Machine for Experiential Urban Learning by liam mccomish

MACHINE FOR EXPERIENTIAL URBAN LEARNING INTERDISCIPLINARY DESIGN RESEARCH Saul Golden & Liam McComish

ISBN: 978-0-9558728-6-0 Published by PLACE, 2012 Copyright ÂŠ 2012 Saul Golden, Liam McComish Text by Saul Golden, Liam McComish, Michael Hegarty/PLACE Design and editing by Saul Golden, Liam McComish All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the authors and contributors. PLACE Planning Landscape Architecture Community Environment Limited 40 Fountain Street, BELFAST BT1 5EE www.placeni.org A Charity registered in Northern Ireland Company Number: NI607231 / Registered Charity Number: XT30723 Our mission is to positively influence the creating and sustaining of excellent places and buildings, making Northern Ireland an environment of exceptional quality for all.

Edited by Saul Golden and Liam McComish This book introduces Urban Research Belfast (URB), an interdisciplinary design-education project between the departments of Architecture and Visual (graphic) Communication at the University of Ulster, Belfast. Since 2009, a total of 200 undergraduate students and supporting staff from both departments at the University of Ulster have contributed to the project, along with significant support from external professionals, community-based organisations, government representatives and members of the public.1

Urban Research Belfast was funded by the University of Ulster, the Centre for Higher Education Practice (CHEP, http://www. ulster.ac.uk/centrehep) and PLACE (the Architecture and Built Environment Centre for Northern Ireland, www.placeni.org).

FOREWORD

PREFACE 13 INTRODUCTION 31 PROJECTS AND LESSONS ABSTRACTED LEARNING AND COLLABORATIVE INVESTIGATIONS 55 ARCHITECTURE, PEDAGOGY,PRACTICE AND THE URB PROJECT 79 GRAPHIC DESIGN PEDAGOGY, PRACTICE AND THE URB PROJECT 104 PLACE,EDUCATION, PROFESSION 115 BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Foreword/LIZA FIOR

Unlike furniture making or fashion design, those who wish to work at the scale of the city tend to resort to visuals and master-plans to describe their intentions, not a prototype or a toile. There is a value in making a proposal for real, if temporarily, for the temporary can be a test of the possible. These projects demonstrate that a simple act itself can be a powerful act of transformation. This ambitious collaboration shows how use can change meaning, occupation is a means to suspend belief and demonstrate what the risky unknown might look like.

muf architecture/art LLP

PREFACE

U 10

rban Research Belfast is part of ongoing collaborative research about experiential learning and ways to better connect place theory with real skills for urban design, influenced by our roles as educators and practitioners in our respective fields of architecture and graphic design. Machine for Experiential Urban Learning (MEUL) represents the combined original output of the project so far, creative mechanisms for teaching, learning and investigating about place in existing urban environments. Our approach, through URB, emphasizes the value of getting lost, or at least questioning negative preconceptions about marginal areas of existing cities. The MEULs require designers to become more than transitory flâneurs, to explore with more purpose and to become more attuned to implicit and explicit local narratives.

Book Structure We have loosely structured the book into sections and chapters that reflect stages of the project research, and teaching and learning methods. As with the project’s mix of structured and student-led teaching and learning methods, the book combines formal essay chapters mixed with less formal vignettes about the project context and individual project activities. The introductory chapter establishes the background to URB, its crossdisciplinary approach to the physical context of Belfast, and its broader conceptual and pedagogic framework, which connects architecture and graphic design practice, education, and theory. The chapter also identifies the academic and professional relationships between spatial and graphic design in the built environment that support URB’s interdisciplinary approach to investigative urban design processes. The vignette in this section provides more detail about the specific project study area of Smithfield and Union, Belfast. The following essay chapters detail pedagogic and practice-led aspects of URB in relation to architecture and graphic design. The vignettes in this section describe the chronology and detail of the project’s main outcomes. These outcomes are illustrated across key project steps that progress from abstract lessons in the studios to more active field investigations and interventions.

The main section on URB follows the project through its stages of implementation, feedback and evolution. Based on extensive photo and video documentation, and our observations, combined with structured and anecdotal feedback from students, project participants and the public, these chapters provide reflection and conjecture about the project’s short and long-term impacts, successes, and shortcomings. Conclusions and suggestions for future research set URB in a wider context of design education and professional practice debates. In the final chapter, the former Director of PLACE (The Architecture and Built Environment Centre of Northern Ireland), Michael Hegarty, contributes an essay that sets the themes of collaboration, participation and design quality – which underpin URB’s academic research – in the context of specific examples of PLACE’s work in ongoing community outreach projects. This contribution discusses development challenges in Northern Ireland that are also common to many urban and rural communities worldwide. Hegarty illustrates how wider debates about the future shape and quality of the built environment have been addressed in Northern Ireland through PLACE’s work with professionals, policy-makers and local communities; and through ongoing academic support.

A note to reader This book – like the city – is not regarded as a finished product. It is presented as both a collective whole, and as a network of individual themed sections. We invite readers to proceed methodically or to use the contents as an orientating guide, entering at different points and getting lost in the experiences and lessons; not necessarily in a predetermined order, but hopefully finding a useful part of our narrative and the students’ outcomes that can be adapted to other settings and applications.

Saul Golden and Liam McComish. May 2012

INTRODUCTION URBAN RESEARCH BELFAST Saul Golden & Liam McComish

Design from the “ground up”rather than imposing project outcomes or explicit messages onto existing communities.

RB was established to investigate interdisciplinary lessons about spatial design, bringing architecture and graphic design together through a joint critical approach to history, culture and place as social aspects of urban design. URB developed out of shared concerns at professional, institutional, academic and local (public) levels over the direction and quality of development in rapidly changing cities like Belfast. By addressing issues of urban design practice through the disciplines of architecture and graphic design, the project proposes more general strategies for greater inter-disciplinary design practice and education to address a perceived skills gap among built environment professionals to develop more ‘holistic – rather than specialist – design knowledge about place-making.’1 URB proposes alternate ways to investigate and communicate about place, aspiring toward better quality urban spaces. While established as academic research, URB focuses on the ways that students of design engage with real environments, specifically more contested urban contexts and empty spaces of the city around them. Empty space is a concept and a physical reality of cities that forms the backdrop to URB, referring to vacated, underused, overlooked and contested areas that can be found not only in Belfast, but in all cities. Empty space in cities has been referred to in different guises that suggest different values: including the critical view of ‘lost space’2 resulting from post-WWII urban renewal; as ‘terrain vagues’3 or indeterminate space of potential, and as more sinister ‘shadowed spaces’4 . In property-led regeneration, these spaces and buildings are often referred to in terms of their monetary value and potential returns on capital investment.5 The latter approach, URB argues, can too often overlook latent qualities and intrinsic cultural or historic values of empty space. As its premise, URB argues further that a focus on place-driven collaborative skills for design in urban environments can improve education outcomes and professional practice, and may improve shared aspirations in society for quality places.

Context: Smithfield and Union, Belfast

1 2 3 4 5 6

HCA, 2010:5. Trancik, 1986. De Sola Morales, 1996. Woods, 1981. Adair et al, 1996; 2003. Moudon, 1992.

To investigate and support this assertion URB draws on urban design research approaches that promote substantive knowledge6 of design rather than prescriptive solutions or method for design. The research documents and evaluates a series of joint teaching and learning activities between students of architecture and graphic design that shift from theory-based activities toward more group-based outcomes in the ‘real’ context of Belfast’s urban edges. These student-led activities focused on shared investigations of urban design and place in a single neglected area of Belfast referred to as Smithfield and Union (Map 1),7 adjacent to the University of Ulster campus.

By starting with approaches that seek to apply design knowledge to transform poor quality, empty, urban spaces, URB aims to build better skills in both sets of students to address more marginal physical, economic and social conditions, and improve upon existing fragmented approaches toward urban design at the earliest stages of investigation. The goal of this book therefore, is not only to document and celebrate the joint work and output between architecture and visual communication in Smithfield and Union, but also to examine and discuss wider relevant issues about educating future professionals, and about better quality places in urban design and development. The opportunity to run Urban Research Belfast in Smithfield and Union arose from prior outreach work within the Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s School of Architecture and Design in 2008-09,8 which established contact with a local group of independent businesses and traders who formed the North West City Centre Regeneration Committee (NWCCRC). In 2009 the Departments of Visual Communication and Architecture were initially brought together in response to a request from NWCCRC to assist with their branding and physical regeneration efforts, to combat ongoing physical and economic decline in the area.

Architecture and Graphic Design: Interdisciplinary Urban Research Collaboration between architects and graphic designers is an aspect of Urban Research Belfast that became more prevalent as we realised the commonality between the disciplines when addressing issues of environmental design. The disciplines work much closer together in practice than in earlier stages of professional education. In the UK context, under which University of Ulster is structured and funded, this is due to a variety of factors, including professional accreditation systems that influence education, and faculty structures that often align architecture more closely with construction, planning and engineering rather than other design disciplines. Traditionally, architecture deals with three-dimensional spatial form while graphic design is more concerned with two-dimensional imagery and typography. However, graphic design can extend to spatial interventions and visual artefacts as much as architecture can incorporate graphics beyond applied surface devices, integrating them into the make-up of a buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s construction. Architects and graphic designers also increasingly use common methods of communicating and exploring design and design processes. When dealing with design in the built environment both disciplines share in debates about contested notions of place-making, as

7 For further details, see the separate Smithfield and Union vignette following the introduction, or refer to an interactive map online and neighbourhood, available at http://www.smithfieldandunion.com/ map.html. 8 http://www.buildinginitiative.org/ accessed 28 June 2009; see also Sheridan (2009), For further information on the URB development and 2009-10 pilot study see Golden (2010).

