The
PhoneBox Project Adapting existing city systems for active citizenry and communication
www.comeconspire.com comeconspire @ gmail.com comeconspire #icrstudio + #storary
We are a multidisciplinary design practice in central London. Led by a passion to tell good stories, we make meaning through design, interpretation and engagement. We work across different media and harness the power of good storytelling to develop & integrate heritage & cultural infrastructure with design, artistic exploration, community led projects, new social practices,communication, learning & policy. Drawing from strengths of having crafted engrossing experiences for cultural platforms, brands and institutions, we script and develop meaningful narratives that last. We design exhibitions, script cultural strategies and interpretation plans, work with museums, develop strong brands, create narrative environments, illustrate, work on publications and printed things, as well focus on placemaking and curatorial initiatives. To initiate interventions to reclaim public spaces, build projects in cities & neighbourhoods engaging local communities, we run an urban narratives lab called Storary with collaborators worldwide. We use this lab to test out projects and ideas that could subsequently draw funding to evolve stronger communities, preserve heritages and explore cultural experiments towards smarter cities and active citizenry. Storary remains an evolving practice and allows us to function as cultural intermediaries - engaging and sustaining audiences as our primary prerogative. As a studio, we envision facilitating a platform for discourse on cultural preservation, dissemination and policies, curatorial practice, futures of design, learning in schools and museum environments as well as integration of co-creation attitudes in the social fabric of the cities we work within.
The PhoneBox Project came about when we began to research public structures and architecture in London, that were often overlooked. We soon found that several phoneboxes in London are actually Listed Buildings and yet, there’s hardly any conversation about them, let alone appropriation of respect they deserve - given how closely the evolution of the phonebox is linked with Modern London. ICR undertook this project as a part of Storary, an urban narratives lab run under the remit of the studio to focus on red phoneboxes across London and finds ways of re-integrating them into the city.
“We began with identifying structures in public spaces that were seemingly overlooked. This project has allowed us to reclaim and repurpose, doing our bit to make London a smarter, shareable city.” These phoneboxes, icons for London as well as all of England dot our landscapes, however stand aloof watching as the city goes by, with their iconic status reduced to backgrounds for tourist photographs. On occasion, we duck into them when it rains, use them for that rare phonecall when our phones are out of batteries. And yes, we all know of the drunken routines and sleazy stickers they’re sometimes associated with. As a design and interpretation practice in London, we feel strongly about this neglect, the attrition of these landmarks and their diminishing role in the social fabric of the city. So we set about trying to capture the essence of these ‘public spaces’ and give them back to the people of London.
An Introduction to the project
The project has 4 distinctive strands, each celebrating the architecture of London.
Two of the four were lau and the studio is workin four strands into a comp interpretation and enga shall facilitate active citiz understanding of our im in the city.
unched during LFA2014 ng towards building all prehensive design, agement outcome that zenry and a better mmediate surroundings
THE CITY AS A MUSEUM We suggested an installation that would reappropriate the phonebooths as storytellers of London, through text. Installed across the borough of Westminster, were over 40 stories of London’s architectural heritage, introducing the audience to historical narratives of the immediate buildings that surrounded them. The installation came about from a very simple thought - when we walk around the city, does the city provide us enough reasons to be curious? And if it does, where do we get our information from to know more about it?
We work often with complicated digital tools and interfaces to create some of the work we do. However, here we identified the basic need to pare back and communicate the stories that need to be told, AT the place they live & breathe in - without needing the audience to log onto a website or download an app. It is an experience that requires no effort, but that fleeting moment to stop and observe.
Secrets in a city Whilst the installation of the signs celebrates architecture around the phoneboxes and makes people more aware of their surroundings, we did slip in a few signs that encouraged them to walk more. To walk and explore the city and know it for themselves. And to set a destination, as with our planted secrets - so they can find things in the city they may have completely overlooked. The secrets we put out included buildings, statues, structural details, greenspaces and disused spaces all dipped in histories forgotten or kept untold. QR codes allowed people to scan and save directions, whilst on the move. At ICR, we believe there’s no greater joy than to discover a city through walking and this is our little attempt to make people stop, yet keep walking to be remain curious and incredibly alive!
