Rebooting Public Spaces

Athena Carter

Latent Politics Brian Price 11.21.11

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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II. III.

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Abstract Introduction Text / Images a. Text b. Spring Proposal Bibliography

THESIS: ABSTRACT

A new type of city is emerging in response to the impacts of new information and communication technologies. Innovations allow for new types of face-to-face and remote communication, for new types of interaction between individuals and urban systems and for the supply of enriched data about your location and what is available to you. This rewiring of our lives is creating new sets of relationships between people and locations, leading to a completely novel sense of place 1. The digital revolution has produced a culture that changes rapidly through the easy consumption of vast amounts of information. Communication and information technology has also changed how we interact and form collectives within the physical environment. My thesis deals with utilizing communication and information technology as a lens to view architecture. It seeks to find ways in which designers can use the tools of architecture to materialize the strategies of technology in order to derive potential operative possibilities.

Urban Narrative

THESIS: INTRO

The pervasiveness of social media within our daily lives produced a social-network culture and begs the question: What constitutes a community within the contemporary context? The parallel digital world requires us to rethink public space. This thesis attempts to outline the challenges and opportunities that the rise in social media raises for the field of architecture concerning community development and experience. First, I will seek to critically understand which strategies can be derived from information and communication technology. I will look at digital social media and how collectives are formed, organized, and how social media has aided in the definition of collective. Secondly, I will look architectures influence on environmental-behavioral effects and how that shapes user experience. Then I will analyze precedents to determine what types of strategies have been used to incorporate technology as a way to facilitate urbanism or community. Finally, using these concepts as the initial foundation, I will form a counter-project for public space that deals with the hybridization of communication and informational technological systems and architecture through the robotic adaptability of spatial tectonic elements. This counter-project will lead to the possibility for an architecture that responds to the new needs of a digitally influenced culture.

THESIS: TEXT
Community has been defined by individuals ability to socially interact; for individuals to form groups. However, historically, connotations concerning the term community are fraught with nostalgia and have been associated with residential societies concerns, values, behaviors, and ideologies particularly concerning family. It also deals with a dependence on geographic proximity, history, and civic engagement. Similarly, public spaces refer to past structures and usage of space for democratic purposes. Examples of which can be seen in Roman forums, ancient Greek polis or agora, or other government-institutionally constructed public plazas. Rafi Segal in his article Cities of Dispersal, describes public spaces as [providing] the space for freedom of speech and public assembly, [enabling] the publicizing of dissent, [maintaining] awareness of the needs of others, and [allowing] the organization of grassroots campaigns and is essential to the preservation of democracy according to this traditional form of public space2. There are five conventional forms of public space -- streets, parks, squares, waterfronts, and plazas that have been used as a place for individuals to communicate and form communities. However, social media has forever altered our ability to interact with each other. The term social media refers to media for social interaction through the use of web-based and mobile technologies to produce an interactive dialogue. Enabled by ubiquitously accessible and scalable communication techniques, social media substantially changed the way of communication between organizations, communities, as well as individuals.3 Prior to the late 20th century, the main instances of such technological advancements in communication throughout history include: the writing press which provided the ability to mass produce information, the conversational media in the form of the telegraph and telephone which allowed for two-way communication, the recorded visual and audio media in the form of photography and movies, and finally the harnessing of electromagnetic spectrum to send sound and images through the air in the form of the radio and television4. These modes of interaction only allowed for one-to-one conversations but did not allow for group forming or group interaction. The graph below illustrates the evolution of social media and the abilities that its progression produced. Prior to 1995, social media was primarily concerned with the transfer of files from a single server, talking to multiple people within virtual chat rooms, and the creation of a person-toperson chat interface. In recent years, social media has focused on the individual, providing them with increased user agency capabilities in the form of customization the development of individual profiles, network and group formation and participation, personal status posts, and organization of groups and what information each group is allowed to view. What is also important is that the mobile device became a lens to see the physical world. This new media produced a consumer concerned with experience and with increasing levels of user agency.

