DESIGN FOR AND OF CRISIS KRISENDESIGN Scientific Seminar Documentation
Prof. Dr. Uta Brandes
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INDEX Foreword - Spaces of Crisis................4-6 Crisis of Writing...................................5-12 Panic......................................................13-17 Early Warning Systems............................... Economic Crisis...................................18-23 Immune Systems........................................... Cultural Crisis................................................. Public Spaces of Crisis.......................24-35 Traumatized Spaces...........................36-39
SPACES IN CRISIS
in almost every issue of each newspaper. Or to put it another way, crisis is always news, the most important news even. Each crisis is usually so dominant that it is soon referred to simply as ‘the crisis.’ It could be argued that the key role of newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the internet is simply to monitor the lines between everyday, emergency, and crisis.
Mark Wigley
More precisely, the media monitor the line between emergency and crisis because emergency, paradoxically, is actually a routine part of the everyday. All systems, institutions, and spaces account for emergency, expect it and deploy resources to deal with it: emergency agencies, facilities, personnel, uniforms, symbols, equipment, warning systems, alarms, telephone numbers, signals, protocols, funds, communication systems, etc. Specific bright colors—typically red, orange or yellow—are used to mark those parts of the everyday environment that can be used to respond to any threat. Even the word ‘emergency’ is part of the everyday environment, appearing on buildings, vehicles, people, and roadways. Every plane, train and building has emergency buttons and procedures written on the walls. Cars have warning lights and carry emergency signs that can be placed on the road wherever there is danger. An extremely dense and sensitive network of devices, personnel and control rooms detect and react to danger signs. A key part of the everyday experience of the contemporary city is the sound of sirens and alarms in the street. Within the home, there is yet another set of alarms, while food packages, cleaning products, medicine, tools, and even plastic bags carry warning labels and instructions of what to do in the case of emergency. All children, workers and passengers are trained in emergency procedures. Spaces are steadily, even unconsciously, monitored for possible emergencies. Everyone has to continuously consider the possibility that almost any person or object in a space could play a role in an endless range of possible emergencies. The everyday environment constantly carries the possibility of emergency. Emergency is an integral part of the space.
Images of devastated buildings are the most eloquent and disturbing witnesses of disaster. Broken buildings represent broken people. If most buildings in an area have been damaged, the entire social structure seems to have broken. The severity of the emergency is confirmed by the sudden arrival of helicopters that bypass the everyday horizontal logic of the city to descend directly into the heart of the traumatized space to extract survivors or drop supplies and rescue teams. We expect or hope that the sight of the speedy arrival of emergency aid out of the sky is the first step in an extended visual narrative of recovery that steadily transitions from the provisional mobile architecture of sandbags, tents, trailers, portable clinics, trailers, and camps, to the restoration of permanent structures as the area heals and a traditional sense of shelter is restored. Having acted as the clearest sign of an emergency, architecture is the final sign of recovery. But what happens to architecture when the situation goes beyond emergency? What happens when emergency turns into crisis as the familiar linear narrative—immediate danger and rapid response followed by careful repair and eventual recovery—does not unfold? What happens when the recovery narrative itself breaks down? What would be the architecture of crisis? Is crisis architecture a contradiction in terms or a crucial unacknowledged force? Outside of architecture, we continually hear about crises, whether they are financial, political, medical, ecological, humanitarian, military, cultural, or psychological. Every sphere of activity seems to be in, going into, or coming out of crisis. We are continuously bombarded by stories about the energy crisis, the climate crisis, the mid-life crisis, the identity crisis, and so on. In fact, the word ‘crisis’ appears repeatedly 4
This is true of all spaces and, in reverse, true of all emergencies. By definition, emergencies occur within a space. They are always contained in a specific territory. The role of emergency procedures is to maintain the limits of a particular space. In a sense, they define the real geometry of that space. The actual condition of a space is not revealed in its visible shape but in the emergency protocols that are used to maintain the shape. One of the most precise ways to analyze the condition of a city, a building, an organization, a company, or a person is to study its emergency response systems, scrutinizing what are treated as threats within its space and how those threats are detected, communicated and reacted to. Every institution has an emergency plan, a way to sustain itself when destabilized. It could even be argued that an institution only becomes an institution with such a plan that simultaneously preserves and produces a defined space.
Each government, hospital, company, university, or police department sets up a crisis management team. There is usually a special room set up for the team to occupy when a crisis occurs, and a communication system is established, but by definition the reason for activating the team cannot be predicted and the team will be unable to adequately respond when the time comes. A financial crisis, for example, is exactly the moment that all the elaborate devices, regulations, protocols, and management hierarchies that are meant to keep the flows of money within certain limits fail to control the situation. Not knowing what it will face and knowing that it will be inadequate, the mission of any crisis management team is to translate the sense of crisis into one of emergency. Crisis management is the attempt to maintain the integrity of a system under radical threat by producing the effect of emergency rather than crisis, the effect of an urgent but contained problem, which is to say, the effect of a defined and stable space.
A crisis is the moment that the threat is not just inside the space but is actually an extreme challenge to the space itself, from the scale of an individual psyche or body in crisis to that of a family, an institution, a city, a region, a nation, or a planet. If an emergency is a threat within a system, a crisis is a threat to the whole system. If an emergency can be at any scale, from a broken bone to a continent, what turns it into crisis is when its effect exceeds the local scale. In a crisis, things spin out of scale and therefore out of control. The whole environment is threatened rather than any object, resource, person or procedure within it.
The very existence of such a team can be an important part of producing this reassuring spatial effect. Since the threat is so extreme, widespread, and unforeseen, the team has to include a diverse range of experts. The problem is always a new one and can only be addressed with multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional techniques that exceed the current capacity of the organization. The situation demands innovation. The spaces being protected have to change to survive. Crises produce new forms. If all spatial systems, all patterns, have an emergency state—emergency being, as it were, part of the pattern—a crisis is the possibility that the pattern itself will not survive, and the result of a crisis is necessarily a new pattern. The crisis is such a radical threat to the environment that it acts as a kind of demand for whole new kinds of policies, procedures, and people.
The word ‘crisis’ therefore does not appear in the everyday environment. It has no buildings, people, equipment, colors, sounds, or protocols associated with it. Crises always appear as the failure of a spatial system, a failure of architecture. It is no longer simply a damaged spatial system needing emergency care. Something has so radically lost its shape that it cannot be repaired. There cannot be a crisis plan, a crisis department, a crisis vehicle, a crisis color, or a crisis button. Nobody can plan for crisis since crisis is exactly the name for that which defeats both planning beforehand and response afterwards.
Crises are ultimately productive. They force invention. Breakdowns incubate breakthroughs. Radical destruction gives way to new forms of production. Since the nineteenth century, theorists have often portrayed crisis as a primary agent of forward progress in all aspects of individual and collective life, most famously in 5
Marx’s concept of a series of inevitable crises in the market culminating in a ‘general crisis’ that forces radical change in the whole the socio-economic system. The original meaning of the word ‘crisis’ is medical, derived from the Greek word krisis, for decision, coming from krinen, to draw a line, to separate. Crisis is not a particular condition of the body. It is the moment that a doctor decides that the patient is at the crucial turning point of either recovering or dying. It is usually preceded by a whole chain of events that are only retroactively understood as warning signs. Crisis is something that is announced at a certain moment. In fact, the announcement always comes late. Things are already right on the edge of collapse. The story of a crisis only starts to be told halfway through. In the end, it is all about a narrative. Declaring a crisis is declaring that the limit of a problem is not clear, and that a radical intervention needs to be done in the hope of reestablishing limits. To declare a crisis is to declare that design is needed, and the resulting design usually becomes permanent.
tectural crises that force new designs. When things spin out of control, architecture, the image of control, spins out. In this sense, crisis could not be more architectural, or less. The field of architecture is devoted to suppressing a sense of crisis but is propelled by the very thing it represses. As the art of limits, architecture is always in a dialectic with crisis. The most crucial insights into the evolutions, complications, and responsibilities of the field can be found within the most traumatic scenes. To simply face the spaces of crisis, as in this bootleg of Urban China, is already to rethink our discipline.
Architectural design is the child of crisis but the field devotes itself to removing the sense of crisis. Even the word ‘crisis’ that appears so often in other fields is rare in architectural discourse. There can be emergency architects and emergency architecture but there cannot be a crisis architect or crisis architecture. Yet architecture is precisely the effect of crisis. If each crisis acts as an urgent demand for new forms, it could be that every part of the built environment has been shaped by prior crises (medical, economic, military, seismic, social, etc). Our everyday world has been shaped by earlier traumas, and silently carries all their traces. Emergencies modify existing architecture, through the adoption of new regulations and technologies in response to cultural norms about risk, but crises produce whole new architectures. The image of safety and security that architecture offers is forged in moments of maximum instability and insecurity. Perhaps architecture is simply the name for that which turns what once would have produced crisis into the source of a contained emergency. It is retroactive crisis management, yet is ultimately destined to fail since all crises are first and foremost archi6
CRISIS OF WRITING
Writing expresses who you are as a person. Writing is portable and permanent. It makes your thinking visible. Writing helps you move easily among facts, inferences, and opinions without getting confused—and without confusing your reader. Writing promotes your ability to pose worthwhile questions. Writing fosters your ability to explain a complex position to readers, and to yourself. Writing helps others give you feedback. Writing helps you refine your ideas when you give others feedback. Writing requires that you anticipate your readers’ needs. Your ability to do so demonstrates your intellectual flexibility and maturity. Writing ideas down preserves them so that you can reflect upon them later Writing out your ideas permits you to evaluate the adequacy of your argument. Writing stimulates you to extend a line of thought beyond your first impressions or gut responses. Writing helps you understand how truth is established in a given discipline. Writing equips you with the communication and thinking skills you need to participate effectively in democracy.
