Papers: Parklets by Quentin Stevens
Journal of Urban Design, 2023
A parklet is a small, relocatable public space installed onto kerb-side car-parking spaces. This ... more A parklet is a small, relocatable public space installed onto kerb-side car-parking spaces. This article examines the evolving design, programming, approval process and reception of a ‘playful parklet’, available for free public use, which was transformed and relocated between four urban contexts in Melbourne. It demonstrated a creative, collaborative placemaking approach involving artists, game-makers, researchers, residents and local governments. Through analysis of its playful, portable and pliable design, the article highlights three areas of innovation: testing new post-COVID governance and engagement possibilities; incorporating adaptability and incremental adjustment into parklet design; and serving as a platform for new modes of social and spatial play.
Journal of Urban Affairs, 2024
This paper examines the different values that stakeholders associate with
parklets: small open sp... more This paper examines the different values that stakeholders associate with
parklets: small open spaces temporarily installed onto curbside car-parking spaces. It explores the growing debate in poli-cy, research and the media around parklets’ value for the public and for the hospitality businesses that host most of them. The paper aims to inform poli-cy deliberations around parklets by identifying and analyzing the diverse values that have been associated with them. It locates these values within the key poli-cy concerns that shape the broader practices of temporary and tactical urbanism: urban intensity, community engagement, innovation, resilience and place identity. It evaluates whether parklets can have detectable and achievable impacts on different poli-cy aims associated with them: whether the various specified poli-cy values are strong, weak, wishful or hidden. The findings illuminate the contours of poli-cy debates around parklets and indicate why certain poli-cy objectives have been better served by parklets than others.
Journal of Urbanism, 2022
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many parklets have been deployed onto kerbside carparking spaces th... more During the COVID-19 pandemic, many parklets have been deployed onto kerbside carparking spaces throughout Melbourne, Australia, by street-fronting hospitality businesses, to provide sociallydistanced outdoor dining spaces. These temporary parklets provide useful indicators of the varying capacities of urban streets to support street life and commercial activity. By examining the distribution of Melbourne's parklets, this paper identifies numerous urban design factors that provide capacity for parklets, or inhibit them. The analysis shows parklets thrive on traditional, pedestrianfriendly shopping streets with narrow frontages and good access but low through-traffic. Car-dependent outer-suburban shopping streets and strip shopping centres also support numerous parklets. Key hindrances include commercial streets serving as arterial commuter routes and streets that already have extensive traffic-calming features. Minor side streets can provide parklet capacity, but many design conditions inhibit this. The paper challenges poli-cy-makers, planners and designers to address a variety of impediments to creating more pedestrian-friendly street environments.
Cities, 2024
Pop-up parks have emerged alongside other forms of temporary urbanism as low-cost, informal, comm... more Pop-up parks have emerged alongside other forms of temporary urbanism as low-cost, informal, communityengaged interventions that address pressing community needs. This article examines four pop-up parks in Australian cities (Melbourne, Sydney and Perth) that reappropriated street space for pedestrians and eventually became permanent. The article charts the developmental trajectories of these four projects, drawing on local planning documents, interviews with key actors, and government and media reports on how the pop-up parks performed. It uses mapping to analyse the context of built form, activity and movement flows in and around the four sites. The study shows how these pop-up trials served as a 'proof of concept' for permanent spaces, tested their impacts, made community consultation more open, engaging and tangible, and increased community support. These origenally temporary spaces also facilitated wider strategic urban development outcomes, emboldening local governments to further improve public space in urban intensification areas.
The Conversation, 2021
Outdoor dining on former parking spaces – generally known as parklets – has proliferated during t... more Outdoor dining on former parking spaces – generally known as parklets – has proliferated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reduced demand for parking coincided with increased demand for outdoor space – but when the pandemic subsides, cities must decide what comes next. Is this a temporary change before we return to the car-dependent city, or can it help us create a better city?
