It’s common practice among essayists to open with dictionary definitions or with explanations of the etymological origins of terms that will be important to the development of their argument. The literature on architecture or urban design is no exception. I think a good way to introduce the reader to the tone of this book is to begin, precisely, by talking about what tends to be left out of a definition in the dictionary or an etymological explanation. Specifically, I’ve chosen the word “elements” to talk about what is missing from the institutional definitions of words.

The definition of the word “elements” in Webster’s dictionary reads merely that its use as a noun refers to “weather conditions, especially: violent or severe weather” and that it is often used in the phrase “exposed to the elements”. The etymological explanations tell us that “element” comes from the Latin elementum, referring to “a first principle”, or “earth, air, fire, or water; one of the four things regarded by the ancients as the constituents of all things”.

participatory methods to inform the design, in order to better grasp this social dimension of experience.

I would like to round out this initial definition of caring architecture and the caring city – which, as readers can imagine, will have a multidimensional pronouncement – incorporating some more political aspects concerning its public and civic dimensions. In order to delve into these other dimensions we will turn our attention back to workshops and empirical work. As we explained earlier, we held four workshops. The first of them, dating from November 2014, was held at PLOT 10, an after-school club for children. The participants were 20 boys and girls between the ages of 7 and 11 and two 5-year-olds. Parents did not attend the workshop, but we had the opportunity to speak with them at pick-up. The second workshop, in January 2015, was held at the Parents for Sport association, another after-school club, run by Águeda Hurtado in the area of Ampthill Towers, with deep ties to the community, involved the participation of five mothers and 23 children between the ages of 4 and 14. The third workshop, coinciding with Sports Day at Brill Place Park, was supposed to take place outdoors at the end of August, but it rained heavily and we were only able to include six boys and girls between 8 and 11 years old, all of whom cycled often. The fourth workshop, in September 2015, coincided with Community Day and the participants took part as a family, in a park. More than 30 families were involved, with children and parents of a variety of ages.

The first activity, detailed in the previous chapter, was based on exploring the scale models that looked like dollhouses. Subsequently, we asked the girls to move the models of the heritage buildings and place them on a large map of Somers Town that we laid out on the ground. The map was completed as we carried out further workshops. In the last two sessions we set up the map before the workshop started, using wooden pieces to represent intersections and strips running between them to symbolize the streets. Both on the four arms of the intersection pieces and on the strips that stood in for the streets, we had engraved the street names using laser technology. Thus, the map offered a schematic representation of the city in two-dimensions, structured through intersections and streets labelled with their corresponding names. The size of the map and its position on the ground meant that the children could walk across it and even ride their bicycles over it, which they loved. Before situating the models of the heritage buildings, we asked the children to reproduce their routes from home to school by walking across the map. Most of the children who could locate their house and school on the map and retrace their route were 10 years old or older, although there were some exceptions with children who we able interpret the map at 8 years old.

Participants over the age of 10 were usually the first to find the locations of major landmarks like Euston Station or King Cross. But, as more models were placed on the map, younger children were able to locate their schools or churches using inferences like “it’s on the street behind the station,” because the street names were often not meaningful to them. The more three-dimensional elements the map contained, the easier it was for the younger children to deduce the correct location of another element. Once all the models were in place, beginning at 6 or 7 years old the children were able to reproduce, approximately, their routes from home to school. This experience gave us an enormous amount of data on how children perceive the city and its representations, which we will discuss further in the following chapters.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Next Article

INTRODUCTION SEVEN OBJECTS AND IDEAS FOR TRANSFORMING THE CITY

Part One

Exposed to the Elements

Chap Ter 1 The Dimensions Of The City And Its Inhabitants

Exposed to the elements

More articles from this publication:

INTRODUCTION SEVEN OBJECTS AND IDEAS FOR TRANSFORMING THE CITY

This article is from:

The Caring City