Brenda Olalde, Lizzie Abernethy Words have evolved through the ages in lockstep with humankind. Perhaps more than any other factor, it is the mastery of language that sets us apart from the animal world. The invention of script (in the late fourth millennium BC) marks a quantum leap forward in human cultural development. Time and space cease to be barriers to the transmission of knowledge and information. To grasp the magnitude of this advance, try to imagine our culture today without writing (for even today’s visual media and high technology communications usually depend on written drafts and scripts). It is impossible to imagine our schools and universities teaching, our scientists conducting and reporting research, our government governing or our civil service functioning without the written word.
It is crucial to society as it expands peoples thinking capacity by projecting ideas and views from different streams of life. This prevents people from blindly believing what they are told and develops peoples understanding of their surroundings.
The written word is arguably the most important, most influential, most dynamic discovery of human history. With the advent of writing, knowledge was no longer subject to the limits of human memory.
We are going to approach our analysis by categorising “Crisis” situations from that of an individual and a collective crisis.
Words are of immeasurable importance. In tangible written form they are the solid bricks from which our ancestors built great civilizations, the foundation stones of our world today.
The most prevalent issue to come to mind when considering the “Crisis of Writing” is the condition known as Writer’s Block.
Writing is useful in many ways in everyones day to day life. It serves not only as a means of communication, but as a tangible thought process. It can be a great tool to help you know more about the way you think, solidify ideas and thoughts, and allow you to reflect on them better than if the ideas remained evolving in your head.
Part of why Writer’s Block sounds so dreadful and insurmountable is the fact that nobody ever takes it apart. People lump several different types of creative problems into one broad category. In fact, we would argue there’s no such thing as “Writer’s Block,” and treating a broad range of creative slowdowns as a single 8
ailment just creates something monolithic and huge. Each type of creative slowdown has a different cause — and thus, a different solution.
In some cases, writer’s block may also come from feeling intimidated by a previous big success, the creator putting on themselves a paralyzing pressure to find something to equate that same success again. The writer Elizabeth Gilbert, reflecting on her post-bestseller prospects, proposes that such a pressure might be released by interpreting creative writers as “having” genius rather than “being” a genius.
Some are essentially creative problems that originate within an author’s work itself. A writer may run out of inspiration. The writer may be greatly distracted and feel he or she may have something that needs to be done beforehand. A project may be fundamentally misconceived, or beyond the author’s experience or ability.
This example is derived from ancient Roman religion, the genius was the individual instance of a general divine nature that would visit creative people and give them their inspiration. Thus taking credit for work however it was considered.
Other blocks, especially the more serious kind, may be produced by adverse circumstances in a writer’s life or career: physical illness, depression, the end of a relationship, financial pressures, a sense of failure.The pressure to produce work may in itself contribute to a writer’s block, especially if they are compelled to work in ways that are against their natural inclination, i.e. too fast or in some unsuitable style or genre.
For a composition perspective, Lawrence Oliver says, in his article, “Helping Students Overcome Writer’s Block”, “Students receive little or no advice on how to generate ideas or explore their thoughts, and they usually must proceed through the writing process without guidance or corrective feedback from the teacher, who withholds comments and criticism until grading the final product.” He says, students “learn to write by writing”, and often they are insecure and/or paralyzed by rules. Phyllis Koestenbaum wrote in her article “The Secret Climate the Year I Stopped Writing” about her trepidation toward writing, claiming it was tied directly to her instructor’s response. She says, “I needed to write to feel, but without feeling I couldn’t write. James Adams notes in his book, Conceptual Blockbusting, various reasons blocks occur include fear of taking a risk, “chaos” in the pre-writing stage, judging versus generating ideas, an inability to incubate ideas, or a lack of motivation. Additionally, The Purdue Online Writing Lab explains common causes ranging an author being assigned a boring topic to an author who is so stressed out he/she cannot put words on the page, and suggests “possible cures” or invention strategy for each. As far as strategies for coping with writer’s block Clark describes: class and group discussion, journals, free writing and brainstorming,
*Winged genius facing a woman with a tambourine and mirror, from southern Italy, about 320 BC.
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clustering, list making, and engaging with the text. To overcome writing blocks, Oliver suggests that asking students questions to uncover their writing process. Then he recommends solutions such as systematic questioning, freewriting, and encouragement.
If we were to consider a Writer’s Block in terms of a Crisis of Confidence, we are able to analyse it from the perspective of the creative community as a whole. For the majority of us, creativity comes and goes—one day you can be producing revolutionary work, and the next, you may be staring at a blank canvas for hours. Being in a creative rut can be damaging, so we often have to find ways to coax ourselves into unfailingly being able to create.
Elizabeth Dilk has created ‘a kit to thwart writers block’. while specifically designed with writers in mind, the kit was produced with the intention to help many people kick start their creativity. as a graphic design student Dilk was asked to ‘find something I hate, change it and make it better, and then advertise it’ for a project. as she states ‘because I hate getting writers block, I researched the many ways to solve it, and created a packaged kit.’
Inspiration is everywhere but often we can find that all this access stagnates our thoughts and ideas. David Kelley (founder of design firm IDEO) believes that what keeps us stagnant and stuck is the loss of our creativity. That somewhere along the way, we’ve stopped thinking of ourselves as creative beings.We’re reluctant to start new endeavors because we fear failure. Or we fear judgment, just like the negative judgment we may have received from our teachers or parents.“When people gain confidence, they actually start working on the things that are really important in their lives. We see people quit what they’re doing and go in new directions. We see them come up with more ideas so they can choose from better ideas. They make better decisions.”
Though the kit denotes much of what Clark and Oliver encourage as a way of thwarting writer’s block, the creative flow is by nature a personal battle therefore each struggle cannot be solved as easily as buying a kit. Though it is clearly inspired by creative thinking and mind mapping to encourage the process of ideating.
*Dave Kelley speaking at TED talks
He advices to: Not let people divide the world into the ‘creatives’ and the ‘non-creatives’. *’A Kit to thwart Writer’s Block’
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Have people realize they are naturally creative and let their ideas fly.
and safeguard human security as well as equip its individual members with the ability to pursue their full human development.
ACHIEVE SELF-EFFICACY A study conducted by WSI(World Statistics Institute) shows that over 27% of people are illiterate globally. The most important effect of illiteracy on society is that, it works as an inhibitor. That is to say, the more illiterate people there are in a country, the harder it will be for the country to develop. This fact could be clarified with an example: America(whose illiteracy rate is below 5%) and Canada(Illiteracy rate: around 8%) are developed countries, whereas countries, like Turkey (61%) and Iran (43%) are undeveloped countries.
Do what you set out to do to reach a place of creative confidence. (Albert Bandura has defined self-efficacy as one’s belief in one’s ability to succeed in specific situations. One’s sense of self-efficacy can play a major role in how one approaches goals, tasks, and challenges.) According to Psychologist Albert Bandura whom Kelley references in his talk, four factors affect self-efficacy: 1. Experience – Success raises efficacy, while failure lowers it.
Illiteracy has got a kind of “genetic” effect. The children of illiterate people are more likely to be illiterate that those who aren’t.
2. Modeling – When we see someone succeeding, our own self-efficacy increases; when we see people failing, our self-efficacy decreases.
Creating a self perpetuating cycle of illiterates who are unable to further their own personal development. This can have disastrous effects on an individuals well-being and quality of life which in turn contributes to a societies inability to develop.
3. Social Persuasion – Manifests as direct encouragement or discouragement from another person. 4. Physiological Factors – Perceptions of physiological responses to stressful situations can markedly alter self-efficacy. For example getting ‘butterflies in the stomach’ before public speaking will be interpreted with someone with low self-efficacy as a sign of inability, high self-efficacy would lead to interpreting such physiological signs as normal and unrelated to ability.
Over the last 50 years, the influence of the mass media has grown exponentially with the advance of technology. First there were books, then newspapers, magazines, photography, sound recordings, films, radio, television, the so-called New Media of the Internet, and now social media. Today, just about everyone depends on information and communication through reading and writing to keep their lives moving through daily activities.
We are now going to discuss issues related to a Crisis of Writing with regards to society as a collective.
It’s not unusual to wake up, check a phone for messages and notifications, look at the computer or newspaper for news, commute to work, read emails and make decisions based on the information that we gather from those mass media and interpersonal media sources.
The existence of illiteracy is a festering social crisis. The effects on the individual and collective lives of communities with low literacy rates, and the dangers that the inability to read and follow the simple precautionary instructions, point to the atmosphere of uncertainty and distrust that ultimately erode the people’s confidence in the ability of democracy to protect
We need to be aware that the values we hold, the beliefs we harbour and the decisions we make are based on our assumptions, our expe11
riences, our education and what we know as fact. We now trust a range of sources to inform our understanding delivered via virtual worlds and myriad forms of content sharing.
sider what is really important? Perhaps we find ourselves struggling with inspiration because we have access to seeing everything that came before.