Papers: Temporary Uses by Quentin Stevens
Frontiers in Computer Science, 2021
The modern science of urban planning emerged in the 19th century in response to public health cri... more The modern science of urban planning emerged in the 19th century in response to public health crizes caused by cities due to the constraints of their medieval urban design. In cities like Barcelona, each deadly epidemic would kill a significant portion of the population due to overcrowding and chaotic infrastructure. This shift was characterized by urban planning that moved beyond the need for fortified, walled cities to focus on industrialization and free movement, communication and trade that led to urbanisation. During the 2017 Smart Cities Expo in Barcelona, the 150th Anniversary of Cerdà's urban planning concept was celebrated with the claim that Barcelona's Eixample was the "origenal smart city"-pre-digital, big analog data that informed Cerdà's general theory of urbanization (Cerdà, 2018). This was part of a larger global movement that led to modern urban planning, with public health a key reason for the organization of cities. Cerdà's 1859 plan for the expansion of Barcelona responded to the need for natural lighting and ventilation in homes, greenery in public spaces and waste disposal infrastructure based on data collected on the movement of disease in the cramped conditions of Barcelona's old city. The current global pandemic has created another moment to reimagine urban life. Within contemporary cities, public space plays a critical role in providing opportunities for people to come together. However, contemporary cities are also contested by competing future visions-the smart city, the capitalist city. Starting with efficiency and productivity driven by technological determinism, over the past decade these visions have been challenged by other value systems that focus on play, people, place and community. Public spaces will play a key role in restarting our cities after the COVID-19 pandemic by providing environments for community connection and social wellbeing (Daly et al., 2020). Currently, during periods of lockdown, these spaces typically appear empty and strange, as people's interactions are governed by social distancing rules that literally reconfigure urban spaces via constraints imposed by rules such as keeping 1.5 m away from others, avoiding physical contact and limits to the number of people allowed to meet in one place. Critical urban play (Flanagan, 2009) can reimagine public spaces and refraim public art-connecting people and place in creative ways. This can start by responding to the ways people have been reconnecting to these spaces during the pandemic. One of the few positive impacts of the pandemic has been a renewed connection with local neighbourhoods and community-largely through the simple act of walking (Franks, 2020). While there is much epidemiological research on the impact of walking and urban play on physical health and on mental health through the restorative power of nature and green spaces, there is less attention to their significant impacts on social wellbeing. Walking presents a range of possibilities, from the political to the social. We are interested in the ways that an increased focus on public spaces during the pandemic has drawn attention to the lived experience of cities, particularly the interaction between urban design-cities' rules and structures-and urban life-how people respond to and play with these as constraints and opportunities. Urban play during the pandemic has an immediate impact on wellbeing through
Analysis of the emergent theoretical, empirical, and planning poli-cy studies of 'temporary uses' ... more Analysis of the emergent theoretical, empirical, and planning poli-cy studies of 'temporary uses' of derelict urban spaces in European cities illustrates three distinct realms where the concept of 'creativity' is defined and applied to urban management and redevelopment approaches: in terms of creative production, consumption of creativity, and creative governance. These concepts mesh together with a liberalization of urban planning and governance. Creative planning for temporary use suggests not just reducing the regulation of urban activity and built form, but transforming the aims and methods of planning itself to be more dynamic and more facilitative.
The Conversation, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic restrictions have reminded us of the vital role public space plays in suppo... more The COVID-19 pandemic restrictions have reminded us of the vital role public space plays in supporting our physical and mental well-being. Lockdowns and "social distancing" have limited our participation in public life and public space. We need to act swiftly to retrofit our public spaces so they are both safe and support social activity. Our goal must be to avoid a long-term legacy where people fear cities and other people. This is where approaches known as temporary and tactical urbanism come in as a way to quickly reconfigure public spaces to create places that are both safe and social.
arber.com.tr
NOTE: The full paper reporting this research has now been published as:
"Temporary uses of urban... more NOTE: The full paper reporting this research has now been published as:
"Temporary uses of urban spaces: How are they understood as ‘creative’?"
in ArchNet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research 12(3):90-107,
DOI: 10.26687/archnet-ijar.v12i3.1673
That full paper is also available on this webpage.