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Segal 8 Kietzmann 250 Shirky Lecture

The advent of the Internet produced a paradigm shift in how we conceive and form communities. It has transformed our perception of time and space through the ability to connect globally and share information with others. It is the first technological medium that allows for the formation of groups, sharing of information, and conversational dialog at the same time especially as old forms of media are becoming digitized and amalgamated into a globally accessible network5.

The Internet is becoming a carriage for the transportation and storage of all other forms of media.

The graph below illustrates the popularity of different forms of media over time. After the invention of the television and the internet, traditional forms such as newspapers, local marketplace, and radio became increasingly less importation within capitalist society. In fact, since 2007, the main emphasis was been placed on television, websites, blogs, and social networks as a way of relaying information to the masses the popularity of virtual forms of interaction and information sharing is projected to increase in the years to come.

The Internet has given us a new medium for social activities, opening up entirely new dimensions of social reality6 -- it has created a realm that only our minds can access: the digital realm. In discussing the digital realm as a parallel world to the physical, Lisa Findley defines cyber-space as:
a conceptual location made very real by the social and cultural interactions and economic transactions that take place through digital connections. This is a growing world parallel to, and 7 often separate from, physical spaces
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Kietzmann 250 Findley 7.

The formation of this parallel reality has not only altered how we form communities but also expanded the actual definition of what community is within the contemporary context -traditional definitions of community are no longer accurate. The term community refers to a previous social structure that has transformed into, what I refer to as, a collective.8 Here, collectivity deals with networks, communal discourse, and sharing of information. It focuses on space as the embodiment of social relationships and the ability to globally network for the creation of integrated collective identities. It is not that community does not exist, but rather, that social media has provided a new layer of interaction that does not fit within the traditional definition of community. Yet, the Internet has not only drastically altered how we conceive of collectives, but also in how we interact or behave in our physical environment. Interpersonal communication within physical public spaces require that communicating parties share physical proximity in which individuals interact verbally and through non-verbal visual aids, such as facial expressions, in order to support the conveyance of meaning. The digital realm, allows individuals with the opportunity to connect globally and form networks -- the multiplicity of nodes and connections made available by the Internet can be seen in Bill Cheswicks Diagram of the Internet.

Diagram of the Internet by Bill Cheswick

A somewhat more adaptable term.

Public spaces were built to accommodate and promote the congregation of people and to describe chance encounters, temporary spaces of gathering, partially accessible meeting places, commercialized and themed entertainment9 -- all dependent on geographic locality. As Rafi Segal explains in Cities of Dispersal:
Within the field of urban design and planning, the shaping of public space has been considered the primary task of the architect or urbanist. Its role and place in the city as a space of gathering and exchange has been treated as a kind of glue that holds together the city and promises to generate urban coherence and active use. Yet this notion has undergone substantial changes. Rather than a singular, continuous sphere or space, the public today is better understood as a fragmentary interplay of multiple publics and multiple groups. The idea of a public sphere, as identified by J Habermas as having emerged from 18th-century bourgeois society, no longer functions for the reasons that brought it about as the place where opinions and ideas about society and state were formed and discussed. With the rise of consumption culture, the public sphere has become an arena for advertising channeled at pleasing various tastes and personal 10 preferences

What is interesting is the difference between the concepts of public space and public sphere. Here, Segal refers to them as almost interchangeable, but makes a distinction between public space as a place where opinions and ideas about society and state were formed and discussed and the public sphere within contemporary society, which he argues has become an arena for advertising11. Conversely, Neil Smith and Setha Low argue that public sphere today can still be very political and they discuss the essential differences between both public space and public sphere within their book The Politics of Public Space, in which they argue that public space refers to:
a range of social locations[that] envelops the palpable tension between place, experienced at all scales in daily life.[and] is not a homogeneous area[In fact, the] dimensions and extent of its public-ness are highly differentiated from instance to instance[and] has a broad definitionpublic space is traditionally differentiated from private space in terms of the rules of access, the source and nature of control over entry to a space, individual and collective behavior sanctioned in specific spaces, and rules of use[Additionally,] it is impossible to conceive of public space today outside the social generalization of private space and its full development as a 12 product of modern capitalist society.