THE PHONEBOOTH TRAIL To sculpt this walk, ICR collaborated with Yannick Pucci, one of London’s popular guide for walks, known for his fascinating stories and ability to pick on the most interesting perspectives on the city - to create a trail around phoneboxes in Central London. Over a 100 people have attended the walk till date - a little adventure that began as 3 walks during the course of the London Festival of Architecture is now a monthly event (which turns fortnightly - if we manage too many bookings). Yannick continues to lead the walk around Westminster telling stories fascinating, uncovering little known secrets and histories of the architecture in the area. The walk brings alive Modern London as we know it today and its rise as a metropolis with the advent of the industrial revolution and technological advancements, of which the telephone becomes an important anchor.
The walk can be booked over EventBrite and is called the London Phonebox Tour.
“From humble beginnings to international fame, red telephone boxes have come a long way from their original purpose. Once a symbol of modernity and utilitarian design, these figures of London life have in the past decades been ‘rebranded’ and repurposed into satellite libraries, cash machines and even shower cubicles. not only tracing the story behind their iconic design, this walk will also juxtapose still functioning telephone boxes with the buildings and monuments they are now facing and illustrate how they are part of a larger architectural dialogue.” - Yannick Pucci
THE SOUNDS OF A CITY There’s so much more of the city’s architectural heritage to discover, and sometimes text just doesn’t suffice. The third part of the project is an ongoing exercise to bring institutional partners and supporters on board to make this happen. We would like to suggest setup of a Freephone number (and we have requested for the BT’s support for the same), which visitors can dial into using the phone-box (information about the service shall be displayed in each phonebox). To create a project around the phoneboxes and not build an interaction centred around the phones themselves would be an opportunity lost. Upon dialing the number displayed, one would hear associated sounds with the area – music (sounds recorded from best performances – sounds associated with the area, poetry recordings, short stories etc) thereby enriching a street experience and building back the simple interaction that phoneboxes once served up in the cityscape, turning them into listening stations or ‘mouthpieces’ to the architecture surrounding them. The maximum length of each piece would be 5-7 mins.
Image courtesy: Traventure.net
FUTURESCAPING LONDON We are aiming to build a digital collaboration with 12-15 architecture practices, asking them to visualise what particular streets in Westminster (with the phonebooths on them) may look like in 2024. The project requests these practices to send us these visualisations in any form – sketches, virtual models, physical models etc. These shall be curated as an online resource to begin conversations about the role of the phonebooths and their relation to the architecture of London in the future.
This enquiry and cocreation exercise would lend itself to being a live resource for a school’s programme we look to develop.
Image courtesy: london-futures.com
The school’s programme would focus on Keystages 2-5, and involve introductions to various architectural styles in immediate environments that the students live and study in, as well as a specifically tailored walk for schools. This walk shall allow the students to understand and experience the city, from the point of view of its historical narratives and see for themselves the contemporary juxtapositions of styles that make London a fascinating study for architects and enthusiasts alike. This shall then be followed up with futurescaping exercises and learning modules in schools allowing students to explore architecture and history as disciplines of study and integrate the outcomes into those prescribed under the National Curriculum across the various keystages.
Evolution of the project For us, telling stories that need to be told is a collective passion. In early 2014, we started thinking of ways of using these phone-boxes as storytellers for our built heritage – as if all of the city were a large EXHIBIT – the buildings, artifacts and the phone-boxes, portals for information. The London Festival of Architecture provided us the perfect platform to launch this project. The theme set for this year’s festival was ‘Capital’, and we worked towards building a project that build on the emotional, cultural and social captial in the lives of London. Battling permissions and planning paperwork, we decided to work first with the council of Westminster, to celebrate the fabulous architecture that surrounds this densest population of phoneboxes in London. British Telecom, played our knights-in-shiningarmour and supported us, whilst Westminster Council granted us access to the phoneboxes in the area, for a temporary installation through the month of June.
The project has garnered incredible support and we’re looking to take this to various councils within London, beginning with Hackney and Camden coucil. We are currently working as community and city engagement partners to Solarbox, a social enterprise that is beginning to turning London’s telephoneboxes into solar powered public charging points for phones. Some of the facets of interaction and engagement explored through the PhoneBox project shall find a place of pride in boxes installed with Solarbox.
To know more about the project visit www.comeconspire.com/storary www.phoneboxproject.tumblr.com All enquiries for collaboration, press or support may be forwarded to comeconspire@gmail.com or call us at +44 7514816464