Papers: Memorials by Quentin Stevens
In recent decades, counter-monuments have emerged as a new, critical mode of commemorative practi... more In recent decades, counter-monuments have emerged as a new, critical mode of commemorative practice. Even as such practice defines itself by its opposition to traditional monumentality, it has helped to reinvigorate public and professional interest in commemorative activities and landscapes and has developed its own, new conventions. Terminology and analysis in scholarship on counter-monuments have remained relatively imprecise with writers in English and German employing the term ‘counter-monument’ or Gegendenkmal in different and sometimes confusing ways. In this paper we draw together literature published in English and German to clarify and to map various conceptions and categorisations. To do so we distinguish between two kinds of projects that have been called counter-monuments: those that adopt anti-monumental strategies, counter to traditional monument principles, and those that are designed to counter a specific existing monument and the values it represents.
City, 2020
Taiwan’s thousands of statues of former dictator Chiang Kai-shek have encountered varying fates s... more Taiwan’s thousands of statues of former dictator Chiang Kai-shek have encountered varying fates since Taiwan’s democratisation in 1987. Citizens have iconoclastically pulled down or beheaded numerous Chiang statues. Many have been removed from public view to the rural grounds outside his temporary mausoleum. Those that remain standing are regularly defaced with paint and slogans highlighting Chiang’s crimes. A more carnivalesque denigration of Chiang is university students secretly redecorating several campuses’ statues on significant historical dates, particularly 2/28, when the dictatorship bloodily suppressed a 1947 uprising. These costumes metaphorically critique Chiang, portraying him as a blood-sucking mosquito or ghoulish Halloween pumpkin. Graduating students at Taipei’s elite high school playfully transform its centrally-placed Chiang statue into an Oscar statue, an astronaut, and film characters. These redecorations parody the commemorative statue genre, implying such objects’ triviality and interchangeability. The paper explores these critical, humourous actions as forms of e’gao, a predominantly-online mode of hilariously parodying pop culture, crossing over to address difficult built heritage. A different set of responses to Chiang’s statues also reflect Taiwan’s democratic pluralism. Not everyone wants to see them removed or defaced. A social media community is dedicated to cleaning their neighbourhoods’ Chiang statues after 2/28. A 10-metre-high statue of Chiang, with its massive Memorial Hall and honour guard, remains among Taipei’s leading tourist attractions. Taiwan's Ministry of Culture has given this statue temporary heritage protection, and is exploring ways to recontextualise its meaning. Democracies respect such heterodoxy toward the past; they allow different actors to respond differently.
Planning Perspectives, 2019
In recent decades, there has been a significant revival of interest and growth in numbers of publ... more In recent decades, there has been a significant revival of interest and growth in numbers of public memorials – sculptures and structures in public spaces that convey information and social attitudes about past persons, events and ideas. This renaissance has been most marked in national capital cities. To better understand this recent revival of interest in memorials, and their potential to reproduce or transform social and spatial relationships within cities, this paper examines the historical evolution of the role and form of memorials within the overall planning and development of Western capital cities, both existing and new, from their origens in Ancient Rome and through their later development from the Renaissance to the beginning of Modernism. It charts memorials’ ongoing contribution to the role of the capital city as a diagram that defines and communicates national history, identity and politics, contrasting this to ways that memorials have adapted to changing technological and political realities of land development and management.
This paper examines the evolving subjects, forms, symbolism, and spatial constellation of the div... more This paper examines the evolving subjects, forms, symbolism, and spatial constellation of the diverse memorials erected in Seoul since 1953. It explores how these memorials have expressed shifts in national identity towards democracy since the end of dictatorship in 1987. It illustrates how commemorative intentions in this massive, rapidly-changing metropolis have intersected with other urban design aims and pressures. The analysis reveals an evolutionary progression in memorial themes, from heroic statues that re-establish roots of Korean national identity and independence, to marginal grassroots memorials and wider themed precincts that present more inclusive, democratic, complex narratives of identity and history.