Public space is nestedin a larger historical framework concerning the state and the transformation of bourgeois social relations and deals with social, cultural, political, and economic processes and relations13 . Additionally, these spaces reaffirm, contradict, or alter their constituent social and political relations14. Smith and Neil argue that the public sphere is spatially undifferentiated15.While public space requires a physical location, the public sphere does not (and has become global due to the advent of the Internet). Not only has the concepts of collectivity and networking expanded due to the advent of the Internet, the idea of the public
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Segal 7. Segal 8. Segal 8. Smith 3-4 Smith 5 Smith 5 Smith 5

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11 12 13 14 15

sphere has as well and so has our ability to gather or incite people -- whether for social or political means. So should the two terms be expanded or redefined as a new term? Rafi Segal believes that public space should refer to past forms that primarily deal with a forum for political debate and coins a new term collective space as a way of describing a space that deals with a new culture driven by technological advancements and consumption. I argue that the term collective space should also include a place for political opinions to be voiced; it is not that the two terms are completely distinct; I believe that collective space refers to an expanded definition of public space which acknowledges the impact of technology on our physical world and the places we inhabit. What does this mean for architecture? How can architecture be used as a method to maximize this interaction? How has the concept of collectivity changed the notion of public? The introduction of social media through web-based and mobile technologies has provided a new platform for social interaction in which individuals are able to share information about themselves, construct identities that they want others to perceive, and allows users to connect to larger networks (concerning geographic proximity, schools, shared interests, etc). It has created a network culture based on perceived social presence, self-representation and identity, self-disclosure, discussions, information sharing, relationships, and groups. Within the article, Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media, Kietzmann states, social media [introduces] substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations, communities, and individuals16. For the past 500 years institutions had the agency to provide the public with information, yet now, due to the insertion of social media, anyone has the agency to voice their opinions and provide readily accessible information to the masses. An example of this can be seen in the reporting of the China Sichuan Province Earthquake where citizens were reporting on the Internet while the earthquake was happening. The last time China had an earthquake of that magnitude it took their government 3 months to report it. Yet during the China Sichuan Province Earthquake, due to citizen reporting, in half a day donation sites are created. How have communication technologies provided opportunities for us to gather mass amounts of people quickly? What could architecture learn from this strategy? How can we use mobile technology as the lens through which we view the world? Architecture currently is limited by its static nature and is in tension with the adaptability that digital technology provides and thus is unable to respond to current rapidly changing culture. Consequently, society is only able to use technology, such as mobile devices, as a way more efficient way to connect with others and to gather the information that sustains it. Within Mona El Khafifs Lecture at California College of the arts during Spring 2011, she states that the citizen in the 21st century is seeking for active social interaction within the public space 17. She claims that it can be achieved through the initiation of public interaction and programming of urban life as a concept of smooth space18. Is it possible to initiate urbanism? And if so, what are the spatial components? Can culture be used as a way to regenerate public spaces?

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Kietzmann 250 Kietzmann 250 Kietzmann 250

Furthermore, collectives are not dependent on geographic proximity or chance encounters as a method to promote interaction. Rather, the Internet has provided a medium for individuals to connect in a new way they blog, post, or text where they are in order to meet with people. Collectives are, therefore, in control of who they encounter; they have agency and are in control of their environment in terms of who they choose to communicate with and how they organize them. This agency has resulted in a shift in our public and social tendencies toward a digital space rather than a physical one because within the realm of 2D the ability to connect is more effective. However, there has consequently been a degradation of collectivity within the physical realm. The paradigm shift from community to collectives was brought on by instantaneous vast moving changes throughout the world as a result of social media. Now culture and information changes and moves rapidly, architecture has not had the time to catch up. The shift toward collectives requires us to re-think public space toward a type of collective space. How can architecture respond to the rise in digital social-network culture and attempt to adapt to this new sense of collectivity?

