Eyes Open

I recently bought the IDEO Eyes Open guidebook for London from Amazon as I was interested in it's concept, which is to explore and experience your surroundings in a different way. It is essentially a guidebook that highlights a number of places not on the traditional tourist trail, but I like the idea of really looking at what is going on around me as I feel that my observational skills may be a bit rusty after becoming desensitised by the bustle of the commute.

I'm keen to check out some of the suggestions that are nearby, especially as I've been here for almost a year and I still feel like I haven't seen all the things that I should have by now. It will also give me an excuse to take a few photos again (another thing which I seem to have neglected since moving here).

Landworkers

I attended the Landworkers Symposium, held as part of the RIAS Convention, at the DCA last Thursday. It presented a series of collaborative projects where the land itself was considered the medium.

I found the first presentation by Gavin Renwick particularly engaging. He showed his work in the Canadian Northwest Territories, and how he had spent time with the local people, and thus built up an understanding of their culture. An interesting insight was the Inuit relation to space. For example he stated that they have no words for inside or outside, as you are always home, as the land is your home.

In a similar vein, the second presentation from Juhani Pallasmaa included two examples of projects he has been involved in. The first was the design of the Siida museum for Sámi culture and the nature of Northern Lapland. The main exhibition in the museum had been spatially organised, where every space had meaning relating to the seasons and work cycle of the Sámi people. The second project was a monument design for a T-junction in Detroit at Cranbrook Acadmey, which they wanted transformed into a feature. The final solution was again rooted within context, with local glacier rock used as the main material, and Juhani described this as a collaboration between architecture and nature and history.

Siida Museum interior

I was lucky enough to meet Juhani the day before the symposium, and this idea of collaboration came up then as well. He talked about collaboration not just being between a designer and users, or a designer and experts, but collaboration should also be with tradition and history, and what has been done before. He also pointed me in the way of some more literature that I might find interesting, mainly in regards to human behaviour and architectural history.

The most significant points that I will take with me from these two days are the concept of collaboration being with everyone, from the people you are designing for, to the client, to the past and all the other people that may be affected. Also empathy for everyone is important, as by understanding how others think it will be easier to interpret their motives and needs.

Ethnography and Architectural Design

While browsing the Anthrodesign group for examples of ethnographic fieldwork used in an urban/public space environment I came across a few interesting questions which led to suggested reading and links. I found a link to this Space and Place listserv as well, and I've tried signing up to it although it seems a bit complicated.

At Peter Merholz's blog peterme.com I found an old post, which talks about the value that anthropological thought can bring to the design world. In the post he mentioned an architectural firm MKThink, who had used an anthropologist to help them "move beyond standard architectural practice and consider ethnography as a method toward constructing better built environments". I think they might be worth contacting in relation to my project, possibly just to gain a better sense of the role that ethnography could play in urban design.

MKThink designed the new AT&T Park concourse

I think I'd like to explore this idea in the Summer. I'm keen to see how ethnography can be used to help design the environments we live in - from public parks to city centres.

The 11th Hour

In our current People and Design project we have been given the task of envisioning a future society in 2108. We also have to imagine a ritual that our society would partake in and then embody this through design.

We have had a series of lectures to get us thinking a lot about issues such as climate change, and how they will have a large effect on what the world will be like in a hundred years. My group have been doing a bit of research and we have set up a blog here to illustrate our process.

I've been doing a bit of my own research into the area, mainly by watching the two films An Inconvenient Truth and The 11th Hour.

Both of them bring up some pretty astonishing facts and statistics, and I'd say a lot of them are quite disturbing. We have been asked to consider what we think the main drivers of the issues that will affect the future of earth. Even though the glaring issues are global warming, soil erosion, fossil fuel depletion, population growth, from watching these films it is plain to see that the problem is humankind, and our disillusionment that we are separate from nature.  

I am interested to look at the positive side, in the 11th Hour it says that this could be the generation to turn things round and make a difference. I've been looking at sustainable design and how it could have a great impact. Bruce Mau's book Massive Change presents some really interesting thinking, and provides possible solutions for the future.

Space and Place

I've been doing a bit more research in relation to the DE project, which we'll hopefully be finding out more about next week. I've tried to divide my research into three main areas:

• People (and their behaviour)
• The space and it's environment 
• The object or interactive system involved.

I found this paper, which deals with social interactions in public spaces. It was geared towards researching possible frameworks for mobile information systems. I like how they have structured their research and hopefully I can take some of this into how we manage our task as a group.

Whilst thinking about people's behaviour in space I remembered a blog entry I came across last year on desire paths. I always find these desire paths captivating, it helped me realised how people will make a space work for them, even if the design of it impedes them. It's visual evidence of where a designer has "imposed their own will onto the site, as opposed to finding a solution that accounts for the wants and “desires” of the users." I think it will be interesting to also look into urban, environmental and architectural design in relation to the project.

Desire Path - Flickr

In relation to objects and interactive systems, I am often drawn back to my roots in interaction design. I find it hard to get away from looking at big interactive systems like display screens and a lot of the examples on Interactive Architecture. I do like a lot of this stuff, although sometimes I feel these interactive pieces can verge too much on the art side of things and fail to acknowledge an actual requirement.

I did find this blog Interactive Displays in Public Spaces, which had some interesting insights, particularly in regards to zones and behaviours around the displays. There's a link to a good write-up on SlideShare, with some useful diagrams.

Diagram of interactive display in public space