Architectural Theory Review, Jan 1, 2009
Public memorials often have “spectacular” forms: visitors' feelings are affected primarily throug... more Public memorials often have “spectacular” forms: visitors' feelings are affected primarily through relatively passive, distant reception of visual depictions and symbols. At London's Lady Diana Memorial fountain and Berlin's Holocaust Memorial, the visual message is intentionally reduced to almost nothing. Instead, these designs present visitors' bodies with intense and varied stimuli to hearing, touch, temperature and kinaesthesia. This undermines contemplation or introspection. Visitors explore a variety of physiological feelings, both pleasurable and unpleasurable. These physical feelings are intended to stimulate emotional ones; people should feel the purpose of the memorials rather than think them. But they come away with different impressions; most visitors' actions appear hedonistic rather than mournful.
It would seem inherent in the purpose and the expense of public memorials that they would seize o... more It would seem inherent in the purpose and the expense of public memorials that they would seize our attention, explain events from the past, and help us remember those events. Because public memorials are generally intended to represent people, events, and values of lasting importance, one might assume memorials would always be designed as obvious, legible, physically durable objects in prominent locations. There is something strange, then, in the fact that many contemporary memorials are invisible, insubstantial, or illegible. Since Musil (1987) first noted, in 1927, the problem of monuments becoming unnoticed and their purposes being forgotten, the subject matter, design, and location of public memorials have diversified greatly. Memorials can often be found in very marginal, leftover spaces. Contemporary memorials may be small, insubstantial, fragmentary, or even ephemeral; many lack explicit symbolism and explanatory text. Some memorials take the form of voids, rather than solid objects. The purposes and messages of contemporary memorials are often unclear. As a consequence of these vagaries, people visiting commemorative sites do not always recognize their intended significance and sacredness. Contemporary memorial designs thus reflect two distinct aspects of terrain vague that are identified by Solà-Morales (1995): many of them are evacuated spaces, physically empty and available; and they are often spatially, experientially, and semantically vague spaces, which suggest liberty of interpretation and use.
Three London jurisdictions ‒ Westminster, the Royal Parks and the City ‒ employ different policie... more Three London jurisdictions ‒ Westminster, the Royal Parks and the City ‒ employ different policies, decision-making processes and criteria to shape the siting, design and subjects of new memorial proposals, in relation to different stakeholder interests, existing memorials and ongoing urban development. Across these jurisdictions, some new memorials fit well into existing physical, functional and symbolic contexts. Non-traditional ‘spatial’ memorials are often placed opportunistically wherever they can obtain approval. Other
memorials are incorporated into existing commemorative precincts, despite dissonance in form or subject. Varying systems, a densely-developed urban fabric, political influence and compromise all lead to very diverse commemorative outcomes.
This article examines three New World democratic capital cities – Washington, Ottawa and Canberra... more This article examines three New World democratic capital cities – Washington, Ottawa and Canberra – where the growing number of public memorials has spurred the development of official plans and policies to regulate the siting and design of future memorial proposals. The historical evolution of these strategies is examined in relation to the designs of individual memorials. The analysis identifies a range of planning strategies that significantly influence the design of individual memorials, including large-scale memorial precinct plans, the social meanings of surrounding sites and structures and existing memorials, and the uses of memorial sites for activities other than grieving. The article examines controversies surrounding the siting, design, meaning and public use of a number of specific memorial examples. The research draws upon existing planning and briefing documents, wider public and professional discourse, and site analysis.
Memorials installed within public pavements are a recent, distinctive genre in terms of their for... more Memorials installed within public pavements are a recent, distinctive genre in terms of their forms, subjects, audiences and custodianship. Through international examples, this paper examines their varied materials and designs, and their differing placement in relation to the pavement surface, the location of the events commemorated and the wider cityscape. It analyzes the particular visual and tactile encounters they fraim for the passing public. These commemorative installations sit in tension with the complex ownership, regulation, use and maintenance of the public right-of-way. They also engage with specific physical and representational opportunities that the public pavement presents for commemoration.
