您目前的位置: 首页» 中心刊物» 第三十三期» 国际文献33

Social and Movement Space.docx

Social and Movement Space, Public and Private Dimensions

Alessandro Aurigi


School of Architecture, Design and Environment, Plymouth University, Roland Levinski Building,Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK.


In design, specific spaces or portions of them can often be identified, and ‘programmed’, to play

specific roles, support certain types of interaction and activity, and provide and facilitate opportunities.

At a very basic level, designers know that they need to programme for effective circulation, as well as for spaces where pause and low-pace activities are possible. Similarly, they need to pay attention – and proactively so – to the public or private roles that certain spaces can assume and fulfil, as well as to the tension between speed of movement and ‘depth’ of the experience of a place. In a digitally enhanced environment, these challenges, again, do not disappear. Yi-Fu Tuan, for instance, reflects on nomadic populations – something intriguingly relevant to reflections on digitally mediated, highly mobile urban life – by putting an emphasis on the ‘deeper’ knowledge and identification with a place that comes from pausing: ‘For nomads, the cyclical exigencies of life yield a sense of place at two scales: the camps and the far larger territory within which they move. It may be that the camps are their primary places, known through intimate experience, whereas the territory traversed by nomads seems more shadowy to them because it lacks a tangible structure’ (Tuan, 1977, p. 182). On similar grounds, some urban design literature addresses such tensions distinguishing between ‘movement’ and ‘social’ space, where often the former is associated – with a negative connotation – to the development of fast vehicular transport and its dominance in cities – a typical ‘false syntax’ scenario. Engwitch (1999, p. 19), for instance, argues that ‘The more space a city devotes to movement,

the more the exchange space becomes diluted and scattered. The more diluted and scattered the exchange opportunities, the more the city begins to lose the very thing that makes a city: a concentration of exchange opportunities’ (Quoted in Carmona et al, 2003, p. 80).

Moreover, designers also know that some of the most interesting spatial experiences can come out of a voluntary or sometimes involuntary articulation of different dimensions, when spaces positively exploit tensions, ‘elements’ of space play more than one role and the contamination between apparently opposite conditions enriches the experience. Unwin (2009, p. 63), for instance, explains how ‘Many small villages across the world that have been inhabited and gently modified over many centuries show the subtle ways in which simple elements can be used for more than one thing. House walls, for example, usually not only enclose the private interiors of the dwellings or their gardens, but also define the pathways, small public squares and roads between them’. And some spaces do not just define more than one thing, but are indeed a ‘filter’ between different dimensions, scales and urban conditions. The arcades in the Italian city of Bologna, for instance, beyond their function as shelter for pedestrians and commercial activities, give a strong symbolic and existential message about a town where civil society and public participation have always been fostered and valued. The participation and contamination of the very private dimension of the ‘building’ and the very public one of the ‘street’, which literally intersect and blur, aligns with the ethos and political history of the town. They also function as a hybrid movement–social space. They are thoroughfares, but extremely interesting and eventful ones (Figure 1).

So, semi-public spaces, in residential and urban design, become very valuable and enriching propositions, offering further opportunities for socialising, while feeling at ease and – in some instances – safer. And the same can be said for spaces that allow articulating movement and pause, or that function as thresholds between these. After all, we all know how a ‘pause-based’ place can be given meaning often by its proximity to a line of ‘flows’. The often romanticised café table, or bench, or low wall, where someone sits watching the world go by, desperately needs the world to go by – though at a negotiable speed – hence some action nearby, or there will be very little to watch and feel part of.

Many examples of digital interventions in cities have been, however, deployed in isolation from spatial design knowledge and practice, and show a lack of awareness of these important nuances and an adherence to some quick-fix ‘false syntax’. The design and placement of public informationterminals in many cities around the world reveals, for instance, an inability to think in terms of both the tensions of movement/social space, and the public/private one.

In many cases, terminals have been designed and placed to respond to a simplistic conception of touch-and-go usage by an idealised model of busy, ‘always on the move’ connected citizen. They depend entirely on an idea of fast movement space, and quick and casual interactions, seemingly belonging to, and echoing (though with little awareness of it), the ‘shadowy’ experience of place that Tuan refers to, or the vehicular movement dimension Engwitch critiques. They therefore end up being placed in entirely ‘public’ and over-exposed – and often rather uncomfortable – locations, forgetting that the nature of the interactions allowed by the terminal is rather personal and private. While being located in visible spots can be understandable from the point of view of the easiness of finding – or noticing – the terminal itself, everything else works against them, from a spatial/urban design logic, and no attempt to articulate successfully and creatively movement and pause, public and private, or the inhabitation – however temporary – of a place, is evident. As Fatah gen. Schieck et al (2006, p. 5)

also note when discussing ubiquitous computing in cities ‘Designing a pervasive system involves understanding which types of architectural spaces, interaction spaces and information spheres are being designed for’.

Figure 1. Bologna’s arcades merge public and private affirming a participative urban ethos. Source: Night view of the arcades in Bologna, Italy. Picture by Giovanni Dall’Orto, 19 November 2007.

(文章来源:URBAN DESIGN International excerpted