MA RKE T NO RTH STR EET

SM ITH FIE LD

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Smithfield & Union Study Area Map: Publishing permit number, 120075. This material is based upon Crown Copyrignt and is reproduced with the permission of Land & Property Services under Delegated Authority from the Contoller of HMSO, ÂŠ Crown Copyright and database right.

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FR ED ER ICK ST RE ET

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There has also been criticism that studio design education relies too much on variations of paper project types and requires more engagement with “real life”

9 ‘…a pedagogical interest in evolving traditional architectural ‘studio’ into a new tool for teaching architecture and our [sic] particular interest in finding graphic means, more suitable than those now [sic] used by architects and planners, to describe ‘urban sprawl’ urbanism and particularly the commercial strip.”.’ Venturi et al., 1977 [1972]:xi-xii. 10 Carmona et al., 2006:3 11 Chapman, 2009:13. 12 URB also supports teaching and learning strategies within the University of Ulster by “integrating academic content with professional practice to consolidate and stimulate learning.” UU 2008:7.

phenomenological design ideals or practical means of development process and procurement. As environmental or visual communications in urban settings or within buildings, two-dimensional graphic design applications also play an integral role with architecture, landscape and product design, in wayfinding success or failure. In terms of academic design-research, there are also some notable precedents for architects and graphic designers working together to study urban environments. Venturi and Scott-Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas, for example, resulted from a semester-long project at Yale in 1968 between instructors and graduate students of architecture, planning and graphic design. While their project is presently regarded more as a morphological study of urban space than for its crossdisciplinary collaboration, Venturi and Scott-Brown explicitly credit these intentions in their introduction, and set out their underlying intent to challenge traditional studio pedagogy and develop new tools from the shared investigations.9

Ambition and Aims: Interdisciplinary Design Practice and Education URB takes inspiration from the latter aspect above in its focused look at collaborative teaching and learning between architecture and graphic design, and the relationship between graphics, built-form and urban place. Urban design in this sense becomes the shared cross-disciplinary area of concern for “the quality of the public realm – both physical and sociocultural – and the making of places for people to enjoy and use.”10 In URB this is the overlapping area of study for both sets of students to try and discern the place qualities of the Smithfield and Union study area, and to underpin separate processes of design by working together to develop core exploratory skills. This approach challenges silos that exist in education and professional education programmes that continue to lack a unified approach to ‘real interdependence and synergy in [their] design and delivery...’11 In response to these issues, and the invitations to work outside the university, URB aims to increase students’ confidence and awareness to engage more – physically and socially – with existing urban areas, particularly those perceived as neglected and of lesser ‘interest’ for designers and design educators. The project not only formalises links across the architecture and graphic design departments within the University of Ulster but develops partnerships with real clients and projects outside the University.12 As the project evolved from initial pilot studies in Smithfield and Union, the shared aspects of architecture and graphic design influenced the

developing project methodology. The project became not just about a single abstract short term activity or consultancy, but alternatives to a reliance on abstract, studio-based design projects and ways to educate future professionals about investigating Design from the ground up rather than imposing project outcomes or explicit message onto existing communities. This alternative approach to traditional studio-based urban design and design education aims to (re)connect with debates about development and the wider city and, through a focus on early career education, to encourage future professionals to take a deeper perspective of their environment. The project aims and anticipated learning outcomes can be broken down into the following tiers, which also reflect shorter and longer-term project aspirations:

Research Aims: • To formalise and test cross-disciplinary teaching and learning between the disciplines of architecture and visual communication. • To research and add to the knowledge base of teaching and learning methods about place, for improved skills capacity of future designers to engage with urban communities, professionals and policymakers.

Pedagogic Aims: • Provide teaching projects beyond the classroom that could have real- time effects, outputs and improve employability. • Connect teaching and learning about branding, typography and visual ideas, architecture and spatial experience with history, culture and place in the rapidly transforming city-centre context of Belfast. • Improve student’s use of reflection to connect studio learning and their sense of what is possible by applying learned studio skills in practice.

Anticipated Learning Outcomes: • Introduce the link in design between abstract studies of place and practice. • Introduce and build student confidence for engaged community-based design activities. • Assisting student’s development of greater criticality about experiences in city environments, and better empathy with the needs and vision of local communities.

With a long-term view we asked, in what way could the project demonstrate to young design students that they are citizens too, and that the city belongs to them as much as professionals or government agencies. In the medium-term we asked, how could design students better learn to engage physically with an urban site and socially with the people, who live, work or play there in order to develop a place-driven vision prior to any attempts at imposing design ideas? In the project planning we asked, how can the qualitative activities of investigation by individual students be structured within an evaluative framework for staff and researchers to collect relevant data and draw conclusions?

Precedents Taking the above aims and anticipated outcomes in to account, URB’s external collaborative methods were then developed from precedents within Ulster and from other international precedents and literature. The initial decision to bring undergraduate students together was informed for example by the Ulster School of Architecture’s existing OUTside Project, a series of live projects involving first and second year architecture students. Those events’ small group, mixed-year format and open-ended project scope allowed students to work “outside” both typical assessment constraints and the studio environment. Morrow describes it “as part of a stimulating, if sporadic, legacy of activist pedagogies.”13 The OUTside Project14 acted as a guide within Ulster for involving students in more formal research outside of the studio and university environment. Further considering issues for collaboration beyond the studio for URB, in its UK education context, a number additional academic-research precedents since 2000 were identified. These included a range of efforts to strengthen connections between built environment courses and wider communities,15 to integrate live projects with the traditional design-led curriculum,16 and to collaborate across disciplines in academia.17 These examples reflect URB’s aims although they differ by dealing with only a single discipline, involving graduate level students primarily or connecting different disciplines but not necessarily working jointly on projects – either at the same time or with shared outcomes. To supplement the literature-based precedents, a visit to London Metropolitan University and University of Westminster was carried out in 2010 to gain first-hand knowledge of live projects set up in built environment courses. From interviews carried out during these exploratory visits we concluded that reflective observation would be a more important means to evaluate URB at an undergraduate level, rather than structuring the project around traditional design projects or similar short-term objectives.18

How can design students better learn to engage physically with an urban site and socially with the people, who live, work or play there in order to develop a place-driven vision prior to any attempts at imposing design ideas?

Morrow 2007: 271. Morrow brought this concept of live architectural outreach projects to UU from the University of Sheffield. 14 The Outside project was not graded or assessed within the School of Architecture’s formal learning outcomes. 15 Uduku, 2001; Jenkins and Forsyth, 2010. 16 Chiles and Till, 2008. 17 Romice and Uzzell, 2005. 18 Interview by S.Golden with Professor Jeremy Till, Dean of the School of Architecture and the Built Environment, University of Westminster, 18 November 2010. The feedback was regarding Professor Till’s live project experiences and pedagogic research, carried at University of Sheffield from 1999-2008. 13

Narratives, in this project, are meant to help elicit and evaluate higher levels of critical thinking on the social life of urban spaces; seeking to show understanding from within rather than as an outsider

Finally, from practice, two influential precedents include NY based Project for Public Spaces (PPS), and the London based Architecture Foundation (AF). PPS’s “Placemaking Training” and “Place Performance Evaluation Game”19 were directly incorporated as a basis for students’ mapping and questionnaires about place in the study area, while AF’s Handbook for Participatory Design20 provided examples of art-based approaches to interacting with the public while gathering qualitative and quantitative data.

Framework: Teaching, Action, Learning, Knowledge Together with our own professional backgrounds and teaching experience, the precedent studies were adapted into URB’s year long cross-departmental and interdisciplinary project structure. The challenge was then to find, or create, a mechanism that could bring education theory and practice together as transferrable methods of teaching and learning for architecture and graphic design students. Following an additional review of design and general pedagogic literature, we combined aspects of traditional studio design approaches with investigative architecture and graphic design strategies to create the project’s underlying pedagogic framework, T.A.L.K. TALK incorporates four design-led pedagogic strands: Teaching, Action, Learning and Knowledge (Table 1).21 These concepts derive from more general pedagogic concepts of constructive alignment and deeper learning,22 applying learned skills in practice,23 experiential and reflective learning cycles,24 active learning,25 and Bloom’s taxonomy of critical thinking.26

PPS, 2005. “Place Game” used with permission of Fred Kent and PPS, Ltd. 20 AF, 2000. 21 For a further description, analysis and references for the framework development see Golden, 2010. 22 Biggs and Tang, 2007. 23 Race, 2001. 24 Kolb, 1984. 25 Argyris and Schön, 1978. 26 As interpreted through Krathwohl, 2009).

Place-based Storytelling

Experiential Activities

Teaching

Abstract Theory

Action

Individual

Collective

Learning

Words & Images

Concrete Experiments

Knowledge

How & That

Questions & Exploring

Reflection & application

Within this framework, TALK employs a series of structured versus open-ended activities. These shift away from a reliance on a one-way ‘transmission or […] systematic extension of knowledge’27 and individual scenarios, toward more collaborative working, experiential activities and creative experiments that are meant to encourage reflection, and also more independent applications of concrete practice.