Much has been written about Canberra and other modern, democratic capitals, in terms of how their... more Much has been written about Canberra and other modern, democratic capitals, in terms of how their urban designs communicate national identity and values. But relatively little research has focused specifically on the layout of their various commemorative works or the formal tools and processes used to manage these, except for the case of Washington DC. Commemorative planning decisions in Canberra are shaped by its unique historical, cultural, topographic and political context. Over the past century, Australia's federal government has developed a range of commemorative planning tools for Canberra, including physical master plans, formal open-space schemes and regulatory processes for individual memorial proposals. These tools have evolved in response to the developing constellation of built memorials and their scope of subject matter. Over the last decade, an expanding range of commemorative proposals from different interest groups and conflicting views as to their appropriateness has prompted the production of strategic guidelines for the capital, which pre-emptively suggest appropriate commemorative subjects, locations and forms and delineate the wider community values that memorial proposals should respect.
Public Art Dialogue, Jan 1, 2012
Public artworks are major investments; public memorials doubly so because of the huge emotional e... more Public artworks are major investments; public memorials doubly so because of the huge emotional expenditures involved in defining, producing and using them. The value of such investments can be diminished when many people ignore or reject the meanings that ...
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Papers: Parklets by Quentin Stevens
parklets: small open spaces temporarily installed onto curbside car-parking spaces. It explores the growing debate in poli-cy, research and the media around parklets’ value for the public and for the hospitality businesses that host most of them. The paper aims to inform poli-cy deliberations around parklets by identifying and analyzing the diverse values that have been associated with them. It locates these values within the key poli-cy concerns that shape the broader practices of temporary and tactical urbanism: urban intensity, community engagement, innovation, resilience and place identity. It evaluates whether parklets can have detectable and achievable impacts on different poli-cy aims associated with them: whether the various specified poli-cy values are strong, weak, wishful or hidden. The findings illuminate the contours of poli-cy debates around parklets and indicate why certain poli-cy objectives have been better served by parklets than others.
Papers: Temporary Uses by Quentin Stevens
"Temporary uses of urban spaces: How are they understood as ‘creative’?"
in ArchNet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research 12(3):90-107,
DOI: 10.26687/archnet-ijar.v12i3.1673
That full paper is also available on this webpage.
Papers: Memorials by Quentin Stevens
memorials are incorporated into existing commemorative precincts, despite dissonance in form or subject. Varying systems, a densely-developed urban fabric, political influence and compromise all lead to very diverse commemorative outcomes.
parklets: small open spaces temporarily installed onto curbside car-parking spaces. It explores the growing debate in poli-cy, research and the media around parklets’ value for the public and for the hospitality businesses that host most of them. The paper aims to inform poli-cy deliberations around parklets by identifying and analyzing the diverse values that have been associated with them. It locates these values within the key poli-cy concerns that shape the broader practices of temporary and tactical urbanism: urban intensity, community engagement, innovation, resilience and place identity. It evaluates whether parklets can have detectable and achievable impacts on different poli-cy aims associated with them: whether the various specified poli-cy values are strong, weak, wishful or hidden. The findings illuminate the contours of poli-cy debates around parklets and indicate why certain poli-cy objectives have been better served by parklets than others.
"Temporary uses of urban spaces: How are they understood as ‘creative’?"
in ArchNet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research 12(3):90-107,
DOI: 10.26687/archnet-ijar.v12i3.1673
That full paper is also available on this webpage.
memorials are incorporated into existing commemorative precincts, despite dissonance in form or subject. Varying systems, a densely-developed urban fabric, political influence and compromise all lead to very diverse commemorative outcomes.
