion. For example we can ask ourselves what is the relationship between public/private into the city, or we can ask ourselves if the zones of mixed functionality is working in our city. Most of these questions can find an answer inside the empirical demonstration.
(my idea is to give the student the goal to demonstrate such hypothesis. The framework will ask every participants to formulate hypothesis rising virtual constructions or proposing virtual variants in the city. Then the other participants have to evaluate the hypothesis just using the implemented virtual variation in the physical space. This is a kind of ubiquitous urban simulation where I create and YOU test, but is also a reciprocal critique.)
Paola Vigano is a visiting professor here at EPFL and she particularly kind to “after sales” critique and verify of the implemented variation to an urban plan.
An interesting part of the course of architecture and interaction with the students is called “critique”, is that when people propose several variations to the same problem and the different solutions are reviewed and compared simultaneously by the participants. It is easy to differentiate between the proposed solutions using functional criteria but is not so easy to discriminate using aesthetic criteria. Sometime for 1 problem there are several solutions.
Interesting references where proposed during the meeting:
1- Gianfranco Caniggia, for example, wrote an interesting introduction to urban plan analysis: Lettura dell’edilizia di base. 1999
2- Pierre Sansot, wrote an interesting book on the functional approach with a view on the phylosophycal approach: La poetique de la Ville.
3- Umberto Galimberti: Tekne e Psiche. Feltrinelli. This book is about the fact that our society is becoming increasingly generalised and that there are less social interactions.
4- Philippe Budon: Ensigner la conception architecturale. 2001. This author is particularly interested in the Cognitive Psichology of the design processes.
5. There is an extra piece of work about “derive urbane” carried out by a group of researchers from the university of Lille.
This project can find a general implementation as a orientation / urban navigation tool. So, in this sense, companies interested in the production of turistic guides may find in this project an interesting marketing opportunity.
This is an excerpt from a discussion with Kristina:
The painting ‘Nighthawks’ by Edward Hopper is an example for a very high degree of permeability and transparency. Here the facade is so permeable, that the bar actually becomes part of the street space and influences its appearance essentially; it illuminates the street, it is the street.
from the stalkerlab:
… Is a collective subject that engages research and actions within the landscape with particular attention to the areas around the city’s margins and forgotten urban space, and abandoned areas or regions under transformation. These investigations are conducted across several levels, around notions of practicality, representations and interventions on these spaces that are referred to here as “Actual Territories.” Stalker is together custodian, guide and artist for these “Actual Territories.” In the multiple roles we are disposed to confront at once the apparently unsolvable contradictions of salvaging through abandonment, of representation through sensorial perception, of intervening within the unstable and mutable conditions of these areas….
Francesco Careri
“Walkscapes. El andar como practica estética.
Walking as an aesthetic practice”
Land&Scape Series
Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2002
pp 205, €25,00
In sostanza, il camminare e tutte le azioni ad esso correlate -attraversare, percorrere,
esplorare, vagare, deambulare, andare alla deriva…- sono delle forme primarie di interventourbano e quindi degli strumenti utili all’architettura per la conoscenza delle attuali configurazioni caotiche del territorio metropolitano.
E’ infatti tornando a farsi viaggiatori nella metropoli e andando a zonzo -seguendo l’esempio dei ready made
urbani dei dadaisti, delle deambulazioni surrealiste, delle derive lettriste e situazioniste…- che èpossibile scoprire
l’esistenza, tra le pieghe della città dei margini, di una geografia inedita di spazi e luoghi che aspettano solo di
essere riconosciuti e riempiti di significati.
Perché, come scrive Careri “…il camminare può essere un mezzo attraverso cui inventare un diverso approccio
per l’intervento nel sistema degli spazi pubblici metropolitani, perinvestigarli, per attribuire significati simbolici, per renderli visibili.
Hidden perspectives can reveal people’s way of perceiving the city in a very personal way. The hidden Glasgow contains lots of such examples. One of them, for instance, is the the Govan Graving Docks. Possible views, stories bout these docks can reveal a very personal way to perceive the space. Some examples can include the idea of abandoned places versus historical or personal related place connected with personal stories.
What can be a good example where a personal perspective can express the divergent view people can have on the same space?
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