There are articles, blogs, wiki pages and social networks which can be used as the basis from which to justify our opinions on almost any subject. Making it difficult to form an understanding of an issue caused by the presence and access to too much information.
BIBLIOGRAPHY http://www.designboom.com/design/elizabethdilk-a-kit-to-thwart-writers-block/ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (2009). “genius”. A Latin Dictionary. Meford, MA: Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University. Retrieved 1 July 2009.
In terms of education it can also lead to laziness and plagiarism as students can copy and paste from a website rather than think for themselves.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/Writersrelief The Media also limits peoples thinking capacity although it projects lot of ideas and views of people from different streams of life. This affects the youth in the society who lack in experience and sometimes blindly believe in what they read and many times the news covered is over exaggerated and it seldom concentrates on the areas which needs real attention. By doing so it can divert societies attention away from the critical issues.
Luszczynska, A., & Schwarzer, R. (2005). Social cognitive theory. In M. Conner & P. Norman (Eds.), Predicting health behaviour (2nd ed. rev., pp. 127-169). Buckingham, England: Open University Press. David Kelley’s TED talk March‘2012 Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk ‘12
The Internet has changed the structure and distribution of knowledge. It is a vast, global, information reservoir. Websites like Wikipedia developed a new way of researching, offering easy access to the public. Besides, people interested in particular topics create online communities where they can exchange information about various topics with others from all over the world. It is an alternative way of learning, much different from the academic way and usually much more practical. Amateurs can become experts and experts can learn from amateurs. It is directed more to experiment and the topics can vary from very specific scientific subjects to banal ones. This has given a new impetuse to the written word. We can read about almost anything online. Yet often we find ourselves giving focus to activities which reflecting we might consider a waste of time. Exposure itself could be considered a Crisis of Writing. Are we so overwhelmed with information now that we do not take time to con12
PANIC
Referring to Mark Wigley’s conception of emergency and crisis3, a single panic attack could lead to an emergency situation, the outcome of an extreme mass panic event like a stampede is the catalyst for a crisis affecting human in space. Interestingly, it is the environment itself, manmade buildings, vehicles; architecture that fail fatally in case of mass panic.
Lisa Buchfelder, Anne Hegge PANIC IS HUMAN
Mankind evolved from hunting in small groups in the open grasslands to working in open-plan offices on the 37th floor of a highrise that can keep up to 2300 people.
Emotions are vital expressions of life and make us humans to what we are, how we behave and interact. A broad range of expressions for a phenomenon reflects its importance in our everyday life. Like inuits have various terms for snow, there is no shortage of expressions for the feeling of panic, extreme fear or similar emotions.
Unfortunately, the basic instinct of homo sapiens remains the same as 400 000 years ago. THE PANIC BUSINESS
From simple stress to panic disorder, solicitude, hysteria, phobia, anguish, anxiety, disturbance, perturbation, consternation, horror, shock, nervousness to freak and black outs. A sudden upsurge of acute intense fear, in most cases paired with attempts to escape is defined as a panic attack.
An increasing amount of products are not being bought because of their functional, qualitative or aesthetical aspects but because of the feeling it pretends to transmit. The axe affect is a prime example. Unilever is not marketing a product to improve body hygiene, Unilever is selling the feeling of attractiveness, being desired, being a hero. Fear or panic as an innateness is easy to target, nobody wants to be a victim, flight is not acceptable anymore; offense, attack and individual survival are playing an in increasing role in our culture.
The individual encounters physical symptoms that may include Shaking, feeling that your heart is pounding or racing, sweating, chest pain, shortness of breath, the fear that you‘re choking, nausea, cramping, dizziness‚out of body‘ feeling, tingling or numbness in the hands, chills and hot flushes.
The aspiration for total control over our life, permanent reachability, constant orientation, complete safety and security is reflected in an swelling market of panic-products selling us the feeling of power, comfort and control. From pink pepper-sprays, handbag-sized parachutes to electrical vests for women fearing a sexual assault.
On the psychological or neural level the autonomic nervous system takes over control. Our survival instinct masters any conscious actions. Panic is a highly infective virus, although extreme mass panic events are very rare, their potential of devastation is extremely high. PANIC AND CRISIS DESIGN
Unfortunately, none of these products will ever be used in the event of a panic attack. Driven by our animal instinct, panic-products will miss their intended purpose, as human beings will not be consciously able to operate them. The only exception is special agents, bodyguards and firefighters who conquered their natural instinct and reaction by training panic situations over and over.
Now knowing that our animal instinct takes over control in case of a single human being or a crowd panicking, the questions arises if or how design, especially design for and of crisis, can meet the needs of people in panic, prevent mass panic, control stampedes or minimize negative impacts of panic attacks. 14
From the designers point of view there is a need for understanding human behaviour in extreme situations so that products, services or skills may safe life.
tive and should therefore not be underestimated in their importance, the dynamic of an existing panic is difficult to influence. Nevertheless it is possible to derive measures from existing findings that should be taken in a critical situation. The stewards or authority figures that should guide people in such a situation, need to be familiar with places, available exits and possibly dangerous spots and they also need to keep track and be able to lead anxious and overwhelmed people.
MASS PANIC In addition to the individual panic, there is the so called mass panic or sometimes stampede. According to the statistics a mass panic is a very rare occurrence, but with the improper use of the word in connection with mass catastrophes or mass hysteria the meaning got common.
In many emergency situations, some people spontaneously take such leadership roles. After the London bombings, for example, the train drivers took over this role initially. But the most important thing to prevent a panic is prevention, meaning the people must be aware of how to escape the emergency situation. Two types of prevention must be distinguished. At first to prevent the outbreak of a panic from the outset, and secondly the damage prevention during an already broken out panic. Here should be shown some prevention measures to evaluate their actual benefits.
It denotes a panic reaction of a large number of people, mostly in confined space. These confined space conditions are often but not always the trigger for a panic. Likewise, a fire, a natural disaster or only the individual behavior can contribute to the general panic reaction. The panic is often spreading wave-like, it develops from the subjective feeling of being endangered or of an objectively existing hazard.
EMERGENCY EXIT SIGNS
If the people want to flee to escape from the danger they increase the pressure on the bystanders and also put them in fear. If these people can’t flee also, there’s a danger of a mass panic while more and more people are pushing towards the exit, or at least away from the source of danger.
The design of emergency exit signs is standardized within the EU and widely distributed around the world. The green background with a indicating arrow is illuminated or fluorescenting to be seen in the dark, too.
Screams, darkness, disorientation and an existing hazard can now intensify the risk of a panic. To trigger the panic now only a minor impact is required.
Due to this widespread, habituation of the people, in the design of the signs has occurred. This habit causes a certain degree of security to the people.
In such a panic reaction the layer of clear thinking will affect the personality of the people, but later be switched off completely. In a full blown panic, man is ruled only by his self-preservation, the escape reflex does not allow objective assessment of the possible escape routes anymore.
By their positioning over the doors they can be seen well even in a huge crowd. However, heavy smoke in a fire can easily hide in ceiling height mounted signs. Here, additional markers close to the ground, as they are obligatory in every plane, were required. Another disadvantage of the pictograms is that blind or visually impaired people usually can not perceive them.
After this so called panic-storm the instinct-driven behavior usually recedes quickly. While prevention measures can be very effec15
POSTER
Emergency exit signs clearly fall under the category of panic prevention. During a panic their benefits are rather low since they are hardly noticed by the people.
In 1939 the British government produced a series of posters that should minimize the risk of a mass panic among the population in case of a major military strike.
The possibly wrong design of emergency exits intensifies the problems, too. According to recent studies up to 90 % of people leave the room through the door through which they entered it. Since people tend to heard behavior alternative exits are often overlooked or not efficiently used.
The third poster of this series was never published, but still got famous as a design object a few years ago. Whether it would have actually had an impact on people is hard to say today. Also whether such a measure would still be timely today or would get lost in the mass of posters in our cities.
Here should be considered how emergency exits could be equated to main exits perhaps in an optical or structural way. EMERGENCY POSTINGS
Also the design of locks end exits can help to minimize the risk during a mass panic. Here we have the case of damage prevention during an existing panic.
In every public building within the EU emergency postings need to be hanging out. They give instructions how to behave in an emergency situation. In simple pictograms and brief instructions is explained how to act to avoid potential victims.
PANIC LOCKS A panic- or bar lock is often used in public buildings. It provides the possibility to also open locked doors from the inside. With a bar lock, the latch is replaced by a horizontal bar, which is operated by the people pressing against it. Even if the persons directly in front of the door can’t move in the narrowness will the exit be opened what defuses one of the most dangerous situations.
But since these plans mostly are in a size of Din A 4, they are easy to overlook in an extreme situation and should already be known to each. APPS At this year’s coronation ceremony in Holland, scientists have tested a smartphone app to track the movement of crowds in real time. The app offers a range of services for visitors, and the possibility to transmit anonymised data of the users movements.