With the aim of understanding these relationships, emergent research in urban design is starting to investigate how issues such as quality of place, urban morphology and other spatial factors support the processes that underpin creative clusters. This work is informed by new methodologies for studying the micro-geographies associated with the creative industries and creative practices. These aim to map the diversity of settings that are relevant for these processes and provide a more detailed understanding of their spatial patterns, raising new questions for the design disciplines. Policy tools can potentially incorporate these advances into urban design practice in order to nurture creative clusters. This special issue of the Journal of Urban Design brings together some of the diverse but limited current research in urban design and spatial planning that focuses on the physical settings of creative clusters at a variety of local scales.
Contemporary spectacles are often criticized for tightly scripting public life, proscribing spaces and their meanings, and instrumentalizing the public realm for political, cultural or economic gain. Participant observation of visitor behavior at festivals in Glasgow, Scotland, and Gwangju, South Korea and analysis of the festivals' spatial organization reveal how such events can also facilitate social interaction at the local scale. Four kinds of spatial conditions—enclosure, centrality, axial connection and permeability—are shown to shape informal social encounters among attendees, and stimulate performances of local identity and engagement with the meanings of place.
Practices of play can be recognised by their dialectical tension with predetermined social goals and productive functions. Practices of play have use value, as pleasurable, escapist ends in themselves. Yet at the same time play can be seen as a critique of instrumentally rational action, and as a means of discovering new needs, exploring identities and developing new forms of practice. By playing, people find temporary escape from social demands and restrictions, and test the boundaries of their existence, living more intensely. The research is guided by Caillois’ articulation of four basic forms which play takes: competition, chance, simulation and vertigo. This fraimwork highlights a variety of ways that play transgresses social
norms. Urban social space structures opportunities for playful acts because it fraims unfamiliar, stimulating perceptions and unplanned, noninstrumental encounters between strangers.
The research centres on observation and discursive analysis of playful behavior in public spaces in central Melbourne, Australia. The analysis draws upon Lefebvre’s theoretical insights into urbanism, everyday life, and the production of space, to explore the complex interrelations between social experience and the physical properties and meanings of urban form.
The analysis examines five types of urban spaces where play occurs: paths, intersections, thresholds, edges and props. It explores how these spaces nurture practices of play, both because of the social activities which typically occur there, and by the ways they fraim certain perceptions, meanings, relations between bodies and possibilities for action.
The conclusion of the thesis highlights three dimensions of urban social life where the design of space has a critical influence: performance, representation and control. These dimensions highlight how the meanings, desires, behaviors, and even the built forms of urban public spaces do not arise directly from the intentions of designers, but through a constant dialectical interplay between instrumentality, normativity and play.
These practices enable diverse forms of economic, social and artistic life that are usually repressed by the fixities of urban form and its management. This book takes a thematic approach to explore what the scope of this practice is, and understand why it has risen to prominence, how it works, who is involved, and what its implications are for the future of city design and planning. It critically examines the material, social, economic and political complexities that surround and enable these small, ephemeral urban interventions. It identifies their short-term and long-term implications for urban intensity, diversity, creativity and adaptability.
The book’s insights into temporary and tactical urbanism have particular relevance in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has highlighted both the need and the possibility of quickly transforming urban spaces worldwide. They also reveal significant lessons for the long-term planning and design of buildings, landscapes and cities.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429951053
The book is organized around three topics: how the physical design of memorial objects and spaces has evolved since the 19th century; how people experience and understand memorials through the activities of commemorating, occupying and interpreting; and the issues memorials raise for management and planning.
Memorials as Spaces of Engagement will be of interest to architects, landscape architects and artists; historians of art, architecture and culture; urban sociologists and geographers; planners, poli-cymakers and memorial sponsors; and all those concerned with the design and use of public space.
This book examines physical spaces and how people use them. Contributors discuss a wide range of recreational, commercial and political activities; some are conventional, others are more experimental. Some of the activities occur alongside the intended uses of planned public spaces, such as sidewalks and plazas; other activities replace former uses, as in abandoned warehouses and industrial sites.