Concepts: Storytelling and Exploring In the TALK framework, the concept of Place-Based Storytelling is drawn from literature of both architecture and graphic design.28 It refers to developing a deeper urban narrative by means that aim to help elicit higher levels of critical thinking on socio-spatial aspects of a local environment – more from within than as an outsider,29 discouraging an overreliance on preconceived knowledge. Applied as a method, storytelling is meant to encourage an inclusive consideration of the symbolic and physical issues affecting urban spaces, balancing professional and local knowledge, without necessarily sacrificing designers’ creative skills.30 Similarly, Exploring is a concept adapted from architecture and graphic design that represents a way of encouraging students to approach ‘getting lost’ as a positive, rather than disastrous, experience in their urban investigations. While the architect and urbanist Kevin Lynch equated “disorientation” with potential disaster for those experiencing the city,31 URB draws upon the positive and poetic interpretation put forward by the designer Ruedi Baur, in response to Lynch: “moving somewhere else not from obligation but for pleasure”. 32 Exploring, through this interpretation, purposely aims to move students beyond their comfort zones without getting them completely lost. For urban design, disorientation is interpreted as a different way to get to know the city, where possible through considered and unexpected encounters that require – or encourage at least – more engaged observation to find the subtler ‘nature of things.’33

Summary: Project Structure, Conclusions and Evaluation URB was structured over three steps across the academic year, with students working together in short-term intervals between periods focused within their own disciplines. Beginning with ice-breaking activities and more traditional theory readings, the activities shift to more interactive small-group based urban studies and discussions on language, theory and practice,34 then to the core student-led field-work projects, observing and talking with people on the street, local independent business owners, residents and representatives from local government. In the main project

After Friere, 1973:139 Baur, 2001; Bartholomew and Locher, 2007; Till, 2005, 2010; CABE 2009:7-8. 29 Hollis, 2008:16. 30 Jenkins and Forsyth, 2009. 31 Lynch, 1961. 32 Baur, 2009. 33 From architect and educator Louis I Kahn’s words: “The work of students should not be directed to the solution of problems, but rather to sensing the nature of a thing. But you cannot know a nature without getting it out of your guts. You must sense what it is, and then you can look up what other people think it is…” In Lobell 1979:12. 34 This stage incorporated a “world café”, a proprietary approach where informal ideas are exchanged around themed tables - themes derived from the readings or learning outcomes. See Brown et al., 2010. 27 28

stage, students conceived and created their MEULs as part of collective event that was fully documented In each year the project completes with reflective workshops and feedback sessions. The project actions were intended, not to create a permanent solution in the study context, but to draw attention to the areaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s existing urban spaces and to challenge its mainly negative perception with discussion about its latent potential. In this context, the first and second year students were tasked to explore notions of place and to try leaving aside all preconceptions or to challenge their preconceptions and learn in situ about the ways that design can affect public space. Image and form may follow from early investigations for urban design, but evaluating design solutions themselves were not the main focus of URB. Instead the project focused on the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; more iterative layering of design information, looking for explicit and implicit knowledge and to build their confidence to engage with unfamiliar people and issues of design in urban spaces - supporting the transfer of these skills into their ongoing education, and future careers. The project results so far, based on short-term activities and evaluation, have often been surprisingly poignant and beautiful observations about the notion of place. Considering that some of these students are first year undergraduates, the observations highlighted an increased awareness of their initial perceptions, changing perceptions and learning. At best they move beyond the immediate neglected surface of the existing city to explore the people, spaces, implicit history and culture of an area that once formed the heart of Belfast. Even students who do not fully engage with the project aims are at least more exposed to the city and to the views of another professional/ subject discipline. As part of a broader application therefore, requiring more long-term research, the projects does suggest ways to engage design students in building stronger skills to address unfamiliar contexts anywhere, and to work with others without requiring a prescribed or discipline-specific solution: an open-ended process that aspires to improve the possibilities for quality aspirations in everyday environments. Toward this end, this book not only describes and contextualises the URB projects, but includes more detailed conclusions about the impact of the collaborative approaches on students, their perception of issues outside the classroom, reflective skills and on possible lessons for future design research.

S The name Smithfield and Union is new, the result of a a locally-driven rebranding effort in 2010. Previously it was referred to as the North West Quarter [NWQ], Northside Urban Village, and Smithfield Market and Library Quarter. 2 Smithfield Square appears on maps back to the 18th century. Smithfield Market appears later, from the 19th century has been described as ‘a focus of popular culture [with a] reputation for bawdy life…the rough and ready exoticism of Belfast…”, A Belfast Souk: A History of Smithfield Market, a one-time underside of the city, Culture Northern Ireland, 2008. http://www.culturenorthernireland. org/article/355/a-belfast-souk (20 November 2010). 3 The Troubles refers to the thirty-year period of ethno-political violence across Northern Ireland, from approximately 1968-69 until the Belfast (Good Friday) Peace Agreement of 1998. 1

4 DSDNI, Atwood Launches Initiatives to Transform Belfast City Centre’s Northside, Department of Social Development Northern Ireland, 22 February 2011, http://www.northernireland. gov.uk/index/media-centre/news- departments/news-dsd/news-dsd-february- archive-2011/news-dsd-220211-attwood- launches-initiatives.htm. The study area has been subject to several masterplans (DSDNI 2005, 2009) and Belfast City Council (BCC 2009). See also DSDNI, Belfast City Centre: Northside Urban Village Regeneration Implementation Plan 2009-2012. May, 2009. 5 DSDNI, “Draft North West Quarter Masterplan Consultation Response August 2005“ and “Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) Northside Urban Village Regeneration Framework: Stage 6 Report, May 2009”, Available at: http://www.dsdni. gov.uk/urcdg-br-publications.htm (Accessed 20 April 2012).

mithfield and Union has existed for over three centuries at the periphery of the historic centre of Belfast and contains some of the city’s important Victorian-era buildings, including its landmark Central Library. For the past fifty years the neighbourhood has fallen increasingly into the shadow of the City’s central business and retail district. Its namesake, Smithfield Market, has remained a central part of the area’s varied and sometimes notorious history, though the original market building was firebombed in 1974 and replaced with a smaller version in the 1980s. Streets, housing and commercial buildings were already lost in the 1960s and 70s due to planning decisions to run a wide vehicular ring road through the area. In the 1980s, more demolition preceded the intrusion of a large internalised retail mall that cut the area off from adjacent neighbourhoods and the city centre. By 2010, large parts of Smithfield and Union were blighted by the substantial loss of their remaining Victorian streetscape. Ironically, much of this had survived intact, though in a declining physical state, throughout the violent periods of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Most of the recent destruction occurred after 2002, when groups of buildings were torn down to make way for new private development, which never happened. Isolated pockets of intact buildings (some recently restored) became surrounded by mainly poor quality public spaces, vast surface car parks, and derelict buildings or building sites - a legacy of empty space. In Smithfield and Union, this situation appears to be exacerbated by different, separate proposals and regeneration initiatives for private-led development from regional and local government. Feedback from local businesses, independent traders and residents reflects the perception that regeneration policy continues to focus on, and holds out too much for, single developer proposals and wholesale redevelopment rather than a coordinated incremental approach to develop empty spaces as part of holistic city-wide, public-space and place-led process.

PROJECTS & LESSONS ABSTRACTED LEARNING AND COLLABORATIVE INVESTIGATIONS

Experiment: Through observation and by talking to people, we can learn a great deal about what people want in public spaces and can (hopefully) put this knowledge to work in creating places that shape liveable communities.

URB-I: September 2009 Readings and Theory

eginning in September 2009, the first teaching and learning activities were run within the design studio, combining historical background on the study area with more peer-led discussion aimed at demonstrating ways to communicate abstract ideas to others. The aim here was to avoid formal lecturing but still allow for teaching and learning on the main concepts of place. A series of well-known architecture and graphic design based published texts was used to establish a knowledge base of theories about place and improve students’ associated vocabulary to discuss their ideas together. Genius Loci (Norberg-Schulz, 1979) for example, was selected for its influential adaptation of Heidegger’s metaphysical philosophy of dwelling and being for architectural education. Norberg-Schulz’s use of concepts like earth and sky and spirit of place, in relation to architecture, have become part of a standard teaching lexicon. The book’s specific reference to influential texts such as Image of the City by Kevin Lynch (1961), also introduces important theories about defining structures in urban space that aid [human] orientation, which have particular relevance to the current project research. Other important required reading included extracts from: Body, Memory and Architecture (Bloomer, Moore and Lyndon, 1977), Experiencing Architecture (Rasmussen, 1962), Anchoring (Holl, 1991:912), and Thinking Architecture (Zumthor, 2006). Body, Memory and Architecture introduces the phenomenological poetics of Bachelard (1969) and the related sensorial perception theories of J.J. Gibson (1966). This sets out the explicitly humanist framework that significantly distinguishes perception between passive receptors and haptic senses, which actively seek out new information through adventure and experimentation. Experiencing Architecture offers in-depth lessons about innate human abilities to engage with the physical world, and relates to the separate education theories about active learning noted earlier. Rasmussen’s mix of everyday examples provides an accessible narrative meant to help students use similar references from their own experience of the built environment. Finally, Holl and Zumthor’s work was selected as contemporary examples from practicing architects who have established international careers with a mutual focus on phenomenology in their conceptual un-built projects and research, as well as their writing and testing through practice. Holl in particular is very explicit about the influence of phenomenology on his architecture1, especially the translated writings of the philosopher Merleau-Ponty (1962). Zumthor’s own writing about his architecture offers

Immerse students into studio life by combining theories about ‘place’ and perception alongside active methods for measuring, observing and interpreting urban narratives

Yorgancioglu, 2010.

an equally accessible description of the connections from his practice to the phenomenological experience in his own memories. These selections are varied enough in complexity for undergraduates so that they may be of use to students of varying knowledge or interest in the subject. They were also intended to show students how words, while not replacing actual experience of place or architecture, can be used to tell a convincing story about specific environments and constructions, which can aid design. During the one-day discussion session, working in small groups, students were asked to share and document their reactions and understanding of the themes in each reading. This session also introduced students to the workshop format as an informal information gathering method, which they would be asked to use themselves in the next activity outside of studio. The Smithfield and Union area provided an open-ended geographic context for Year One graphic design students to enhance elementary practices in photography, typography and illustration through active learning experiences in unconventional environments outside the studio. Notions of place and the role of graphic design in the urban landscape were introduced through established texts such as Baines and Dixons Lettering in the Environment2 and which establishes the key themes of way-finding and orientation in the city and defining place through typo/ graphic means. Notable case-studies such as Intégral Ruedi Baur’s work for Montréal’s Quartier des Spectacles, along with site-specific work by Studio Myerscough and Why Not Associates formed the basis for discussion and inspiration. In October 2009 the graphic design students conducted a two-day photographic residency in the area so as to develop their understanding of urban narratives through an immersive practice based activity.This provided an important opportunity for negative perceptions to be challenged and transformed through active engagement.