I argue that public spaces need to be rebooted and in order to accomplish this we should look at the forms of media and technology that has influenced our current culture particularly social media and mobile communication technology. By utilizing the tools and logic of social media as spatial strategies for architecture, new emergent relationships could be discovered. Social media has produced a culture that is interesting increasing levels of user agency. Within current communication technology and social media interfaces, users are given the ability decide for themselves how they want their interface to look, what applications or functions they want, customizable ringtones, profile pictures, and what capabilities they want to have. Users are now able to write individual reviews on products and send companies feedback on what functions they want the companies to incorporate into their products. The functionalities of user agency within the space of 2D are mediated through spatial boundaries. When you enter a spatial boundary here, your abilities change. If we think of the space of the internet, space and time collapses and we are able to connect globally and form networks. It is this idea of networks that actually forms the structure of the internet through network coding. The network code allows for the adjustment of the flow of communication. The rerouting of that code creates new communication lines as the paths change. What if this was applied to a building the same possibilities could take place. What if we could that this concept

of network coding in terms of the adjustment of communication paths, adaptability, and the technologys allowance for interactivity and connectivity through user agency and applied this as a strategy for architecture? How could the discipline or strategies of architecture change if we could look at it through the lens of operative social media strategies?

As a way of understanding these possibilities I examined three precedents that dealt with increasing user agency, interconnection, the changing of abilities through spatial boundaries, and adaptability through the lens of technology. River That Runs Through City is a designbooms FUJITSU design award competition entry for A Life with Future Computing by Japanese designer Chikara Ohno. The architect was concerned with the increase of information and communication technologys influence on reducing the value of place of body19. He attempts to discover the possibility of using technology to connect human activity with urban space. The design incorporates an electronic landscape that runs through the city, in what he refers to as rivers. Ohno describes these rivers as:
[running] through the existing urban facilities and have several types of information channels such as books, music, movies, local information and communication. Only people along the river at the same time can share the contents.the quantity and proportions of information fluctuate by interests of people gathering at a particular location. It makes and promotes a feature of space 20 spontaneously, the city being restored to an area of variety and influence.

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Designboom River Runs Through City by Chikara Ohno FUJITSU judges special award Designboom River Runs Through City by Chikara Ohno FUJITSU judges special award

The operational strategies used within River That Runs Through City are the use of rivers of electronic information as a way of gathering people to produce increased interactivity amongst the local community. The infrastructure in order to develop this is small and local. The rivers are located along areas in which the existing urban context already supports that type of information. For instance, information about restaurants would be located near pre-existing part of the city that had a lot of restaurants. A network map could be used to illustrate the relationships between the adjacencies of the programmatic rivers.

Within Mediating Mediums, Greg Trans thesis for the Harvard Graduate School of Design, he focuses on the hybridization of augmented reality and architecture specifically the materialization of digital elements. He sees the potential between the interaction of digital forms and their material context21. Tran claims, digital tools act as an infrastructural and informational prosthetic, but will be most profound when they tie back to the human body and engage their surroundings 22. He attempts to immersively interweave the digital 3D with physical buildings in which architecture is designed simultaneously with the digital. This allows material and digital matter to play off each other for maximum formal, spatial, and functional potential 23. The insertion of these virtual elements is grounded by physical ones, such as walls it is not a digital overlay but is actually attempting to become a functional and legitimate possibility24. Similar to River That Runs Through City as the user enters different spatial boundaries, their abilities change. What is also interesting about this project is Greg Trans strategy of connecting digital culture with site specificity because for the last 30 years these two concepts have been in opposition. He argues, people think of the digital world as expanding, all pervasive, access anywhere, but this idea brings up the creation of interesting and unique local identities. Tailored to specific buildings or audiences 25.