PILLAR Also a pillar, positioned in front of an escape door can help to evacuate people paradoxically. Around the pillar, the flow of people gets divided, which can prevent a clogging of the door. Thus, the time necessary for the evacuation can be reduced by up to 30 %.
This data can be analyzed and seen on a map by security forces. So risk situations can be identified and defused early, by navigating the visitors to nearby emergency exits using their smartphones.
Although this measure is more architectural, it could be subordinated to the “escape route design”.
The use of these or similar apps could, if all other security measures are in place, provide a good support to the present forces.
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CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In summary it can be said, that the impact of design must be evaluated differently in panic prevention.
David H. Barlow: Anxiety and Ist Disorders. The Nature and Treatment of Anxiety and Panic. 2nd ed. New York 2002, p. 108ff
An individual reacts in case of a panic attack in 3 different ways: freeze, flight or fight. The vast majority of human tend to flight, to run away from the dangerous situation. A wide selection of safety and security products offer escape from the life-threatening situation; ranging from audio (alarm sirens) and visual (emergency exit plans) to haptic (panic button) solutions.
Mark Wigley: Space in Crisis c-lab.columbia. edu/0158.html (retrieved on 10.05.2013) Form. Zeitschrift für Gestaltung. The European Design Magazine. Form 190, 2003, p.34ff Christian Zacherle: Crowd management: Möglichkeiten der Prävention und Intervention bei Massenpaniken am Beispiel von Fußballspielen, Public Viewing und Open-Air-Veranstaltungen. 2010,
Panic is also an emotion that is being used to market safety products, selling pseudo-security but no safety. Especially in the United States, remember 9/11, a growing market of safety and security products, pretending to save us from panic, is developing.
http://www.kraftwelt.de/Panikpraevention.pdf http://www.dfki.de
In case of mass panic a success in the prevention is quite visible, but it is also evident that only a mash of the single measures provides a certain protection, and that the persons present must be well informed about the safety precautions. In case that a mass panic broke out, only architectural or structural measures remain to avoid high casualty figures. Here a collaboration of designers and architects would be appropriate to optimize existing measures like emergency exit doors. In the future electronic systems such as computerized simulations, apps or even google glass will provide an effective support of existing systems. Thus, a close cooperation between operators, security personnel and programmers or designers is necessary. Most importantly, it is a priority not to get in a situation in which a panic of any kind could break out .
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ECONOMIC CRISIS
Another type of economic crisis is crisis caused by event. When large amount of money is withdrawn from bank, the bank can not afford the requests and goes bank run. When bank or government faces financial distress or having problematic debt (debt crisis), it can also lead economic crisis. (2) Not as technical definition, but economic crisis can also be observed as consequent of another crisis or material shortage. E.g. The second oil crisis on 1979 was triggered from Iranian rev-
Yusuke Goto Where does economic crisis happen and how does it affect to us? Can personal bankrupt be a small scale of economic crisis? We can somehow imagine bankrupt situation, but it is more difficult to understand economic crises in large scale. As we have already discussed in our seminar, a crisis is a threat to the whole system (1), therefore economic crisis might be a threat to whole economic system, so probably not personal scale financial threat but rather threat to nation or whole world wide, which overwhelms individual effort. Unlike other crises (e.g. panic situation or war situation etc.), critical situation in economy does not produces physical result. Therefore they are often visualised as abstract images and numbers. Then what kind of influences do we receive from communication channel like daily news and other media? Here we probably imagine some common images, e.g. falling arrow on graph, desperate traders and demonstration on street etc. That means, distribution of information and formulation of the perception of economic affair have a lot to do with design, even though the design does not directly connected to would scale economic dynamics. Last but not least since the invention of currency, design contributed to represent imaginary economic value. In this paper I focus on the invisibility of this crisis and it’s relation to design.
olution, or spike of oil price was also observed during the Gulf war (note that real oil production was barely dropped down during at both events, but it was speculation, which drove oil price). PERCEPTION TO ECONOMIC CRISIS How do we see these economic crises, which are physically invisible and difficult to imagine? I had some short interviews with my friends to see our subjective understanding to economic crisis:
TYPE OF ECONOMIC CRISIS
Question: What do you imagine from the word “economic crisis”?
There are several different definitions of economic crisis. One type of crisis can be defined by quantity threshold. E.g. yearly over 40% of inflation is typically regarded as a economic crisis. Disturbance of currency rate (currency crashes) and subsequent currency debasement are also this type of crisis. Subsequently these crises can trigger economic slowdown (recession). (2)
-It’s difficult to understand -It happens again and again -Panic at bank -Someone grabs money through crisis -Losing job -Demonstration, protesting burning something on the street Including myself, many people did not have 19
clear picture about economic crisis, but definitely having negative image. Where does this vague fear come from? From fragility value of currency or inequality of wealth?
we daily see is large number of ubiquitous influences, which formulate large economic phenomenon. As the five-coloured terror-risk level alarm system of the United States offers level of safety but ironically brings us conscious to danger from terror attack at the same time, a system for the order brings image of disorder into our daily life. On the other words, disorder exists everywhere, where order exists (3).
Regarding fear to catastrophic financial events, we often hear the combination of “black” and “---day”. I supposed that these words may reflect our traumatised perception to economic crisis. As shown in below, every weekday has already booked with the combination of “black ---day”. Black Monday World wide fall down of stock price on October 1987
In this regard fragile of disorders in our daily life can be understood as spread influences of cries. There is difficulty to reconstruct from the fringe of small influences on the street to large economic movement. This might be one of the reason, why we feel economic affair as invisible. Adam Smith’s word “Invisible hand” also describes such invisible economic relation, even though his words are now regarded too naïve and optimistic. Other way around, visualisation of economic activity, like dropping arrows and economic indicators may hinder our understanding of what is exactly happening on the street.
Black Tuesday Largest stock fall was recorded on the Wall street crash of 1929, which was the largest financial crash in USA and led 10 year of depression Black Wednesday Withdrawal of UK pond sterling from European exchange rate mechanism on 1992, which led large financial disorder in UK and Europe. Black Thursday The start of the Wall street crash of 1929
FRAGILITY What does economic crisis mean to personal scale? E.g. steep inflation may deteriorate our savings. In news channels we can observe people rushes into bank trying to withdraw his / her savings when a bank is about to go bankrun. What does mean to us?
Black Friday The panic of 1873, international financial crisis through fall of silver demand. Long depression followed after this financial crash. Some catastrophic events in weekend are also named with “Black-”. (e.g. The large bush fire in Victoria, Australia is named Black Saturday.) We associate miserable or chaotic situation with these words. That is, we memorised catastrophic events in the past by naming the day with “black” and traumatised. CHARACTER OF ECONOMIC CRISIS UBIQUITY AND INVISIBILITY
When we put our money into bank, we have to trust banking systems that it pays back correctly, but such trust can be easily lost if the bank, or government get in critical condition from some reason. Without trust our saving can be only data, or banknote can be piece of paper. It means, without support from customers or citizens, bank or government system is not able to sustain.
Even without drawing our attention, economic situation influences onto our daily life. E.g. a group of gangsters on street could, in some cases, suggests bad economic situation. What
Recently Zimbabwe got extreme inflation just after the eruption of civil war on 2008, until abandon of its currency on 2009. This event depicts fragility of the currency value, a dra20
My questions are: 1. What forms our perception of economic crisis? Design should playing key roll to make invisible and abstract affair visible on media communication. So how do we receive information from media? 2. How economic industries build trust? Without our trust to financial organisation, including country, economic system will not work, so how economic industries build trust? 3. How is economic value represented, especially for currency? Related to former question, fail of trust to currency may lead lost of economic value. As same as economic crisis, economic value is also abstract. So how are currencies designed to achieve trust?
matical transformation from money to paper. Since banking business and economic policy of the government need to establish the trust, we can observe various message and design to build trustful image.
For further argument building I would like to start from the third question.
Unpredictability, or continuity of crisis Describing and predicting economic behaviour is still very controversial. Even for professionals it is difficult, or impossible to predict economy in long term until now. Back to the character of crisis by Wigley (1), an economic crisis can be described as uncontrollable state of economy, but in this regard how many governments and national banks are really taking control of economy? Even though various efforts are taken to keep economy stable and prevent crisis, it occurs in different places from different causes. Reinhart and Rogoff (2) described such crisis - treatment cycle as “This-time-is-different Syndrome�. It offers us an image that economic crisis occurs again and again. If we observe whole economic activities as one phenomenon, it shows instability as normal state. Since the cause of economic crisis is not solved nor enough determined, it could be described as a constant crisis, which we have also discussed in seminar.
-How is the economic value represented, especially regarding design of currency? DESIGN OF THE CURRENCY - VALUE For long period almost all currencies were based on something valuable, like gold, silver but also other objects like rice in Japan, which represent common value. Even after the introduce of banknotes, currency system were based on gold until 1920s (gold standard), which meant the banknote can be exchanged at bank with corresponding amout of gold. Even though our currency is not based on gold any more, current design of currency, especially coin’s design is still inspired from antique coinage. Using high quality metal, which still shine like silver or gold in round form reminds us Roman Denarius coins. A portrait on one side and a name of issued state represent authority.