URB II: October 2010 Reading into Neighbourhood Investigations

Baines, Dixon 2003

In the second project year, based on feedback from students, the classroom stages were revisited to expand the reading selection, and to add urban precedent studies around Belfast. This change meant lectures and discussion were more relevant to all, and the teaching and learning combined more with work beyond the confines of the University at an early project stage. At the start of the academic year, readings from both disciplines were distributed, along with ten specific areas of Belfast, to small mixed groups of 8-10 students. The expanded reading list included new selections from architecture,

graphic design, and also art in public: Graphic Design: Integral (Baur, 2001); Visible Signs (Crow, 2003); Universal Principles of Design (Lidwell et al., 2003); What is Graphic Design? (Newark, 2002); Art in Public: Transforming Post-Conflict (Binns, 2007); Public Art, Architecture and the Overproduction of Spectacularised Happiness (Jewesbury, 2007); Working on Community: Models of Participatory Practice (Kravagna, 1998); Looking Around: Where We Are, Where We Could Be (Lippard, 1995). The 10-day exercise aimed to: • Immerse students into studio life by combining theories about place and perception alongside active methods for measuring, observing and interpreting urban narratives • Begin building skills to understand urban issues outside the studio that may transfer back in to better design outcomes inside. • Share teaching and learning approaches to urban storytelling; or the tools to observe, analyse and interpret the built environment at many scales or levels of detail, using real examples of urban contexts. Because both architecture and graphic design at University of Ulster share strategic interests in the social art of design, delivered through place-specific projects – buildings, landscape and urban design or visual and graphic intervention – and have ongoing studies in Belfast, this initial analysis of specific urban areas was undertaken jointly. Each group was asked to document, describe and investigate existing building types and local streetscapes in their assigned area, and prepare a “sketch-record” through various design skills (sketching/ model building/ film-making/ measuring/ photography/ writing). The outcomes were a PowerPoint and an A3 booklet designed by the groups with each member contributing. For the group presentation, a dedicated half-day event was set aside followed by a shared reading discussion using the proprietary World Café3 format , in which lunch is provided and set around themed tables - themes derived from the readings. During this final hour-long activity, students moved between different tables every fifteen minutes. One person remained to take notes on large ‘tablecloths’ using felt pens provided. Teaching staff did not lead discussions but observed and added questions. The students shared and debated different aspects of their readings, while recording their questions, statements, poems or sketches in their own text and graphic interpretations. The successful results from this activity avoided a question/answer format and have been gathered for future dissemination to be described in following sections, along with written survey feedback forms.

World Café, see Brown et al. 2005. http://www.theworldcafe.com/ 3

INTERVENTIONS: ACTIVE EXPERIENCE RESEARCH METHODS To move the teaching and learning from paper, and in-studio or university environments, to testing of the principles discussed in live scenarios, a number of field investigations were planned that required students to interact directly with people outside of their controlled academic environments.

Passive versus Activated Space: Mobile Urban Experience Labs [MUELs] The first activity outside of the studio in 2010 took inspiration directly from William H. Whyte’s notion of “triangulation” a term used to describe “the process by which some external stimulus provides a linkage between people and prompts strangers to talk to each other as though they were not.”2 Although Whyte was primarily observing the effects of existing objects, sculptures, performers or even particular views from a given space, this project used a two-stage activity combining observation with direct interaction and experimentation through the invention of the M.U.E.L. or Mobile Urban Experience Lab. The MUEL acronym refers to both a tongue-in-cheek anamorphic inspiration of the mule, a hybrid breed valued more for hard work than aesthetics, as well as inspiration from a local daily event involving dozens of mobile newspaper stands spreading across Belfast. The expected outcome of the project brief was for each team to design a temporary movable object based around a particular human sense, adapted for testing out different aspects of perception around the city. The MUEL was a small-scale, constructed object that dealt with the senses and the abstract notions of phenomenology from both the emotional and cognitive sides of theory. The MUEL project evolved as a way for students to further develop abstract explorations of place with concrete experiments in an urban context – Belfast in this case. MUEL challenged students to create a portable kiosk inside the studio for use outside the studio, attempting to isolate a particular experience of the city through one or more human senses. They had 1-week for design and 1-week to build a chosen or hybrid scheme, working in eight small teams. The design, construction and then intervention using the MUELs

When you study a place and chart it and map it, you begin to acquire a proprietary right in it. You do not reason this. Obviously, you have no such right. But you feel it. It is your place. You earned it.1

1 Whyte, 1980: 110 2 Ibid. :94

first involved a studio based team project for architecture students, with graphic design input from Vis-Com students. Taking cues from Visual Communication, graphic text and symbols were added as integral parts of the design. The proviso was that the object should be constructed from readily available or recycled materials, that it would be ‘wheeled’ out of the studio to various locations to interact with “people on the street.” Over a two-week period, students designed and built each one of the following named MUELs at full scale:

Captured View Finder/ Urban Pin-hole Camera/ Urban Ear/ Urban Veil/ Urban Cactus/ Shadow Motion Machine/

3 ‘Place Game’ Place Performance Evaluation Game, copyright Project for Public Spaces, used with permission. See www.pps.org

selected visual experience indirect visual experience indirect aural experience distorted visual/aural tactile/haptic experience direct visual experience

Architecture and Vis-Com students completed this activity together. The “Capture View Finder” for example (see image, page 54), took the form of a simple “phone box” shape that allowed a choice of views to be opened up from inside. In different locations the aim was to encourage people to stop and enter, choosing a view that they most often walked past without paying much attention. Once completed the use of the MUELs combined with an observational mapping and questionnaire activity, based upon Project for Public Spaces’ “Place Performance Evaluation Game”3 to gather information and then test-out the differences between passive and then activated city spaces. Students spent one morning mapping activities and movement patterns in empty spaces within the study area, while also interviewing members of the public. The following day, with the MUELs transported to the same locations as the previous day’s observations, students experimented with what happens when you place a new object designed to elicit reactions from passersby into the formerly empty spaces. Students were asked to consider: How does that object or series of objects define and change the nature of the space around it? Can it change perceptions and make people, even unwittingly, more aware of their urban surroundings – to notice a view, to pause and interact visually, verbally or kinaesthetically? Finally, each team tested their MUEL in separate city locations for an afternoon; ‘activating’ secondary or passive spaces and then observing and mapping how members of the public interacted with the MUEL, with the students and often with each other. The student groups documented all activities with film and photography, as well as gathering all the

feedback and mapping data onto a single large format map of the area to be used to communicate their findings back to the public and local groups. The aim of the MUELs was both as a means to actively teach and learn about aspects of perception, but also an opportunity to experiment firsthand with Whyte’s observed phenomena. Lessons are ongoing.

What’s Wrong With This Place? February 2010, Workshop and Exhibition: For the final stage of URBI, students worked in one of the ‘empty’ spaces identified in the Belfast study area, using the example of the Architecture Foundation’s Road Shows4, which temporarily transformed derelict spaces into something more positive. Working with local business owners, empty shop units were ‘loaned’ to the students in an open-air precinct called the Haymarket Arcade. Students and staff cleaned up the empty units and, over four days, transformed them into an exhibition of artefacts and graphics (including the large-scale mapping studies, documentary film and slide shows, visioning models and sculptures, graphic booklets and posters showing information about the area, created by the graphic design students). Access to the units was provided in return for the project work to improve the outlook of empty spaces. All artefacts installed were allowed to remain in-situ as long as the units were unoccupied for commercial use. Students and staff then organised an open workshop within the study area, in a former industrial space used by an artists’ collective called AdHOC; the space was a semi-heated disused warehouse, a printing plant just off the main retail street. Students and staff installed a film made by a 2nd year student of documenting his investigations, and a student generated photographic slideshow of places and people from the Smithfield and Union area. All the students’ collected mapping, handdrawn information from The Place Game was assembled onto a 3m x 4m (10’ x 12’) map. Fifty people attended the workshop - forty students, five local traders, three local authority representatives from the Northern Ireland Planning Service (planningni), Belfast City Centre Management (BCCM), the Department of Social Development (DSDNI), one conservationist from the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society (UAHS), one practicing architect, and one member of public. After an introduction to the project, there was a presentation of mapping ideas and visioning by students from architecture and graphic design, then comments on mapping ideas and issues noted from local traders, comments on area development proposals from DSDNI and challenges for getting it right, skills building comment and participation from Planning.