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Inventing Interactive Mediating Mediums Inventing Interactive Mediating Mediums Inventing Interactive Mediating Mediums Inventing Interactive Mediating Mediums Inventing Interactive Mediating Mediums

The Diller Scofidio + Renfro Hirshhorn Museum Extension is a 145 ft tall temporary inflatable meeting hall. The large translucent fabric bubble will swell out of the top of the museums internal court yard, creating an air of lightness, making the building seem as if it were ready to float upwards into the skyThe structure would be installed twice a year.The design is extremely flexible it can be blown up in a short time, and the interior can be easily reconfigured with each installation, allowing the museum to respond to cultural issues of the moment in a timely manner 26. The operative strategies used for this extension is the forms flexibility, the temporality of the entire installation, the adaptability of the interior space for various programmatic appropriation needs, and visual connectivity to the surrounding context of the existing museum. What do these three precedents reveal? That operational strategies such as: zones of selective electronic information sharing, the changing of abilities through spatial barriers, interweaving 3D digital elements with physical elements, the use of technology to tailor a space to a specific site or audience, adaptability of programmatic appropriation, form flexibility, and visual connectivity can be used as ways to create urbanism spatial through the aid of architecture. Furthermore, all projects attempt to include concepts of interconnectivity, diversity, accessibility, and the appropriation of space as spatial strategies. The pervasiveness of social media has also produced a society that is highly concerned with the experience. Within physical space, this deals with architectures influence on user experience in terms of their reactions and behaviors within space. In order to further understand this relationship, I investigated an interdisciplinary approach to space by researching spatial sociologists work concerning the conditioning of environment-behavioral reactions. The diagram below illustrates what environmental=behavioral reactions were produced based on experiential qualities of space between virtual, mixed, or physical precedents. The user experience can also be broken down into multiple layers that are overlaid on top of physical space. These layers are comprised of various urban and individual narratives. The layering of information adds to the development of our understanding of physical space,
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ARCHIVENUE. Hirshhorn Museum Extention by Diller Scofidio + Renfro

producing an information landscape -- that can in many ways transform the way we conceive of the city itself. Kevin Lynch discusses how users perceive and organize spatial information as they navigate through cities. Lynch reported that users understood their surroundings in consistent and predictable ways, forming mental maps with five elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. His findings deal with the idea that our built space has multiple readings and that user experience is deeply tied to their movement through the space --which results in the unfolding of mental maps or memory of space. This leads to the concept that space is a condition that is constantly subject to change. Space is the seditmentation of mental maps27. Mona El Khafif states: public spaces that are highly activated chose cultural sites and their surrounding urban spaces as a main selection of case studies. Urban space unfolds on multiple layers and is also designed through these layers 28. Within her lecture, El Khafif discusses the theory of Matrix Space in which :
space unfolds into four layers: physical materialization, the programmatic appropriation of activity, the organizational framework that defines the relationship between the two previous layers, and the cultural representation system that when combined with the first layer allows for 29 cognitive recognition and identification .

How could the concept of Matrix Space and the consequent break down of space into four layers actually inform the way we design public space? Could it lead to the creation of situations that could maximize interpersonal connectivity? And how could communication and information technology strategies help inform it?

The Situationist International movement focused on the creation of situations the staging of events and spaces for life to unfold. The potential application of this concept would connect with how social media has fetishized daily life into the level of an event the eventization of daily life. Mona El Khafif states that:

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El Khafif Lecture El Khafif Lecture El Khafif Lecture

real urbanity needs something more than the staging of events, but also the incorporation of daily life. The criteria parameters for this new space include: openness, blending, process, 30 density, diversity, accessibility, hybridization .

The Situationist International movement also focused on the methods of how capitalist society uses architecture and urban infrastructure as tools to exert social control on society. The diagram below describes the methods used for control in conventional public space typologies. This was done as a way to examine the resultant social behaviors from methods of control within a space.

Given the issue of the tension between the static nature of architecture and the fluidity that technology provides as well as the strategies learned from social media, communication technologies, and the precedent example strategies, this thesis attempts to create a counterproject to public space to reboot it31. The following design experiments deal with applying operative strategies from social media to the tectonics of architecture and what potential operative possibilities could be derived. These experiments deal with the rebooting of neglected public space or buildings that are unable to easily adapt to flexible programmatic occupation. These strategies attempt to incorporate the concepts of continuity, heterogeneity, interactivity, and connectivity.