DESIGN FOR ECONOMIC CRISIS
TRUST
Until now I have argued characteristic of economic crisis. So how does this affair matter to design?
Design of coinage from antique to presence does not only represent economic value but also to aim building trust. Symbols, iconic architectures, portrait of prominent person or motif from myth are commonly used to establish 21
DESIGNING TRUST
trustful image of authority of the currency and of the issued state. Especially for banknotes, which are basically just paper, it is more important to build trust to the currency. To communicate the value of banknotes, it uses newest printing techniques and high quality paper. Off course symbols, decorations and portrait are used as same as coins.
Electronic monies and credit cards drive the imaginary value of the currency further. Since it does not possess physical body, design of these cashing methods borrow often metaphor of value and trust from other objects, e.g. money suck, pad locks or shields etc. It is also interesting that such electronic cashing methods are based on existing currency and offer additional features, convenience or safety. Graphic 2 shows logging display of paypal. com website. Pad lock and the slogan “Paypal, sicherererer” (paypal, safetierererer) shows how Paypal put weight on establishing trust from user by using metaphor of safety and slogan.
One of the big reason for strict punishment against counterfeiting is, not only to stop illegal profiting, but it means the challenge against issued authority. As I mentioned previous chapter, we can also observe collapse of the trust to the currency and to the state can lead economic crisis like the recent hyperinflation in Zimbabwe or in Weimar Republic after the First world war.
-What forms our perception of economic crisis? Design for economic crisis Even though predicting and preventing economic crisis can be difficult and may not have direct relation to design, there is design for economic crisis, i.e. design in media. McLuhan wrote our perception to the world is dependent on media (4). And we, designers are responsible for formulation. Problematic of the economic crisis for media is that, main cause of the crisis is invisible or undefinable. Therefore many metaphors of catastrophic situation are hired to visualise invisible crisis. Graphic 3 shows picture search result from google.com with the keyword “economic crisis”, to get quick overview of people’s understanding of economic crisis. These pictures could be the most frequent pictures, which may appear on news and other internet media. What we can find on this result, falling arrows, desperate traders, burning banknote and cartoons with bad guy (president of USA), provoke us a déjà vu, as if we have been seen some very similar pictures. Even though they tell us something is going wrong, it doesn’t describe exactly what is wrong or how will it relate to our real life.
-How economic industries build trust? ARCHITECTURE OF BANKS Why some banks, especially national banks still hire Roman temple style (e.g. Bank of England in London)? As same as currency it should represent the authority of the bank and the economic power of the state. To have stable currency and economy, bulding of national bank has to be stable, monumental and the represent the power of the nation. The audience of this message are members of the country, citizens, who (are supposed to ) trust and support the currency system. Similar trust-based structure can also be observed for example in religion, as the temple represents omnipotence of the god and believers support the system through engagement. In this regard there is similarity between sculpture of Apollo of the antique Greek and the Charging Bull sculpture in Wall street, New York (Graphic 1). The sculpture of the bull is powerful, dynamic and represent power of wall street, but at the same time its bronze golden body reminds the religious “holy cow” somehow. Also famous motto on American currency, “In god we trust” ironically suggests religion-like character of currency. So if we don’t believe the rule maker (god for religion, government or national bank for currency), it will lost its value.
DESIGN AS CRITIQUE Often design are used to critique economic policy of a state. It provoke us counter opinion against authority or majority. Graphic 4 is provocative poster for Occupy Wall street movement. The Charging bull (Graphic 1) is 22
One interesting aspect in the future is designing value amd currency. Until now we have only electronic paying methods,which is still based on concentional currency. But surely the value will have different form in future, or maybe meaning of the value itself might change.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 1) C-Lab, Space in Crisis, Mark Wigley, http://clab.columbia.edu/0158.html 2) “This Time It’s different: Eight century of Financial Folly”, P. 4 3) Ordnung, Unordnung und Emergency Design, Timon Beyers, P. 6 4) Medienphilosophie, Frank Hartmann, WUV, 2000 Graphic 1) Screen shot from http://google.com, with the keyword “economic crisis” Graphic 2) Picture courtesy of http://chargingbull.com Graphic 3) Poster for Occupy Wall street, Copyright unknown, http://www.breakingcopy.com/ the-poster-art-of-occupy-wall-street
effectively used as the symbol of “brutal capitalism”. As another example I mention a picture book that depicted how much money was thrown after the real estate speculation in Japan in 90’s (Graphic 5). For example to rescue a major bank (Sakura Bank) from debt crisis, around 6 billion EUR was spent, which is for individual too difficult to imagine. The picture book showes that, with that amount you could have bought Washington post, Cicago Bulls and Annual contract of Tiger Woods. CONCLUSION From first impression there might be no relation between economic crisis and design. But the design has crucial roll for economic affair: building trust, which is fundamental for economic value. Until now design has only played supporting roll for economy by communicating value of currency. Design might not prevent or save emerging economic crisis, but it can be a tool to give critique. 23
PUBLIC SPACES OF CRISIS
complexity. He affirms that the intersection of space (which he considers to be the horizon of our concerns, theory and systems) with time is of course undeniable. Describes the different hierarchy of places in middle age, as the medieval space: the space of emplacement. This place was opened by Galileu Galilei, dissolving the Middle Ages:
Joana Francener, Raoul Döring
“(...) that the earth revolved around the sun, but in his constitution of an infinite, and infinitely open space.”
It is very hard to define a word, one can look at the dictionary for that, since it is a great tool to assist those who come across a foreign term. Now, when it comes to terms we are already familiar to, those we have listened to our whole lives, the dictionary is not so helpful anymore. In our case the words “space” and “crisis” have been used by ourselves, taking form and own meaning to us. Therefore instead of trying to find an exact definition of what these words mean by itself or when they are put together, we decided to summarize Michel Foucault’s lecture on Utopias and Heterotopias and take some excerpts of Marc Augé’s book “Non-places”. Their backgrounds are slightly different, yet they fit in pretty well the discussion, the aim here is that you read different views on it, in more of a dialoguing way, allowing yourself to take part in this discussion.
Foucault believes the anxiety of our time consists of fundamentally space, more than time. Not really concerning demographics, and whereas there will be enough space for all mankind on our planet, but stressing that what actually worries one is the proximity of relations, how these relations are classified, how one attributes it in a given situation to achieve an end. He calls it the relation among sites. Despite our techniques of appropriation, he believes we have not yet dissanctified the contemporary space, since we still differentiate them: the institutions which we have not yet broken down, here are some examples: private and public space, family and social, cultural and useful, leisure and work. They are still sustained by the presence of the sacred.
If you would like to take a deeper look into these authors, it may be interesting to have look into Structuralism, Supermodernity and even Postmodernism, they are more complex settings that help us comprehend our contemporary society.
Regarding Bachelard’s work on the phantasmagoric layers that fills one internally, Michel Foucault directs his discussion, instead, to the external space. The space that in his words stage our lives, time, history happens, a place that configures a set of relations, that delineates sites which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another. For him a place can be defined by a cluster of relations happening there, i.e.: sites of relaxation: cinema or café. His special interest though, are those sites that relate to all sites: by suspecting, neutralizing or inventing the set of relations they happen to designate, mirror, reflect.
OF OTHER SPACES: UTOPIAS AND HETEROTOPIAS MICHEL FOUCAULT Michel Foucault defines in a lecture in 1967 the terms Utopia and Heterotopia, in which firstly he contextualizes the XX century and the idea of space that comes within it. In his words the XIX century was prepondering an accumulation of the past, in contrast to the XX century: that he calls the “epoch of simultaneity, juxtaposition (...) of the dispersed”. Not a long life developing through time, but a network connecting points and intersecting within our 25
UTOPIAS
3RD PRINCIPLE: heterotopia juxtaposes a simple real space with several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible. Theater, cinema are two typical ones, but the most notably example comes from the orient: the Persian garden. A square that represents the four parts of the world, the garden is the smallest parcel of the world and then is the totality of the world. The Persian carpet is a representation of the Persian garden.
Not a real place, general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of society. They present society in a perfected form, or else, society turned upside down. HETEROTOPIAS Real places existing within every culture, they work like counter-sites, enacted utopia in which real sites (all other sites that can be found within the culture) are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted. Every society has its heterotopia, they however differ in form.
4TH PRINCIPLE: the slices in time: heterochronies. The absolute break in the traditional time. Taking the cemetery as an example again, it is the place where life is lost, quasi-eternity, the permanent lost dissolves and disappears.The museum and the library are another parameter of heterochrony: they accumulate time. Opposing to that, there is the festival as absolute temporal, transitional, as well as vacation villages.
Foucault worked out six principles to define a heterotopia, we try to summarize them briefly: 1ST PRINCIPLE: It is present in every culture. For example, heterotopia of crisis concerns primitive societies, which had forbidden sacred places to be visited by people who live in situations of crisis: adolescents, menstruating women, elder people. In our society these heterotopias would be: boarding schools, compulsory military service, honeymoon. The former two examples represents virility taking place anywhere else but home; the latter is the deflowering of the young woman which also takes place in no place (heterotopia has no place geographical marker). The heterotopia of crisis has as well transitioned to heterotopia of deviation: comprehending people with deviating behaviour (required by the mean norm), they are home, psychiatric hospitals, prisons, even retirement homes.