“you wouldn’t really think of looking…you just walk along. You don’t look at things. But when you open up the thing you start to notice things which I wouldn’t be thinking of doing, you know what I mean…just walk on oblivious—Y’know your looking out at something you’re just seeing different wee things.”

4 Architecture Foundation, 2000

The representative from UAHS talked about ‘what’s been lost’ from the area and a local trader offered ideas about ‘What this space could be’. During the workshop, staff and students introduced the project, presented the results of their studies, invited guest comments on the area’s development proposals and participated in an informal discussion on the theme of “What’s wrong with this place?” The discussion raised challenges to all involved with the area’s future to make positive changes based on the lessons of what has been done poorly in the past. Student interaction: when addressed as a group there was very little interaction with the workshop guests but when one student was asked to tell the story of their participation in the week’s events they had no trouble standing up and answering. A public opening event followed for the exhibition, as an opportunity to share their findings and visions with each other and members from local business community, the public and government. As a finale in the evening a reception was held for the public exhibition in the open space of the Haymarket Arcade. This provided students with a reward for their work as well as an opportunity to gather feedback. The event was publicised with flyers, a press release and projected slideshows onto derelict buildings nearby. For the exhibit and open-evening centrepiece, the students installed their MUELs and incorporated one into an illuminated central “social hub”. A few local traders took part and used the event as an opportunity for impromptu discussions of their own in the exhibition spaces.

MACHINE FOR EXPERIENTIAL URBAN LEARNING 44

1 Hillier, 2007 [1996]

The MEUL, which stands for Machine for Experiential Urban Learning, evolved from lessons drawn from the first iteration – the MUEL – described above, with a significant difference of moving away from a phenomenological object to a more broadly engaging experiential learning tool; a non-invasive physical/graphic/multi-media artefact or installation event that would allow the students to take over or occupy empty spaces in the city, and to engage members of the public in observation or conversation about these areas or the wider city. Where the original MUEL, drew inspiration from physical objects associated with everyday activities, the MEUL is more akin to shared experiences of events, performance, or even more subversive activities like recent Occupy movements in cities around the world, including Belfast. These types of charged political events, and more festive cultural exchanges take place throughout the year. The MUEL in this conceptualisation, is intended neither as a pure graphic nor as an architectural solution to ‘empty space’ but some means for students to take over small parts of the city and start conversations about design and social uses. From the object approach, the MUEL developed into a series of short-term experiments that together aim to challenge or simply bring to the surface, aspects of selected empty spaces. For the MUELs, the term ‘machine’ includes the space or physical configuration of forms, as Hillier1 denotes, to study the social organisation of everyday life, but they expand this understanding to take in a network of elements that includes the interaction of students, the people of the city, and the unseen (unquantifiable) qualities of each empty space. As an original experiential teaching tool, MUEL combines teaching and learning about place-branding and place-making through lessons on type, wayfinding, spatial experience, architecture, imaging and local history and culture as place-based storytelling approaches to urban design. Working again in small groups, now 3-4 students, guided by tutors but using peer-led decision making, students worked on seventeen site specific and studio-based design projects to investigate given sites within the general study context through observation and interaction with the

public, agree on one aspect (physical, social, political, etc), develop a response (construction, graphics, performance, other) and plan its implementation using temporary (preferably recycled/recyclable) materials. Two external facilitators, former students of each course , were brought in during this period to assist in the coordination of keeping track of the groups and liaising with the studio tutors. Tutors provided guidance, asked questions, prompted debates among students and coordinated the overall health and safety aspects. On the day prior to the installations, each group was again given the proprietary Place Game as a tool to mix mapping and interview questions for the public and public activities. Each group visited their empty space to record all activity and speak to people and document the site conditions before any interventions occurred. The following day, each team installed, tested, documented and then dismantled their responses during a single morning (or evening). The responses ranged from taking over disused bus-stops for children’s play areas, provocative installation on busy street corners, using graphics and small-scale recycled products to provide places to sit or seek shelter, they took over footpaths, car park spaces, vacant lots, crossing islands and other vacant areas. One group projected text as large scale images onto vacant buildings in the evening – calling visible attention to “Cherish these Cracks!”.

REFLECTION & FEEDBACK

MEULS

1 Max-Neef, 2005: 5-16 Adapted from Golden 2010; Golden and McComish 2012

public workshop and exhibitions allowed structured qualitative feedback questionnaires to be distributed to participants and visitors (collection was at anonymous drop points). These events were kept very informal and unlike more traditional town-hall type formats allowed for verbal and written feedback to be gathered from locals, fellow academics and professionals who may not otherwise take part in formal workshops or interviews. After working on separate design projects in their respective studios this step brought the students back together to document and then reflect upon the project, its stages and their changes/ reactions during the course of the year. The URB project and the MEULs, however, like architecture and design education, present challenges for short-term evaluation in pedagogic research. The projects are not intended as linear, single points of evaluation as design education and professional development are cumulative process over semesters or years. As noted previously, this current stage of analysis focused more on the ways in which students were able to reflect on the process of jointly addressing an area of common concern, not an assessment of the design quality of their interventions. Data was gathered during discipline-specific projects, through follow-up student publications, and workshops where anonymous surveys and interviews provided qualitative feedback. These were related to anecdotal and observed evidence gathered during the project stages. The analysis is ongoing to provide a range of information for curriculum development and future project design or research but some preliminary findings are discussed below. While the two discipline groups were principally at similar Further Higher Education Qualification levels, the Vis-Com students had a more diffuse range of Foundation year experiences and therefore less confidence in their subject focus. As a result they expressed more uncertainty in the structured survey regarding the outcome of the MEUL exercise. This was moderated by their experience of the reflective opportunities offered by the subsequent publication design. Reactions suggest a need for ‘controlled interdisciplinarity’1 and that students’ grounding in their own particular practice area is not necessarily negative starting point.

Pedagogic lessons Reviewing with the qualitative feedback from surveys returned, the initial analysis shows students had a more positive reaction to projects where abstract concepts combined with experiential activities. This contrasts with feedback from faculty, including the author’s early presumption that the abstract readings and paper projects – with their freedom and poetic nature – would be seen as a more fun and valuable tool. The implication for future studio situations is to avoid teaching of abstract concepts in isolation from concrete projects, although the balance requires further research. Some broader observations include: • For more abstract ideas sessions, peer-led small group formats, rather than tutor-led discussions only, benefited the depth of ideas exchanged. • Active methods were logistically trickier to organise, especially in ‘empty commercial spaces’. Stakeholder, landlord and local authority timescales did not always fit in well with semester format or class-time schedules of students and staff. • Outdoor activities were weather dependent and required flexible planning in short-term intervals. • With planned activities, especially outside the classroom, an explicit end goal, like the exhibition, was necessary to keep students engaged.

Anecdotal Evidence An alternate evaluation of the project came from speaking with participants and students during the events themselves. For students in the workshop, for example, trying to elicit discussion as a group resulted in little interaction. However, when one student was asked to speak about an image of their intervention projected onto a screen (to tell the story behind it), they were able to speak about their apprehension going into the area, the observations they made, the people they spoke to and the ideas that resulted in their site-specific temporary sculpture. An architecture student’s work, back in the studio, showed evidence of a clear impact. Having resisted the abstract activities from the beginning and struggled in studio to produce more than shallow visual project responses, the student was asked instead to produce a documentary film of his understanding of the site, with some graphic design input. The result was a poignant mix of observation, graphics, interviews and music, edited to capture a much deeper connection with the area’s character and people. This particular student’s design work and participation in studio underwent significant improvement. The interpretive film was also awarded a student prize at the 2010 All-Ireland Symposium on the Built Environment, held in Belfast.

The participating graphic design Students exhibited a noticeably enhanced confidence wih space, scale and materials in subsequent projects within their own course in the semester immediately following the interdisciplinary collaboration. This lends weight to the notion of longer term values and capacities inculcated by challenge of interdisciplinary working. The assessments from stakeholders, local authority and members of the public who took part is ongoing and the partnerships formed have provided a good foundation to continue this research and work outside of the University in the future. A local government representative gave the following feedback of the work together so far:

“[The project] provided a concrete connection between the businesses in the area and your students which I feel will be far reaching and sustainable...” Anecdotal reactions from the public may, for now, be best summed up by these comments from local residents:

‘…you wouldn’t really think of looking…you just walk along. You don’t look at things. But when you open up the thing you start to notice things which I wouldn’t be thinking of doing, you know what I mean…just walk on oblivious.’ “They were talking about it down the pub.”

The building looked dilapidated, tired and neglected; bold greenpaint buried under graffitti and much vandalism. Following careful research of other possible areas, our group chose to base our MEUL intervention on Kent Street, located off the beginning of Royal Avenue. We were immediately drawn to a large building on the left, which sits beside the Linen House Hostel, due to its sheer size and beautiful symmetry.

As a designer, one of the skills I had to accquire was an awareness of my own preconceptions and the variety of ways I can better understand the nature of a townscape in order to engage with a design project. Our main aim, as Vis Com students, was to instigate or stimulate interaction among users or observers - whether through physical construction or through the use of words and images.

