Spaces and Places
City of Visual Accumulators: The Photographic Typology as a Civic Method for Collectively Surveying Sites of Urban Change View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dan Brackenbury
Photography is a critical recording tool in the planning stages of urban development. The camera is used to organise physical information, triangulate the dimensions of space and chart the terrain of a site, usually from above. However, these expansive mechanisms tend to look at the city comprehensively, while the idiosyncrasies and anomalies that contribute to an area’s character at ground-level can sometimes be overlooked. While frequently discussed in urbanism, ‘character’ is a value that is challenging to explicate because it can mean different things to different people; as a result it is often spoken about in hypothetical terms. The digital application Streetset responds to these challenges by prompting city-goers to collect photographic typologies of unique urban characteristics in their local area. Photographic urban explorers such as Eugène Atget, Lisette Model and the late Michael Wolf, have proven that the photographic typology is a powerful tool for collecting motifs which contribute to the identity of the city. Their image collections have been likened to fragments of evidence, attesting to the soul of places and immersing audiences into the disappearing ambience of the street. This paper outlines how Streetset can build upon the work of these practitioners. It introduces the app as a platform to collectively observe and assemble the aesthetic architectural patterns that punctuate our cities, giving them rhythm and meaning. By recording these patterns as a community, we might better understand the unique qualities of the urban environment and express what these places mean to us as citizens.
University of Oregon Department of Product Design Prison Blues: Supporting Incarcerated Adults, College Students, and the Public through Community Design View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kiersten Muenchinger
Oregon’s constitution requires adults in custody to be involved in productive work. Through Oregon Corrections Enterprises (OCE), incarcerated men and women have job training and earn an income. Over 1,300 men and women inmates participate in OCE training and production each year. The Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in Pendleton, Oregon is home to an OCE apparel production facility, which has, since 1984, produced denim apparel focused on lumberjacks and timber industry consumers, and is branded Prison Blues. In 2018, OCE partnered with the University of Oregon Department of Product Design to design, document and manufacture contemporary denimwear. In this partnership, OCE helped students specify their designs for mass production, and students introduced contemporary materials, styles and customer bases to OCE. A capsule collection of apparel was produced by the incarcerated adults at the Pendleton OCE facility, and exhibited and sold in Brooklyn, NY and Eugene, OR. Results of the production and sales were presented to the OCE management and workforce. This partnership to create contemporary, durable work apparel that connects the incarcerated and the free individuals in our communities, elicited discussion on the value of productive work and training for both students and prison inmates, and contemporary perceptions of prison labor both within and outside of prison.
This Is the Place: Thinking of Urban Regeneration Out of the Box
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Carlo Bianchini
Urban regeneration currently represents one of the most relevant topics of discussion among researchers and designers being quite a prickly subject to handle especially for its interlaced and multidisciplinary character that requires a high dose of out-of-the-box thinking. In this framework, the access point to innovative answers can come from anywhere and the work on the “house-shack” of Valentino Zeichen presented in this paper aims at demonstrating this last statement. Located in the very heart of Borghetto Flaminio, inside the “cultural” axis of Flaminia Street in Rome, the house-shack of this very famous poet is a tangle of tangible and intangible values, a micro-place with a high poetic density deeply in contrast with its architectural and formal inconsistency. This powerful contrast poses some fundamental questions: what shall we document and how? How can we assess its cultural value? What kind of conservation should be performed? And especially: could such “informal monuments” be used as drivers for urban regeneration? The research developed on this cultural “topos” pushes to the limit the disciplines connected with the Representation, History, Restoration and Design of Architecture. Standard methodologies are in fact inadequate in this case being mainly oriented to the investigation of tangible material values of artefacts and not to their intangible components (cultural, social, etc.). This “extreme” research topic about knowledge, conservation, and possibly management and fruition has led to original methodologies we consider innovative to improve the typical top-down approach used in urban regeneration interventions.
Does This Building Make the World a Better Place?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Asha Kutty
“Does this building make the world a better place?” Student debates during history class. Reflections from the instructor. For the past three years I have been conducting debates during my history class (Industrial Revolution -Present) taught to sophomore and junior year students. Choosing from a list of buildings through time, students debate whether their building helped shape a better quality of life for its city’s citizens. Students consider the circumstances of time and place, covering five themes: 1) Social 2) Economic 3) Environmental 4) Technological 5) Political. This study summarizes my thoughts on the pros and cons of conducting these debates. It discusses the ways in which students were able to reflect on situations present in much of design research and practice, such as the engagement of design with differing cultural patterns of use; design as a physical modification of the natural world; and design as a technological innovation. It also addresses certain pedagogical obstacles faced, such as an inherent need for many students to be ‘examed’ or ‘quizzed’ rather than debate, in order to acknowledge educational gains.
