Brief: To design a way for people to discover the cultural richness of the city of London.
Group: Haining, Lili, Alexandra, Tanvi
Overview
We received our brief from Jamie, who is the senior marketing manager at Culture mile. He explained to us our target audience and how they were facing problems in including the segment in the cultural activities organized. Culture mile had titled this segment as ‘The Kaleidoscope creatives’. They majorly included families and of low-income groups.
After we were introduced to the brief, we decided to explore the site of Culture mile, which was from Farringdon to Moorgate. These sites included the famous Barbican center, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the Museum of London.
Findings
We walked from the Barbican to the Smithfield rotunda. We were all trying to find our way around the actual culture mile, but we found it troublesome. Understanding we were in a culture mile was quite difficult as there were no signs or visual aids. We decided to make a map of the actual culture mile to figure out the wayfinding and get a better understanding of the whole space.
Research methods
We decided to divide the work amongst ourselves and research by different methods. I chose to do an AEIOU study and a literature review. Hannah did a study on our target audience and Lili and Alexandra decided to work on examples of the same kind of work implemented before.
From the AEIOU method, we found various historic sites at Culture mile which were interesting. We also tried mapping the areas of community gatherings.
Time
After visiting culture mile a couple of times, we got interested in the Smithfield meat market and how that is open only from 2 in the night till 10 in the morning. We started observing how people behave differently at different times of the day and the overlap which interconnects each other.
Literature review
I focused my review on how time and space are correlated, and how spaces become vessels to carry positive communal meanings (Carr et al., 1993, p. 344). Reading “Rhythmanalysis” by Henry Lefebvre, I realized how urban spaces are affected by the rhythms of our cycles. I also looked into the privatization of space and how Open cities operate. Richard Sennett, the urban visionary, argues about creating open cities. It was interesting to see how people interpret their way through a particular space.
Our initial ideas were related to making use of the space in the Smithfield meat market as it is empty from 10 to 2 in the morning.
Feedback
As this was the initial week, we tried discovering a million different possibilities of where we could intervene. We also tried a bunch of different methods of research. Our cohorts appreciated that we had dealt with a lot of areas, but they thought that time might be an interesting place to deal with.
John mentioned that our literature review would need a lot more references and gave us a list to read which related to time and space.
Takeaway
As this was the starting point of the project, we focused more on the practical review whereas we should have focused first on desk research and literature reviews. I reflected on how being in the space one is designing for informs our ideas.
References
Amin, A., 2008. Collective culture and urban public space. City, 12(1), pp.5–24.
Bourriaud, N., Pleasance, S., Woods, F. and Copeland, M., 2002. Relational aesthetics (p. 44). Dijon: Les presses du réel.
Carr, S., Stephen, C., Francis, M., Rivlin, L.G. and Stone, A.M., 1992. Public space. Cambridge University Press.
Lefebvre, H., 2004. Rhythmanalysis: Space, time and everyday life. A&C Black.
Malone, K., 2002. Streetlife: youth, culture and competing uses of public space. Environment and urbanization, 14(2), pp.157–168.
Sennett, R., 2017. The open city. In In The Post-Urban World (pp. 97–106). Routledge.
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