“Buildings shape the volume of environments (for better and worse) but the streetscape, or the surfaces and spaces between buildings, bring to life the activity and culture that happen there”

DEVELOP A SHARED PHYSICAL INTERVENTION THAT INFORMS, ANALYZES AND REFLECTS THE NATURE OF THE LOCATION AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.

• SELECT AN ‘EMPTY’ SITE WITHIN THE SET LOCATION CONTEXT

•

DESIGN BRIEF

RESEARCH

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

SUCCESSFUL DESIGNS CAN HELP ALTER PERCEPTIONS ( BY I N T E N T O R A C C I D E N T )

ABOUT A SPACE OR NOTIONS OF PLACE TRIP ADVISOR Internet research on travel websites was used to investigate tourist’s perceptions of the area surrounding the building

“The area around the hostel doesn’t seem to be safe especially not at night”

“Hidden at the end of a long, dark and shabby industry road”

“Narrow, dark alley didn’t make me feel safe”

We decided to talk to the manager of the hostel situated beside the old building, to gain a better understanding of the activity around the building and perhaps learn a bit more about it’s ‘story.’ Through this interview, we became aware of new facts about the building: The building is owned by the hostel and currently used as storage •

It once was an old linen mill •

Around 100 people staying in the hostel at the one time •

These people come from all around the world •

Perhaps area could be improved with regard to lighting at nightime

MASER Irish-based street artist, Maser endeavours to highlight the positive aspects of graffitti and how it can enrich a cityscape. His work carries a message, and quite often this message is proclaiming his love for his city, the environment and the people that live there. Maser possesses the ability to reveal a site’s inherent essence, and the main element that attracted me to his work was the idea to capitalise on a site’s personality and character, whether this is percieved as stereotypically good or bad. We shouldn’t always feel the need to improve an old, derelict piece of architecture, but

SOLUTION TO DESIGN INTERVENTION

CONCLUSIONS

A 52

necdotal evidence suggests that students emerged from the experience with a deeper appreciation of, and therefore confidence, in dealing with ‘unpredictability, stress, openness, multiple contending voices — conditions characteristic of supercomplexity’. While this project concerned the specificity of place and design, for future research and practice considerations, the lessons learned also have wider implications for ways to better support students preparing for supercomplexity in contemporary life and professional practice.

The Urban narrative A key feature of student engagement with place that emerged through this particular framework, from the feedback, was that the explicit focus on a greater awareness of narrative(s) associated with the urban environment may not have been as apparent from a traditional studio approach. An appreciation of narrative or the qualitative value of urban storytelling may be the more important output from the project framework. In the case of visual communication or architecture, narratives came from less obvious, more complex, networks of information - directly from people’s stories or from existing or “lost” buildings and other history, from existing graphics, typography or graffiti; all gave clues to less obvious cultural character or any ‘territorial’ issues. During the visual and verbal documentation, and on-site design experiments, students reported on the ‘folklore’ they gathered; memories, which they noted as contributing to their sense of place as much as activity and physical space.

Transferability and Future Research The acknowledgment of the narratives can also be interpreted as a validation of the teaching methodology’s aim to elicit and evaluate higher levels of critical thinking and critical skills to address urban design. As Bartholomew and Locher conclude from their own separate pedagogic research: “Narratives provide structure for understanding how the world operates.” This awareness could contribute to a more holistic and humane design sensibility identified as local tendencies in graphic design, or as arguments for greater engagement with local communities, and transformative agency in architecture. From the URB experience, this does not mean that efforts at greater engagement require an exclusion of individual design or creative ingenuity however. The method of using experiential activities to informally engage with everyday lives and learn from everyday activities does appear to

provide a suitable test case for good practice in social engagement, to help students get beyond preconceived ideas and find out ‘what’s the story’– even if their responses don’t necessarily support popular opinion or aim at achieving a consensus. How these skills develop during the remainder of students’ education and if the learning continues beyond into their varying professional disciplines remains to be seen through empirical results from future urban design practice and further research.

Students seemed to become aware of the narrative(s) associated with the urban environment. For many, these may not have been apparent from a traditional studio approach.

ARCHITECTURE, PEDAGOGY, PRACTICE AND THE URB PROJECT

Saul Golden

The dichotomy of opinion shows up as two opposing arguments: one in favour of more creative autonomy to pursue formalist design, or one for greater openness to re-engage with society on matters affecting the built environment.

Collaboration and Transdiscipliniarity.2

W “I don’t know that architects are saying ‘let’s collaborate’… but we are dealing now with complexity that requires greater collaboration.” 1

Sean Griffiths of FAT Architects, quoted in Bedell, 2009. 2 Max-Neef, 2005. 3 Only 10 out of 41 RIBA validated schools of architecture in the UK teach urban design to undergraduate students. Simmons, 2008. Rogers identifed inadequate interdisciplinary approaches to undergraduate and postgraduate courses for relevant urban professions UTF, 1999:161. 4 Salama and Wilkinson, 2007: 250 5 Ruedi 2000:119 6 Salama and Wilkinson, 2007: 250 7 Martin, 1958: 8 While the research is seen within international processes and issues architects, designers and existing cities, the UK focus relates to the specific educational and professional context in which the University of Ulster Department of Architecture operates; validated by UK professional bodies, the Architects Registration Board (ARB) and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). 1

hy is collaboration an important focus of research into the education of architects and to Urban Research Belfast’s interdisciplinary approach to urban design pedagogy? In their core studies of architectural design, history and theory, technology and professional practice, students of architecture are already bombarded by increasingly complex and pluralist theory, ethics and prescriptive dogma. In urban design, the list is again exhaustive, ranging from polemic ‘isms’ and metaphysical readings, patterns and morphologies to empirical, qualitative and quantifiable (valuable) considerations; economic, social and critical questions such as ecology and sustainability, community, accessibility, gender, culture, race and power. With the extent of intricate knowledge across the areas of art and design, social and physical sciences and economics that must be considered therefore, it is little surprise that engaging with urban design can be daunting to undergraduates who may have entered schools of architecture knowing only about the art and design aspects of the profession. In many cases these aspects of the broader engagement for architects, especially with inter-disciplinary social concerns, may not even figure in undergraduate architecture courses.3 The reason for this has been put down to the number of architects who “insist that architecture and its education are about creative acts based on viewing architecture as an art, and only an art, not a social act, not a science, not a technology or even a business.”4 Consequently, the social aspects of architecture, because they are seen as ‘unglamourous’,5 may be resisted by those who also argue that they are “not an architect’s problem, and that the politics of design and building are issues that students will encounter in practice anyway and that is not an architectural education concern.”6 While not proposing a single solution or synthesis of the debates about collaboration and social responsibility, URB’s response is that waiting to introduce these issues in practice is too late. The project’s pedagogic approach uses design-led teaching and learning activities in architecture and graphic design specifically, but with regard to all disciplines, argues that approaches to practice skills and values professionals develop can be shaped by early experiences in education to influence more careful consideration of professionals’ roles in society, and more openness to true trans-disciplinary collaboration. For architecture, the concept of collaboration introduced through URB therefore, means more than architects’ traditional views of ‘cooperation’7 as the ability to work alongside others or to lead design and construction teams. With the support of literature and practice examples mainly in the UK,8 the projects in Urban Research Belfast present ways

to question whether creativity and interests in quality of place can coexist with social engagement as explicit concepts of professional architectural practice; whether it is possible for architects to see collaboration as more interdisciplinary and participatory processes within the professional mainstream. This approach not only addresses knowledge and skills gaps identified at UK government levels9 but incorporates related aspects of incoming European directive requirements for architects’ training.10 With this international perspective in mind, URB acts though professional education to foster creative skills with greater social responsibility, and inter-disciplinary skills to investigate local qualities of place without expecting a pre-defined project output as a result. This action aims, as the architect, educator and polemicist Jeremy Till writes, “…move from the idea of architect as expert problem solver to that of architect as citizen sense-maker; a move from a reliance on the

9 HCA, 2007, 2010, 2012. See also: CABE 2001; ODPM 2003; Egan 2004; ODPM 2004. 10 “That training [as an architect…] must be of university level […] must maintain a balance between theoretical and practical aspects of architectural training […] adequate knowledge of urban design, planning and the skills involved in the planning processe) […] the relationship between people and buildings, and between buildings and their environment, and of the need to relate buildings and the spaces between them to human needs and scale […] the role of the architect in society, in particular in preparing briefs that take account of social factors;” ED, 2005 in DCLG, 2007:58-59.

impulsive imaginations of the lone genius to that of a collaborative ethical imagination; from clinging to notions of total control to a relaxed acceptance of letting go”11

Pedagogy and Urban Design Knowledge: The Studio and The Field

Till 2009:151. Sayers, 1947. 13 Giroux 1991; Biggs and Tang 1999; Webster 2008 14 Freire 2006 [1970]:71. In the UK the shift toward more student- centred learning has taken on officially supported momentum from Government and higher education bodies since the publication of the Dearing Report (1997). 15 Head and Eisenberg, 2009:2-3; The amount of information available online has doubled every two years since 2005. Grant and Reinsel, 2011 16 Head and Eisenberg, 2009: 1 11