5TH PRINCIPLE: heterotopias suppose opening and closing, isolating and making them penetrable. Presupposes entrance. He also affirms that they are not public, since a rite of acceptance or purification has to take place before one gets in. 6TH PRINCIPLE: the relation to all the space that remains. The function can be making a place illusionary, by exposing the other spaces permeated in human life even more illusionary. Or creating a space that it’s like the real space, yet a perfected one. As example of that he describes the Jesuit communities settled in the colonies in South and Central America during colonization, by catholic priests.
2ND PRINCIPLE: has a defined function within society. The same heterotopia can work differently according to its culture. Hierby he gives the example of the cemetery, which first was so sacred, it was built in the centre of the town, together with the church. As knowledge during the XIX century grew more conscious, they realized that the venue had more to do with causes of death than resurrection or elevation of the soul making them move it to the suburbs of the city.
NON-PLACES - MARC AUGÉ Marc Augé is a French anthropologist that coined the term “non-place” in an essay and book of the same title, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1992). He defines places as relational, historical, and concerned with identity, therefore the space that it’s neither of the mentioned is a non26
place. Examples: a motorway, a hotel room, an airport or a supermarket.
The overall perspective, Augé also points the problematic of the contract present within these non-places, the individual loses her\his identity in the context, the identity present is the one of the institution of power present there. This loss of identity, is materialized every time one is reminded of the contract with the power governing this space. One is detached of his individuality, he becomes: the customer, the passenger, the driver. (Augé 1995)
Clearly the word ‘non-place’ designates two complementary but distinct realities: spaces formed in realities: spaces formed in relation to certain ends (transport, transit, commerce, leisure), and the relations that individuals have with these spaces. Although the two sets of relations overlap to a large extent, and in any case officially (individuals travel, make purchases, relax), they are still not confused with one another; for non-places mediate a whole mass of relations, with the self and with others, which are only indirectly connected with their purposes. As anthropological places create the organically social, so non-places create solitary contractuality. (Augé 1995)
WILLIAM H. WHYTE AND THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL URBAN SPACES Understanding Who is William H. Whyte and his mindset William Hollingsworth Whyte was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1917. After graduating from Princeton, he served the Marine Corps during World War II. In 1945 he was discharged and 8 months later he became an editor at the Fortune magazine in 1946. His first book published “The Organization Man” (1956), a summary of his already published articles on corporate Culture and the suburban middle class, sold more than two million copies and made him visible to the wide public. It was one of several works of literate and provocative social analysis to appear in the 50’s, among them David Riesman’s ‘’The Lonely Crowd’’ (1950), which dealt with the formation of values of the urban middle class; Vance Packard’s ‘’The Hidden Persuaders’’ (1957), which critically dissected advertising and consumerism, and John Kenneth Galbraith’s ‘’American Capitalism’’ (1952), with its emphasis on oligopolies and countervailing powers. (New York Times 1999)
“Airport Rush” Photo: Little Joe’s
He also emphasizes how one bases his relationships in these environments, especially concerning communication, which is mainly done by text. People in the mentioned above places, their dialogue is a one way communication of instructions, signs, placards. But the real non-places of supermodernity - the ones we inhabit when we are driving down the motorway, wandering through supermarkets or sitting in an airport lounge waiting for the next flight to London or Marseille - have the peculiarity that they are defined partly by the words and texts they offer us: their ‘instructions for use’, which may be prescriptive (‘Take right-hand lane’), prohibitive (‘No smoking’) or informative (‘You are now entering the Beaujolais region”. (Augé 1995)
The overview was a critique on the ethics of American Business, describing bureaucratization of the corporate environment as a pursuit of safety, underlined by conformity. His critical point of view also concerned how this permeated life in every level across the U.S. He griefs the death of the individual: “‘the modest aspirations of organization men who lower their sights to achieve a good job 27
with adequate pay and proper pension and a nice house in a pleasant community populated with people as nearly like themselves as possible.’’ (Whyte, 1956)
After this publication, Whyte started his very promising academic career, which core of study was the human habitat, specially on street life and urban space. He assisted the New York Planning Commission in 1969, which led him to question how these spaces were working out. He wrote several texts about urban planning, design and human behavior in various urban spaces, became a Professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York, and spent 16 years of his life conducting pioneering studies on pedestrian behaviour: watching and filming people on the streets of New York, this was called The Street Life Project. He was also an advisor to Laurence S. Rockefeller on environmental issues and later played a key role as planning consultant for major U.S. cities. From public space he turned to urban sprawl and urban revitalization, when he started advocating for and researching on city dynamics.
His observations embraced the private life, housing, where these families chose to live, who would then relate to and how the wives of the organization men would make sure to adjust within the corporate system. ‘’We are describing its defects as virtues and denying that there is -- or should be -- a conflict between the individual and the organization. This denial is bad for the organization. It is worse for the individual. What it does, in soothing him, is to rob him of the intellectual armor he so badly needs.’’ (Whyte, 1956)
In 1999, by the age of 81, Mr. Whyte died in Manhattan, New York. He left a wife, two daughters, grandchildren and a significant legacy to America’s urbanism: ‘’Conservation Easements’’ (Urban Land Institute, 1959) helped gain open-space legislation in California, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. And participation concerning environmental issues and public spaces: ‘’Cluster Development’’ (1964), ‘’The Last Landscape’’ (1968), ‘’The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces’’ (1980) and ‘’City’’ (1989). WILLIAM H. WHYTE AND THE PUBLIC SPACE William H. Whyte dedicated a long time observing the streets. Using charts, time-lapse photography he observed the pedestrians in an intuitive analysis, his focus was on the human relations and frivolous behaviour on public spaces. When teaching his students he would also give emphasis to the qualitative observation, combining questions and small interventions always guided by observation. He believed that a healthy public space is the place that attracts many people, automatically becoming a safe and desirable, always stressing that what people are looking for are actually more people. A successful public space is one that
From the movie “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”, by William H. Whyte
In the 80’s, when reviewing his work, despite the changes of the countercultural in the 60’s, Whyte confirmed that ‘’the organizational man is still very much alive.’’ 28
congregates the largest amount of people to engage with one another.
sites chosen in Cologne as antagonic spaces of crisis. One may ask why use the words antagonic here, since neither of the spaces represent a threat to each other directly, or are by their constructed nature a result of conflicting interests or objectives when they were planned as public spaces. However from our very intuitive notion, they appeared to be both a public space of crisis, hence each of them for exactly opposing reason.
“What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people.” (Whyte, 1980) A public spaces of crisis in his opinion would be one which fails to contribute to the quality of life of the individual and consequently the society. The space that does not take into consideration how people use public areas, ignores what Whyte considered to be the way people vote “following their feet”, so an uninhabited public space fails in it’s basic objective. What would configure a space of crisis.
Brüsselerplatz and Ebertplatz were constructed when the city planner Hermann Josef Stübben expanded the city center in 1881. The walls of the city were torn down and what we know nowadays as Neustadt-Nord and Neustadt-Süd were embraced, as well as the ring boulevard and several plazas were reconstructed, and historical buildings were renovated.
“It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.” (Whyte, 1988) Mr. Whyte disliked very much the idea of fences, or buildings that would resemble a military fortress. He would forbid windowless walls, cement courtyards, bewildering tunnels, megastructures and spike Investing on sidewalks, inviting the confusion and well distribution of many people.
What we know today as Brüsselerplatz, was a property given to the archbishopric of Cologne in 1889. In 1894 a new plan of Stübben was meant to change the appearance and placement of Cologne’s churches. It led to a temporary brick construction of the todays St. Michael designed by Heinrich Krings. Also the reconstruction included that the churches were now all facing the Cologne Cathedral. It took 100 days to finish the temporary building of the church which was realized on the 28th of september in 1894. In between the years 1902 and 1907 the plaza was reconstructed into a public open space with the church in the centre, and it’s final layout as we know today was finished from 1981-1982.
BRÜSSELERPLATZ AND EBERTPLATZ Antagonic public spaces of crisis in Cologne, a reinterpretation of Whyte’s study: The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces A SHORT HISTORY BACKGROUND AND PROBLEMATIZATION OF THE PUBLIC SPACES
Ebertplatz was first a wide boulevard, with parks and recreational areas as it still can be seen in the north part of it. This park was named “Deutscher Ring” in 1887, and in 1923 during the Weimarer time, the plaza was separated on paper by the name of “Platz der Republik”. When the national socialists took over the power in Germany they immediately renamed it to “Adolf Hiltler Platz” which after the war, in 1945 was quickly changed back into “Deutscher Platz” again. It had also to be reconstructed after it, they were renewed and finished in 1971, with six lanes improving traffic. The underground station was finished in
As mentioned before, one cannot be as naive as to think Whyte’s work could be dissected, taken as a mathematical formula or method and then applied in any public space around the world. It is also not our intention, to prove his work a science or philosophic truth. Yet we can review part of his analytical thinking and observations in The United States, especially concerning the documentary “The Social Life of a small Public Space” and try use these “lenses” to look at how human behaviour works in public spaces in order to evaluate specific sites. Brüsselerplatz and Ebertplatz were the two 29
WHYTE’S FRAMEWORK AND FIELD OBSERVATIONS
1974, the biggest subway connection point of Cologne until today. This however wiped out the last traces that were left from Josef Stübben’s urbanist characteristics.