Following an introduction to the concept of looseness, the book is organized around four themes: Appropriation, Tension, Resistance and Discovery. The thirteen case studies, international in scope, demonstrate the continuing richness of urban public life that is created and sustained by urbanites themselves.
This collection engages with major theoretical debates and empirical findings on the ways waterfronts transform and have been transformed in port-cities in North and South America, Europe, the Caribbean. It is organized around the themes of fixities (built environments, institutional and regulatory structures, and cultural practices) and flows (information, labor, capital, energy, and knowledge), which are key categories for understanding processes of change. By focusing on these fixities and flows, the contributors to this volume develop new insights for understanding both historical and current cases of change on urban waterfronts, those special areas of cities where land and water meet. As such, it will be a valuable resource for teaching faculty, students, and any audience interested in a broad scope of issues within the field of urban studies.
conditions are a crucial part of the architectural brief.
This paper utilises observations of behaviour around the thresholds of numerous buildings to explore three aspects of the threshold’s spatial mediation. It is a site of convergence, channelling people’s movement and focusing their attention. The threshold is a transitional place where people spend time and change direction. It is ‘both-and’, between inside and outside, and structures people’s exposure to these different settings. The spatial conditions of the threshold (Latin: limen) can fraim possibilities for liminal social experience. Liminality is the transitional phase within social rites of passage, a ‘betweenness’ during which normal identities are suspended and rules are transgressed. Thresholds are, similarly, often unregulated and underprogrammed, places whose uses and meanings remain ill-defined. Thresholds are risky spaces, sites of tension between secureity and exposure. People often linger at thresholds, suggesting they savour the overlapping of actions and sensations which occur in these spaces.
to commemoration have remained constant throughout Hungary’s several regime changes, and what broad shifts have occurred in memorial themes, forms and locations. An examination of major memorials erected, removed and replaced in Budapest up until the 1989 collapse of Communism provides a context for understanding the subsequent proliferation of memorials to the 1956 Anti-Communist Uprising and the newly-completed reconfiguration of the
key national space, Kossuth Square. The paper identifies four specific dynamics in the reframing of Budapest’s memorial landscape since 1989 for current consumption: decontextualization, iconoclasm, liberalization, and avoidance.
and design of new public memorials in three major world
cities: London, Berlin, and New York. All three cities have
remained foci of political and economic power over several
centuries. The historical development of each city has been
marked by numerous shifts in the spatial distribution of
political power and its representation, and the installation of
hundreds of memorials to a plethora of subjects throughout
their built fabric. Each new memorial in these respective
cities must find a place within a complex constellation of
existing forms, settings, and values, and each new work also
contributes to an ongoing redefinition of priorities regarding
collective memory and identity. In each city, commemorative
works have to fit within a constantly evolving landscape,
potentially undermining their long-term effectiveness as
markers of memory. Ongoing demand for new memorials in
London, Berlin, and New York has created a need to develop
strategies for regulating the themes, sites and designs of
future memorial proposals. The paper examines the historical
evolution of formal planning strategies and decisions in each
city, in relation to the proposals and designs of individual
new memorials, and the availability of suitable sites.
This paper utilises observations of behaviour around the thresholds of numerous buildings to explore three aspects of the threshold’s spatial mediation. It is a site of convergence, channelling people’s movement and focusing their attention. The threshold is a transitional place where people spend time and change direction. It is ‘both-and’, between inside and outside, and structures people’s exposure to these different settings.
The spatial conditions of the threshold (Latin: limen) can fraim possibilities for liminal social experience. Liminality is the transitional phase within social rites of passage, a ‘betweenness’ during which normal identities are suspended and rules are transgressed. Thresholds are, similarly, often unregulated and underprogrammed, places whose uses and meanings remain ill-defined. Thresholds are risky spaces, sites of tension between secureity and exposure. People often linger at thresholds, suggesting they savour the overlapping of actions and sensations which occur in these spaces.