With URB, the challenge discussed here and in the introduction, was translating the project aims and aspirations into an actionable method to work with first and second year students of architecture and graphic design. How to introduce them to the working together, to the concepts of inter-disciplinarity, and to engage them with the right balance of study of the theory, meanings, language and application of place in local urban contexts. Some of the challenges are those that are found to be common across other disciplines in humanities, social and physical sciences: to bestow intellectual skills that are “transferable to subjects other than those in which we acquired them.”12 In the wider context of education, collaborative teaching and learning, and teaching through experiential methods outside of more insular academic environments has been a part of an ongoing shift in approach since the 1970s.13 The impacts of these changing attitudes has been a move away from what the widely cited critical theorist Paulo Freire (1970) originally termed the “student-teacher contradiction” in which teachers are power/knowledge-holding “subjects” and students are kept at a distance as receptive “patient, listening objects”14 Despite this shift however, and the abundance of resources students now have to access information, studies have shown students in higher education to rely more on a “small set of common information”, increasingly digital and rarely from face to face resources other than their subject instructors.15 With regard to how this blinkering affects students’ attitude toward independent learning, the above research concludes that ‘students conceptualize research, especially tasks associated with seeking information, as a competency learned by rote, rather than as an opportunity to learn, develop, or expand upon an informationgathering strategy.’16 In architecture similar issues can be seen in studio environments and attitudes toward engaging with information outside of design or studio – analysing briefs and site contexts for example. For architecture and design, there is an ongoing debate surrounding the value of learning and working that is restricted to studios or deskbased investigations. Studio environments have been praised in the past as an “exemplar” of reflective education and practice with a wide range of teaching and learning opportunities,17 but they are also criticised as hothouse of artificially supported learning.18 This criticism focuses

on established power structures in architecture studios and, like the comments above about general education trends, on the limited view of learning whereby students too often rely on the weekly instruction of tutors rather than developing their own independent critical judgement. For urban investigations, the criticism focuses on the tendency to teach through repeated versions of ‘paper projects’ and assessments prioritising visual and graphic output over a demonstrated engagement with ‘real life’ away from the drawing board.19 This ‘traditional’ approach to studiocriticism focuses based design education favours “easier [or] the tendency to safer” design contexts that are “invariably teach through beautiful, ‘full of [obvious] character’ and repeated versions have strict limits.”20 Morrow contends that of ‘paper projects’ students who work in these safe contexts and assessments “may never develop the skills needed to prioritising visual deal with large, expansive sites that have and graphic output little [obvious] character” and ‘should over a demonstrated have the opportunity at least once during engagement with their studies to design sites that take into ‘real life’ away from account the needs of marginalised groups the drawing board. in society.”21 Salama and Wilkinson argue also for social aspects of architecture to become an integral part of studio teaching so they become part of an accepted process of research design: “The studio setting, tasks, and activities should allow students to conduct research while aiming at developing their abilities to transform social and behavioural information into buildable architectural forms”.22 The current problem, which goes back to early discussions about how student’s approach research, is that there is a tendency to see the social and environmental aspects as a tick-box of visiting the site and producing perfunctory mapping exercises. Site visits are not structured sufficiently as a “form of investigation or inquiry [and as] a result students do not realize what to see and what to look for…”23 This criticism is reflected in a growing observation of students reliance on digital tools such as online maps and on proprietary virtual street tours, which can replace actually walking down a street in different seasons and times of the day, and – in the limits of current technology – do not allow students to use more than their visual observation skills. Part of the approach through URB, and tools like the Mobile Urban Experience Labs and the Machines for Experiential Urban Learning was a direct focus on the site and the investigation of place and place narratives as the main project outcome. In this way the students could be

Schön, 1985; Boyer and Mitgang, 1996; Farren-Bradley, 2000. 18 Till 2005: 3; Stansfield-Smith, 2000; Nicol and Pilling, 2000; Habraken, 2007. 19 Nicol and Pilling, 2000:10, 19; Morrow 2000:47. 20 Morrow, 2000: 45. 21 Ibid 22 Salama and Wilkinson, 2007: 252. 23 Salama 2006: 65. 17

regeneration programmes have too often concentrated on changing buildings, rather than helping people…

introduced to both phenomenological aspects of place, to using all their senses kinaesthetically and haptically, and to directly engaging socially with other aspects of the local context by talking to local people and building users.24 The teaching and learning activities emphasize the need to supplement traditional design skills with ways for future professionals to grapple with less obvious urban conditions and with the ‘other’; other people, disciplines, and ways of critical learning and practice. These skills are regarded as different to those for designers working in Greenfield or exclusively private projects but just as important to future professionals.25 The joint aspect of these student-led investigations, as is discussed in later sections of the book, gives students a structured yet open-ended opportunity to share their observational skills, and help each other learn about experiential investigations, physical qualities of typology and typography, and to the search for deeper aspects of the local area through storytelling. It is this latter aspect of engagement and moving students, even if temporarily away from drawing boards and computers, that has inspired URB’s T.A.L.K. framework.

Critically Addressing the City: Belfast and Beyond

Nicol and Pilling, 2000 CABE 2001, McIntosh and Bailey 2004 26 Di Masso et al., 2011 27 Global Occupy movements (“951 cities in 82 countries”) since 2010, reacting to banking and economic crisis of 2007-08 and ongoing challenges to government cutbacks and policies are the most striking example since the 1968 riots in cities around the world: Rogers, 2011. See also: ww.occupytogether.org/ and www. occupybritain.co.uk/. 28 In UK context place-making refers to specific initiatives for ‘regeneration and housing’, and place-shaping as “the ways in which local players collectively use their influence, powers, creativity and abilities to create attractive, prosperous and safe communities, places where people want to live, work and do business.” HCA 2010; 2011; Future Communities, http://www. futurecommunities.net/why/place-shaping-0 (20 November 2011) 24 25

Using Belfast as the specific area of analysis, URB uses the TALK framework to concentrate on the kinds of shared skills and knowledge that improve architects general collaborative approach to design but may also help better address existing marginalised parts of cities, where architects are but one of many actors in community-led or private development frameworks. In existing cities like Belfast, there are additional social questions about who has the ‘right’ to make decisions about planning and design for new development and ‘regeneration’, and who determines each area’s place-meaning,26 the appropriate infrastructure and form, and the priorities for private and public space. These questions go beyond the scope of architecture education and this present research with students, but are relevant to the project aims and or wider discussions with students about architects’ roles in the planning, design and delivery of these types of more public urban projects (in education or practice). The challenges these practice contexts hold are not new but continue to increase in complexity as the world rapidly becomes more urbanised, there are higher levels of mobility (professional and personal) between geographic locations and cultures, and there is increasingly open conflict over the stratification in society between classes and political authority.27 Difference, or the ability to contend with differences becomes an increasingly important skill to learn then, before entering professional practice, to address the above issues. In architecture and urban

design, differences include power differences between the many disciplines, investors and government bodies who set, interpret, fund and implement design initiatives for urban development. There are also important differences in language between these groups that must be addressed. These include definitions of place, place-making and placeshaping,28 and community versus neighbourhood29 planning, as well as different qualitative and quantitative means of valuing â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;successâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in new development and regeneration. The variety of interpretations in just these few areas can lead to divisive approaches to decision-making and implementing urban development projects, especially in more marginalised neighbourhoods where private investment can conflict with public visions or expectations for the future.30 In these existing neighbourhoods, the views of non-professionals (local people, community and voluntary organisations, special interest groups and other stakeholders) can be considered with government and private development plans or consulted after designs and detailed proposals are in progress. When working in these situations, the professional roles architects choose can be determined by ethics and commercial factors

In the UK context, Community Planning is a term used extensively in Scottish Planning to refer to systems of planning infrastructure and services (www. scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/ PublicServiceReform/communityplanning; www.improvementservice.org.uk/ community-planning/). This is a different usage of the same term in the US that means architetural or spatial 3d-planning with local communities â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the usage that is adopted by URB and is closer to the UK term Neighbourhood Planning used by the Royal Institute of Architects (RIBA 2011) and endorsed by the Royal Town Planners Institute (RTPI) and UK government Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG). See also www. communityplanning.net. 30 Di Masso et al., 2011; North Belfast News, 28 April 2012:1-2. 29

as to whether they act as agents for developers and government bodies, or the public itself, or somewhere in between. Most who continue into the professional field may end up in a traditional commercial practice31 but some may choose more protagonist social roles while others will become more autonomous designers, Looking to the 1950s to 60s, to the extent possible. Additional pressures the widening cultural and professional split between the and influences have arisen arts and the social sciences in the wake of the global in architecture and planning economic recession since 2008, changing investment reflected alternative views levels and government of Modernism’s ‘heroic policies to deliver or measures’37 For radically support private delivery altering cities in the US, UK and Europe these views of development projects through local partnerships challenged the belief that for example. These ongoing “form on its own could shifts, described further determine the quality of social and economic life, not in the following sections, challenge both existing just contribute to it.” professionals and educators concerned with producing future professional, to determine the most suitable balance of individual creativity and valued skills to work in these complicated arenas.