Our main parameters of observation according to William H. Whyte were how the sitting spaces were working, its density of use; table usage; are people alone or in groups (what is predominant?); movable chairs, individual chairs; visual aspects, are there people watching people, observing them, reciprocal movements, when people are engaging in a conversation, they tend to follow each others moves in a synchronized choreography; elevating or putting down places, architectural actions that in Whyte’s opinion can be very dangerous, unless you have an attraction in the center of it, moving people towards it, i.e.: fountains, sculptures; what he also considers unacceptable in public spaces is fencing it; how the sun influences people’s behaviour in the space, and that depends on the temperature and time of the year we have; wind protection is another relevant element; presence of water, places that challenge you; trees; food; triangulations, that gathers people, i.e.: a police officer arresting someone, an artist performing, someone selling food.
Brusselerplatz in the evening Photo: Darshana Borges
The problematic we saw within these both sites is actually that one has its conflicts from people’s intense usage, whereas the other is underused by people. Though location wise they both occupy very noble and central spaces in the city of Cologne. Using Whyte’s framework we decided to watch people using these public spaces to see what happens there. Our specific question, therefore is: What makes so many people want to hang out for as long as they do in Brüsselerplatz, what causes a very problematic conflict within the inhabitants of this neighborhood; and what makes such a huge public plaza as Ebertplatz hardly be used as a healthy public space, instead becoming a place of transit only? More specifically, what roles does architecture and urbanism play in this situations?
2nd of June 2013, Brüsselerplatz, 16h30, 12 °C Once you arrive at Brüsselerplatz you can see many people grouping to squeeze at Bali’s shop window console, a store on the corner of the plaza that right in this moment, is offering one of the best spots under the sun (still a temperature of early Spring, therefore every strip of sun is being used). You can see a balance of people sitting by themselves and people in pairs sitting in a well distributed manner across the square. People sitting together are also engaging in reciprocal movement, the people by themselves are either reading a book or simply observing other people. Every strip of sun has been pursuit by the people sitting there. The sitting spaces used are the ones designed to do so, the benches, the chess tables and the picnic tables on the right hand side if you
Der Deutsche Ring, 1900. Photo: Sammlung Franke
30
2nd June - 17h30 - 13 °C Ebertplatz
Ebertplatz Photo: A.Savin
are standing in front of the church.The other non-designated sitting possibilities are also being used: they are plant beddings distributed everywhere at the square, sometimes offering just enough place to lean on, not really sitting, these bedding’s designs look even perfectly suited for also baring one’s drink. The church which is closed most of the time is also used as a leisure spot by children,
There many people crossing by, but hardly anyone stops to hang out (it’s a transit zone). People aren’t really engaged in any activity here, there are about three people sitting by themselves, another three groups spread around chatting. Ebertplatz has also been lowered down from the street level, because of the underground station. In the centre there is a sculpture, but it doesn’t seem to work as well as Whyte predicted it, probably this site would need something more appealing than that in order to congregate people. This shifts the horizon in a very unflattering way, because the people actually do not have a horizon left anymore, instead streets filled with cars, followed by tall buildings. On top of that, this part of the square is also all fenced around.
they use the church door as a goal while they play football. At the back of the church people are sitting down on the stairs that take to a door at the back of the church. The left hand side has some playing areas for children, which are as much used by them as the door of the church on the side. Triangulations can be found especially in facing the front side of the church, since all cafés, kiosks and restaurants are there. During the day one can see all spaces around the church harmoniously used, we wondered if the church itself, by it’s monumental presence offers some sort of shelter and sensation of protection, as well as the trees there.
In spite the unattractive features, configuring this space as predominantly transitional, there is another side of the plaza that has kept the characteristics of the boulevard, designed by Joseff Stübben. This area has threes offering a nice shadow and some protection, a pleasant lawn, is not fenced, has water in it’s central part, animals, and people actually group there for picnics or reading a book.
At 17h the flow of people increases, they are mostly parents pushing baby carriages.
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DESIGN OF/FOR SPACES OF CRISIS
ings, and therefore also consumer needs. Red can stimulate hunger, triggering excitement and also raise the heartbeat. Red seems to have colour dominance with regards to actual food products, as well. If red foods such as tomatoes, strawberries, and apples aren’t a natural part of the product, red packaging can be used instead, seen with Coca Cola, Skittles or Campbell’s soup. Yellow can support feelings of happiness and friendliness, making the colour scheme a well used combination in the fast food business.
Looking at public spaces of crisis from a design solution point of view we found that approaches for bringing a space into crisis is as prominent as offering solutions to improve spaces. Following the previously mentioned theories and observations relationships and sociability are two important factors to determine whether spaces are to be considered a crisis area or not. We found that this key factors also are implemented and embedded deeply in the concepts we were looking into. It is therefore that these designs aim to bring a solution to alter the perception and feelings people have about the spaces. The examples reach from visual identities to electronic products or urban architecture.
This visual concept is not only to enhance the appetite of people but also to keep them in a state of excitement which is artificially extended during the stay in the restaurant. It finally can lead to a form of exhaust and tiredness and ultimately the wish to leave this environment. Anyone can try this by staying in a KFC for more than 30 minutes. It is not a pleasant experience. By this stimulations not only the consumption of products is ensured but also a circulation of customers is established. Going further, the interior design is aiming to limiting people in their choices where to consume the product. Chairs and tables are fixed and can not be moved, as well as they are usually not offering a comfortable sitting experience. Personalising these spaces is therefore nearly impossible.
DESIGN OF SPACES OF CRISIS The brand design McDonald’s has used for more or less seventy years is one of the examples how fast food chains use architectural and visual design to manipulate and influence customers behaviour. But it is not only the customers they are affecting as we are suggesting.
Considering that customers are free to leave whenever they want and may not stay for a very long time in those environments, a bigger crisis can be seen from the employees point of view. Being exposed to this space for only a limited period of time, the effects quickly wear off for customers but with personal spending multiple hours being confronted with this stimulations there is a good case to believe that effects of exhaust and stress can have serious effects on their health.
McDonald’s restaurant. Photo: MCC
Companies like McDonald’s are aiming to enhance customer flow and the effectivity of its personnel in order to increase profits. Following this interest the design of restaurants and stores has to support this aim. Bright yellows and vibrant reds are not only attractive colours to be seen from far distances but also effective to stimulate people. Being exposed to coloured environments can change our mood and feel-
It is important to mention that although this design approach apparently has worked well for many years McDonald’s recently shifted their approach on how to attract people and influence customer experience. As seen in many restaurants, green and brown colours have taken the place of vibrant reds and yellows, as 32
McDonald’s new interior concept. Photo: anonymous
well as new store concepts like McCafé allow customers to comfortably spend more time in their stores. This can be interpreted as a reaction to a growing consciousness in health and environmental issues people have developed over the past years.
people and infringes their human rights, while supporters argue that making the Mosquito illegal would infringe the rights of shopkeepers who suffer business losses when teenagers drive away their customers.
As seen before the hindrance to connect personally to spaces and form relationships with or in them is a way to control the flow and behaviour of people. Other solutions following this idea of deliberately creating spaces of crisis are not as subliminal. Widely used in America, England and Canada an electronic invention made news in 2006 when introduced to the market. “The Mosquito” is a high frequency speaker aimed to keep teenagers and people up to 25 years old from loitering at public spaces. It emits a high frequency noise, similar to the sound of a mosquito, reaching up to 104dB. Invented by Compound Security Solutions from South Wales the 1500$ device has been triggering a broad discussion about human rights. Critics say that it discriminates against young
Mosquito speaker. Photo: Compound Security Solutions
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DESIGN FOR SPACES OF CRISIS
down before these new plazas are planned in cooperation with city departments by citizens and often achieve higher numbers of visitors than previously implemented spaces. Temporary structures like beer gardens made from shipping containers can easily be changed and financed, but can bring a big impact. Recapitulating the design approaches, we found a common theme that connects them. Each of them aim to hinder or enable relationships and personal connections to a space. Whether its a colour scheme or urban architecture, design and technology is used to define peoples social behaviour for the better or the worse in order to construct spaces which serve specific needs of either user or designer.