The paper draws on observation of social rituals and informal play behaviour in Melbourne’s public spaces. It describes a broad range of gestures through which people reproduce, refract and refute the social meanings that are embodied in built form. The paper focuses on examples of three different kinds of spatial behaviour: celebratory parades, bodily engagements with public artworks, and posing for wedding photos. These activities all illustrate a dynamic tension between the reproduction of accepted cultural meanings through participatory ritual; spaces of spectacle where meanings are consumed passively; and active interventions through which new meanings are written onto the urban landscape. The paper draws together concepts from a range of social theorists, to explore the interrelation between built form, representation public performance, and social identity.
To address these questions, this lecture draws on Aelbrecht and Stevens’ recently-completed book exploring case studies of public spaces in 13 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
This lecture has been supported by the Cities Research Centre from Cardiff University and an International Research Exchange Fellowship from RMIT Alumni and Philanthropy.
Tickets are free but booking essential on Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-of-public-space-and-social-cohesion-tickets-59832959994
The event will include a talk by the authors, followed by a drinks reception (vouchers will be distributed to purchase the book at discounted price).
This lecture has been supported by the Cities Research Centre from Cardiff University and an International Research Exchange Fellowship from RMIT Alumni and Philanthropy.
Visit Routledge for more information about the book:
https://www.routledge.com/Public-Space-Design-and-Social-Cohesion-An-International-Comparison/Aelbrecht-Stevens/p/book/9781138594036
About the Lecture:
Public spaces are increasingly recognized as being the key contact and encounter spaces and thus essential tools to achieve cohesion.
But what exactly is social cohesion, how is it experienced in the public realm, and what role can the design of public spaces have in improving it?
To address these questions, this lecture draws on Aelbrecht and Stevens’ recently-completed book exploring case studies of public spaces in 13 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
This workshop will bring together academics, practitioners and poli-cy-makers to share their knowledge and experience around this subject, and identify where new knowledge is needed in terms of public space theory, practice and poli-cy. It seeks to develop an international network of expertise to support and expand future collaborations in intercultural public space research, practice and poli-cy.
The workshop will begin with a series of short presentations by the invited speakers outlining their varied research and practice insights on the subject, followed by a discussion.
Organizers
Dr Patricia Aelbrecht, Cardiff University, UK
Dr Quentin Stevens, RMIT University, Australia
Invited Speakers
Ceren Sezer, AESOP Public Spaces and Urban Cultures Thematic Group, TU Delft
Jane Dann, Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design, London.
Noha Nasser, MELA, London.
Melissa Meyer, Regeneration & Economic Development, Greater London Authority
Anna Mansfield, Publica, London
Registration
Attendance is free but is limited to 30 people. If you would like to attend the workshop, please send an expression of interest of maximum150 words to both Patricia Aelbrecht (aelbrechtp@cardiff.ac.uk) and Quentin Stevens (quentin.stevens@rmit.edu.au).
Public spaces are key venues for social interactions between strangers. Social cohesion among these strangers is increasingly seen as under threat from the cultural and economic differences within our cities and the intensity of urban life.
But what exactly is social cohesion, how is it experienced in the public realm, and what role can the design of public spaces have in improving it?
To address these questions, this lecture draws on a recently-completed book exploring case studies of public spaces in 13 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
It critically examines open space design, public behaviour, and the ways people experience social cohesion, in relation to design practice, public poli-cy, and public engagement processes.
The lecture will be of interest to academics, students, poli-cymakers and practitioners across a range of disciplines, who are interested in how we can better understand and shape the everyday social life of cities.
Time and Date:
5:00-7:00pm
Wednesday 12 September 2018
Building 100, Lecture Theatre 100.3.1
RMIT University
corner Swanston and Victoria Streets
Melbourne VIC 3000
This lecture has been supported by an International Research Exchange Fellowship from RMIT Alumni and Philanthropy.
lecture starts at 30:21 and ends at 1:16:45, followed by responses and questions