Traces: New ways to engage with the urban environment
Urban environments are constructed by diverse visual languages that constantly interact with us. Buildings, roads, signs, traffic lights, among others, were designed to have a certain look and a certain meaning; they were planned. Other examples, such as forgotten things, trash left on sidewalks and...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis de maestría |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2019 |
| País: | Chile |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:repositorio.anid.cl:10533/253073 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/10533/253073 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Humanidades Otras Humanidades |
| Sumario: | Urban environments are constructed by diverse visual languages that constantly interact with us. Buildings, roads, signs, traffic lights, among others, were designed to have a certain look and a certain meaning; they were planned. Other examples, such as forgotten things, trash left on sidewalks and marks on buildings and objects, seem to be there just because; they are incidental, therefore unplanned. What kind of new insights of society can we extract from these “unplanned elements”? How do these elements relate to the way we engage with urban spaces? What type of methods are required to decipher these incidental elements? And, how can these readings be represented? This research focuses on the unplanned products of our activities in cities. It takes these "traces"—the materiality of what is incidentally left behind by society in public spaces— as a new approach to read our urban environments, not only by adults but also by children. "Traces" are used as a starting point for young people to speculate about recent activities that could have occurred within their built environments. By building a new methodology, the research set up more than 10 workshops, where different London based youth groups were invited to find marks and objects that look interesting/unfamiliar/incidental, to then reflect on the question, “What could have happened in my neighbourhood?” The method consists of street exploration and search for traces, collective speculation, and on-site re-enactments. Fiction is used as a way to reflect on present situations, to critique social and urban systems, and to imagine possible futures from what is to be found. Looking to empower young communities and generate urban engagement, "traces" gives free space for young people to have a voice on what is happening around them, through a method that aims to visualise how the youth perceive, understand and relate to their urban environments. Keywords: Public space, urban interventions, community engagement, urban pedagogy, citizen participation, urban design research, speculative design |
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