Although there are barely products or ready made solutions on how to improve spaces of crisis, design solutions can for example be found in architectural approaches to spaces. Looking to New York City a public movement brought big changes to twilight zones and risk areas in the past years. With the help of the New York City Department traffic circles and triangles are made into pedestrian plazas, bringing back attractive public space to the people of the neighbourhood. By using pre made structures like shipping containers, potted trees or chairs a socially problematic neighbourhood can be changed for the better while costs are kept down to a minimum. Mostly been planned from the top
CONSIDERATIONS Public spaces of crisis is indeed a very broad topic that can be tackled in many different ways, beginning from a rather intuitive perspective, the subject took form during its process. As it began intuitively, it allowed us a more personal approach, guiding our further research, either confirming or contesting our early assumptions. William H. Whyte’s literature surely guided us well at first, especially concerning field observations, but the solid spine of this seminar paper was actually taken from Mr. Foucault and Mr. Augé. They confirm in deeper manner, Whyte’s own statements when it comes to spaces as sensible stage for people’s relationships to one another. The observations and reflections on Cologne’s both sites: Ebertplatz and Brüsselerplatz had individually different outcomes. As for Ebertplatz, the equivocal urban architecture became the obvious reason why it does not congregate people; as for Brüsselerplatz this picture is the opposite, all its architectural decisions seem to have been very assertive. Bringing again the problematization of these sites, the former one has plausible solutions, closer to realization, but the latter, however succeeding in bringing people together, suffers from this quality, what features its state of crisis: Confronted by users
Pearl Street Triangle in Dumbo, Brooklyn. Photo: The New York City Department of Transportation
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and the people living there, the solution for this one seems blurry, a constant topic for the city council, which probably will still prolong debates for long. BIBLIOGRAPHY Augé, M. 1995. Non-places. London: Verso. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16, no. 1. Translated by Jay Miskowiec (1986). New York Times. 1999. William H. Whyte, ‘Organization Man’ Author and Urbanologist, Is Dead at 81 - New York Times. [online] Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/13/ arts/william-h-whyte-organization-man-author-and-urbanologist-is-dead-at-81.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm [Accessed: 6 Jun 2013]. Plato.stanford.edu. 2003. Michel Foucault (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). [online] Available at:http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ foucault/ [Accessed: 29 Jun 2013]. Princeton.edu. 1950. Structuralism. [online] Available at:http://www.princeton. edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Structuralism.html[Accessed: 24 Jun 2013]. Spaces, P. 2010. Project for Public Spaces | William H. Whyte. [online] Available at: http:// www.pps.org/reference/wwhyte/ [Accessed: 6 Jun 2013]. Whyte, W. 1980. The Social Life of a Small Urban Space. [video online] Available at: https:// vimeo.com/6821934 [Accessed: 24 May 2013]. Whyte, W. 1956. The organization man. New York: Simon and Schuster. Whyte, W. 2001. The social life of small urban spaces. New York: Project for Public Spaces. Whyte, W. 1988. City. New York: Doubleday.
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TRAUMATIZED SPACES
common feelings of a person with a trauma, and therefore emotions to be connected with a traumatized space. Talking about 9/11; the area of where the world trade center used to be, became a traumatized space to the people not only for those who suffered from trauma because of the attacks. There are studies showing that a wide range of people, including survivors, rescue workers and those living in the area reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress; nearly 96 percent of survivors reported at least one symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder two to three years after the attacks; also the prevalence of depression, anxiety, substance abuse and post-traumatic stress in the New York area all were higher than they were before the attacks4. The space is not just limited to the area of New York; the terrible events certainly turned into a nationwide collective trauma, which led to a development of additional traumatized space, due to real time footage and the “War on Terror”. Increase of aviatophobia (fear of flying), change in the use of public transport and avoidance of mass events are just a few examples of how peoples behavior has changed. Within this explanation crisis can be seen as the pre-stage and trigger of a trauma. In our examples: the human tragedies or the physical injuries of the victims can be seen as personal crisis, whereas decreasing trust in public security as a collective crisis. Differing from the collective trauma of 9/11, there also can be a traumatized space only “visible” for a single person. Using cases of childhood abuse as an example: The room where the abuse took place is traumatized for the abused, but for anybody else it’s just a normal room.
Jacobus North, Pablo Solano September 11, 2001. At 8:46 am the American Airlines Flight 11 with a crew of 11 and 76 passengers, impacted the North Tower of the World Trade Center in the city of New York. America was shocked for what the first news channels called an accident in the island of Manhattan; inside the ABC News studio the screams of the presenters can be heard when, while transmitting their special report, a second plane, the United Airlines Flight 145 with 65 people, crashed into the second tower. The then president of the United States George W. Bush confirmed in a national broadcasting that the country is under attack and the new word employed to define and explain the outgoing situation is terrorism. In less than two hours both towers collapsed due to fire-induced structural failure1 involving the death of 2,606 people, their families and the survivors faced not only with the physical injuries but also with psychological wounds and survivors guilt, with traumas. To define what makes New York’s ground zero a traumatized space we have to set up a definition of space and trauma itself. Originating from the words trauma, an emotional shock following a stressful event or a physical injury, which may be associated with physical shock and sometimes leads to longterm neurosis2 and space an area left between one-, two-, or three-dimensional points or objects3. Wherever trauma takes place and bounds with a space, a traumatized space is created. It is important to point out that the main factor is not the physical appearance, but the events that caused the trauma and then define the space; even though trauma and the (reminiscence of) physical appearance are related. Anxiety, fear, sadness, denial or anger are
Collective memory, whether conceived of trauma or simply history, works as a lens that makes traumatized spaces visible. Meaning that a non-traumatized person recognizes the traumatization of others and understands the associated spaces. One common way to communicate a ‘collective memory’ is the creation of memorials. They are one of the most clear tangible works from architects, artists and designers regarding massive post-traumatic experiences in public spaces. In the most basic 37
sense, memorials must serve to preserve memory or knowledge of an individual or event. The architectural historian Alberto Pérez-Gómez affirms that “it is in the face of catastrophes, historic traumas, and human injustices that the architect’s and the artist’s roles become increasingly complex, problematic—and necessary.” The question is always the same: how to address a destroyed place (like ground zero in New York) and create a regenerative space? For Prof. Dr. Pérez-Gómez “neither art nor architecture can compensate for public trauma or mass murder. What artistic and architectural practices can do is establish a dialogical relation with those events and help frame the process toward understanding”.
in the United States is to remodel these places where violence took place and return them to their original purpose. As some others the New Utøya project -a plan for re-establishing a political camp on the island of Utøya (Norway) after the terrorist attacks in 2011- was praised by Ms. Quirk for its idea of honoring the victims not with a “shrine” but with “a message that the perpetrator failed”. In terms of Design of for Crisis, the interventions in traumatized spaces are still in debate. As we tried to find answers for the original questions more and more appeared on the way. We know a traumatized space can be created and maintained by the memory culture, and we also know that through Design the main purpose is not “healing” a mass-trauma related to one specific space, but communicating a message that leads towards public understanding of the events. We know traumatized spaces do not depend on the scale factor and –as crisis- can vary from your childhood room to a huge financial district. But as we conclude our topic we will also like to ask: what do you consider a traumatized space? And do you find memorials as the best way of post-traumatic intervention?
In the case of the September 11th attacks, a national memorial stands now on the exact site where the World Trade Center was. The design was the product of an international competition and according to the 9/11 Organization “the memorial features two enormous waterfalls and reflecting pools, each about an acre in size, set within the footprints of the original twin towers…More than 400 trees are planned for the plaza...Its design conveys a spirit of hope and renewal, and creates a contemplative space separate from the usual sights and sounds of a bustling metropolis.” For Stephen Prothero, scholar, writer and blog contributor for CNN the first impression of the 9/11 Memorial is –as describe it by its organization- an auditory experience that does distract you from the hectic Manhattan but with something even louder: “water crashing over a series of waterfalls”. This contemplative space for Mr. Prothero is actually an immense plaza devoid of intimacy, feeling as “big and loud as America” and that misses “a sense of the ineffable, of mystery”. With these conflicting opinions we then have to ask how a memorial successfully creates this space of dialogue and reflection in Prof. Dr. Pérez-Gómez statement? Vanessa Quirk from Oxford University gives us a light to answer this question by analyzing the possible Post-Traumatic Design interventions in public places after a mass shooting. For Ms. Quirk, the option that has shown the best results in the past 20 years 38
REFERENCES Bonder, J. 2009. On Memory, Trauma, Public Space, Monuments, and Memorials. DESIGN OBSERVER, [article] May, Available at: http:// designobserver.com/media/pdf/On_Memory,_ Tra_1250.pdf [Accessed: July, 2013]. Prothero, S. 2012. My Take: 9/11 Memorial not sacred enough. BELIEF CNN, [blog] February, Available at: http://religion.blogs.cnn. com/2012/02/27/my-take-911-memorial-notsacred-enough/ [Accessed: July, 2013]. Quirk, V. 2013. Post-Traumatic Design: How to Design Our Schools to Heal Past Wounds and Prevent Future Violence. ARCH DAILY, [article] January, [Accessed: July, 2013]. Trigg, D. 2009. The place of trauma: Memory, hauntings, and the temporality of ruins. MEMORY STUDIES, [article] February, Available at: http://mss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/1/87 [Accessed: July, 2013]. O’Brian, B. 2011. Researcher Finds 9/11 Attacks Led to New Understanding of Mass Trauma. [article] September 2011 Available at: http://news.columbia.edu/newyorkstories/2518 [Accessed: July, 2013]. Dr. Dunst, A. 2012. After Trauma: Thinking American Culture Beyond 9/11. [article] May 2012 Available at: http://academia. edu/1539512/After_Trauma_Thinking_American_Culture_Beyond_9_11 [Accessed: July, 2013]. Bogazianos, D. A. 2008. Review of “Trauma and Memory: Reading, healing, and making law, by Austin Sarat, Nadav Davidovitch, and Michal Alberstein (eds). Stanford University Press [review] May 2008 Available at: http:// www.gvpt.umd.edu/lpbr/subpages/reviews/ sarat0808.htm [Accessed: July, 2013].
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