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El Khafif Lecture A type of urban re-generation of public space

The first experiment is a set of five separate, square furniture installation pieces. The interior construction of each square is different to allow for a variety of seating options. The five pieces can be rearranged to form a multitude of configurations it allows the user the agency to decide which configuration they need for whatever event or meeting they want to use it for. In this way, it also becomes a stage for life or events through programmatic appropriation of activity 32. One of the five squares is a frame for a projector screen, this screen allows for users to set up impromptu meetings or movie showings. The potential application of this architecture can be easily deployable as a way to reboot multiple neglected public spaces due to its lack of physical attachment and can be used for multiple activities, depending on user needs.

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El Khafif Lecture

The second experiment differs from the first in that its application deals with the tectonics of a physical building. What if the tectonics of spatial elements could move through a type of robotic adaptability? What possibilities does this provide? The second experiment is a first attempt at dealing with this question. It involves a movable stair system in which a stair would move to different locations within a building. As it moves, a foldable wall moves with it to maintain a barrier of safety on the second level. The adaptability of the stairs allows for programmatic flexibility at different times within the day, the stairs would move to provide new connections to different spaces, based on programmatic needs of the building. In this way, the once static elements of the building actually begin to adapt to programmatic needs. This could also potentially create new physical connections between different users by providing them the opportunity to meet along new paths. It engages the users to re-imagine how they use space; making them aware of their surroundings and their bodys physical response to it. The third experiment is a second attempt at using robotic adaptability to the tectonics of spatial elements in order to discover potential operative possibilities. Here, there is an adjustable floor system, which rotates along an axis to provide three different programmatic arrangements: lecture hall seating, exhibition space, and outdoor auditorium seating. The form is dynamic yet still connected to the building. Its implementation and transformative qualities connect the user and the body to space. It articulates the appropriation of space into a tectonic that is in flux and allows for the adjustment of program over time. The changeability between the three configurations demonstrates the temporality of different program and provides the user the agency to decide when each configuration should be employed.

THESIS: SPRING PROPOSAL

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. ARCHIVENUE. Hirshhorn Museum by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Found Online: http://www.archivenue.com/hirshhorn-museum-extention-by-diller-scofidio-renfro/. Accessed: 21 November 2011. 2. Aureli, Pier Vittorio. Toward the Archipelago: Defining the Political and the Formal in Architecture. Log 11. Winter 2008. 3. Berjaut, Constance. The Metropol Parasol. Found online: http://www.smdmag.com/en/2011/08/04/le-metropol-parasol/. Accessed 21 October 2011. 4. Davidson, Aaron. Online Communities v.s. Classical Communities. Found online: http://spaz.ca/aaron/school/online.html. Accessed 25 September 2011. 5. Designboom River Runs Through City by Chikara Ohno FUJITSU judges special award. Found Online: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCMQFjA B&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.designboom.com%2Fweblog%2Fcat%2F16%2Fview%2F 14755%2Friver-runs-through-city-by-chikara-ohno-fujitsu-special-jury-designaward.html&ei=npXKTqnPBaGQiALnuuHBDw&usg=AFQjCNESBSXTZTCDuYczmBhhF TBn6pIOkA&sig2=URUZKl0m00vQIoRzYZK8QQ. Accessed 21 November 2011. 6. Findley, Lisa. Building change: architecture, politics and cultural agency. New York: Routledge, 2005 7. Franz, Gerald and Markus von der Heyde and Heinrich H. Blthof. Predicting Experiential Qualities of Architecture By Its Spatial Properties. Proceedings 18th IAPSConference. Vienna 2004. 8. Inventing Interactive.Mediating Mediums. Found Online: http://www.inventinginteractive.com/2011/08/22/mediating-mediums/. Accessed 21 November 2011.

9. Kietzmann, Jan H.; Kris Hermkens, Ian P. McCarthy, and Bruno S. Silvestre. Social media? Get Serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business Horizons 54. Vancouver: Segal Graduate School of Business, 2011 10. Segal, Rafi. Cities of Dispersal. 11. Shirky,Clay. How Social Media Can Make History. Lecture at TED. Oxford, July 2009. 12. Smith, Neil and Sertha Low. The Politics of Public Space. New York: Routledge, 2006. 13. Urban Narrative. Found Online: http://urbannarrative.com/. Accessed 8 November 2011.