From Practice to Pedagogy: Looking Backwards and Forwards

RIBA Future, 2011. These discussion took part in the World Café activities describe in a separate section. The roles were also reveresed for similar discussions about graphic design and other topics related to the joint project ativities. 31 32

While Belfast was the specific focus of URB’s inter-disciplinary investigations, the project also introduced the students to the background of their ‘chosen’ architecture and graphic design professions in relation to cities and urban design. As noted in the introduction, the project’s initial stages incorporated more traditional teaching activities like presentations to students and discussions with them about the general anticipated project lessons. The discussions relevant to this chapter on architecture focused on architects’ involvement in urban renewal and regeneration frameworks in the last twenty-five years primarily, set in a longer-term context of debates and disciplinary divisions that have emerged since the early twentieth century. After initial presentations from staff, to set the historical background about both professions, students were able to openly discuss with each other their own definitions and understanding of their respective professions, gaining each other’s separate disciplinary perspective.32 Some students noted the more glamorous aspects of fame, and fashion

drew them to study architecture; the raised the profile of architecture as a profession in popular culture,33 high profile iconic buildings and their starchitects, which emerged from the ‘boom’ of global development since the late 1990s. The discussions were an opportunity to highlight how, despite the boom of development and apparent high profile of the profession, architects’ current roles in larger more diverse construction teams – particularly as designers and team leaders – have been increasingly challenged and sidelined in the UK over the last twenty-five years by economic streamlining and construction-led procurement;34 shifting the architect’s traditional position to more secondary or tertiary roles.35 With parallel history and theory courses providing a more general background, the examples used in URB were chosen to place current criticisms of architecture in the context of longer-term. An example of debates over form versus social considerations was taken from the early period when town planning formed as a distinct discipline from architecture. The pioneering planner Patrick Geddes’s (1915) warned new civic design and town planning students not to fall into the “too external [aesthetically concerned] and technical discipline that has become the bane of architectural instruction.”36 Looking to the 1950s to 60s, the widening cultural and professional split between the arts and the social sciences in architecture and planning reflected alternative views of Modernism’s ‘heroic measures’37 For radically altering cities in the US, UK and Europe these views challenged the belief that “form on its own could determine the quality of social and economic life, not just contribute to it.”38 There are also the well cited lessons of Kevin Lynch (1961), referred to in the introduction and Jane Jacobs (1961), Gordon Cullen (1962) and others in this period. Without retelling the full history of urbanism, this era was also highlighted to students as the period when questions about Modernist approaches to urban development became central to US and European debates within architecture, and led in part to the formation of the new quasi-discipline of urban design.39

Urban Policy and Urban Design Skills: The UK and Beyond The previous background discussions set the context for how the URB activities relate to professional practice in the UK today. For URB, the examples about how form and social responsibility connect in urban design practice remain relevant; as do the pedagogic implications from contemporary critics that those responsible for the art and physical design of cities have lost touch with the skills to learn from the “qualities of everyday life.”40 In recent examples from the past twenty-five years in the

33 The popularity of the profession among young people has increased and now includes celebrity endorsements from international know actors and pop-stars (Glancey, 2011) and is celebrated in a new line of children’s dolls to ‘capture the spirit and style of architects’ for young girls http://icanbe.barbie.com/en_us/games/ amazing-architect.html (20 March 2012). 34 RIBA 2000, in response to the influential government reports behind the changes, Latham (1994) and Egan (1998). 35 “…a Faustian bargain where they [architects] became more prominent but their role less significant.” Koolhaas and Shigematsu, 2011. 36 Geddes, 298 37 Giedion 1967 38 Broady (1968) cited in Taylor 1998: 7 39 Mumford, E., 2006. 40 Gehl, 2001 [1971].

UK, the government’s own assessments conclude that policies on existing cities have not always delivered on the aspirations of quality or inclusivity “Regeneration programmes have too often concentrated on changing buildings, rather than helping people…Past experience has shown that massive investment can be made in building or refurbishing residential or business property with very little impact on local people”.41 Seen against subsequent reports and debates about award-winning building projects,42 these findings suggest urban development projects that focus on individual building projects, over a more holistic approach to public use and needs, can tick one or more evaluative boxes as a ‘successful’ development (for example, investment return, statutory objectives, iconic design) without necessarily achieving a “good quality of life for the whole community”43 or having a significant impact on economic and social regeneration of inner city populations.44 Relevant to Urban Research Belfast it also highlights a need to develop skills to identify issues that could have an impact on local people, or could contribute to a more authentic sense of place, but may not necessarily involve planning or design a building in the first instance. There are those who argue on the contrary, that these aspects of the profession should not be the impetus for education or professional action – those who promote greater aesthetic autonomy for architects from clients and other disciplines for example or who promote greater use of digital tools as the basis of new forms for cities.45 The full debate are beyond the scope of this book to address or resolve but critics of calls for greater autonomy or a reliance on digitally produced form contend that architects “have collectively disengaged from real decision-making and that the profession is caught in a ‘cult of iconographic mediocrity’,”46 which has resulted in the sidelining of the profession in the UK and elsewhere. From a qualitative perspective on quality of place the obsession with gestural form and iconic design as drivers for development rather than qualities of life can produce poor quality environments for people47 or what Gehl refers to as ‘birdshit architecture’48 and others call “novelties” and “pathological urban contexts”.49 Looking forward In the UK, at the time of this research project, successive Government regeneration policies on local infrastructure, services and development continue to promote more private sector initiatives for regeneration. Under the most recent Localism policy,50 changes to planning, housing, regeneration and economic growth also emphasise greater creative collaboration between private and third sector organisations, with local public institutions, and more local partnerships to design and deliver local places.51 The RIBA’s response (2011) sought to show

SEU 2000: 29. English Partnerships, 2007; SEU, 2000; HCA, 2011; 43 ODPM, 2000. 44 Imrie and Raco, 2003:4; An issued raised earlier about US development projects by Harvey, 1989. 45 Schumacher, 2010; Leach 2010 46 Spiller, 2010 47 Gehl, 2006[1971]; Kent 2007 48 Gehl, at a speech to the RIBA, 30 November 2011, refering to the formalist obsession since the 1960s in which architects and urban planners view cities as if from a great height and ‘drop’ their building forms with little regard for the effects of the pedestrian level scale and spaces. Cited by the author. 49 Perez-Gomez, 2005. 50 DCLG 2011 41 42

place-making as an integrated experiential approach to developing the built environment with “quality of life” as the key driver. DCLG, Regeneration to Enable Growth, 2012, p. 8. 52 RIBA 2011, Guide to Localism Opportunities for architects, Part One: Neighbourhood planning, 1 53 HCA, 2010:5. 54 Influenced by the research and writing about cities and city spaces by American urbanist William H. Whyte (1980, 1988) and Danish architect Jan Gehl (1971, 2010). 55 Till, 2004,2009; Heynen, 2007; Rendell, et al., 2007; Blundel-Jones et al 2005; Jenkins and Forsyth, 2010. 56 Hepworth and Spencer, 2002; Aldrick, 2011; Levy et al., 2011. 57 Bailey, 2005:65-66 58 Doucet, I. ‘If We Are, Indeed, All ‘Embedded’, Then What to Do Next? A Review of BAVO’s Too Active to Act.’, Footprint 08, Defying the Avant-Garde Logic: Architecture, Populism, and Mass Culture, Spring 2011, (Delft School of Design Journal), p. 91. 59 CABE, 2006; RIBA, 2011b. 60 Liza Fior, muf art/architecture llp, interviewed by the Author, London. 30 November 2011. 61 Doucet and Cupers, 2009; Kossak, et al. 2010; Awan et al., 2011 62 Blundell Jones et al.,2005; Forsyth and Jenkins, 2009; Till, 2009; Miessen, 2006, 2010. 63 Till, 2009: 151. 51

the profession adapting pro-actively, issued guidance calling the changes: “[A] powerful opportunity to change attitudes towards development through genuine, positive and inspiring engagement […and demonstrate] the power of good design and the value of our profession in shaping better places and helping deliver a better quality of life.”52 According to government sources however (2011), there remains a gap in what it refers to as the appropriate skills to deliver “good urban design” and “quality of place”; a “need to develop more cross-cutting skills among all professionals in the sector and for all professionals to have a better holistic [rather than specialist] knowledge of place making and their role in delivering it.”53

Summary Thoughts:A Critical Future Urban Research Belfast takes a critical approach to the future of architecture through educational strategies and design pedagogy, which may influence future professionals. Through design education, URB questions existing professional roles and ideologies on inter-disciplinary practices and public engagement. URB does not aim to exclude or denigrate the value of art and design in architecture or the important role of materials or tectonic considerations in quality places and buildings, but it grounds architecture’s traditional apotheosis of construction detail and digital technology through more humanist considerations of public space and everyday qualities of life.54 The projects presented attempt to situate these elements in a holistic framework of design values related to the city and the broader role of architects in contemporary society. URB’s critical approach argues – as others have already55 – that early stages of architectural education are the appropriate place and means to implement this realignment of the profession; to allow for more activist, participatory and transformative roles in mainstream urban development, and in society. Even in the uncertain period of recession, the challenges of urbanisation, more stratified societies, and more transient lifestyles suggest that transferable urban design skills to work creatively at different scales, with different people, and in different geographic or cultural contexts will become increasingly important. During the twenty-first century, a knowledge economy, in which creative skills are valued, is expected to develop around urban areas and become more important in the UK.56 As Bailey argues, “knowledge is not a substitute for architectural imagination but inadequate knowledge would handicap the general level of design.”57 To remain relevant in these areas, architects and architecture pedagogy need to adapt the way knowledge is gained and shared, with enough flexibility for experimentation with other disciplines to promote transformative types of knowledge as a valid form

of professional entrepreneurialism - cultural versus investment capital. In these debates, in the UK and Europe, critical proponents of architecture have developed a growing consensus for “practice as a locus for critical action, and thus propose a form of social engagement that is situated and embedded in the real.”58 In professional literature and examples of practice there is more recent evidence of explicit support for working beyond disciplinary, professional and institutional silos, and the use of methods for engaging local people at the earliest stages of development consideration affecting the public realm:59 “…because that’s what we do...we’re interested in making space public, ie: making it richer, questioning who the public is in the conversation.”60 At the time of this research, the above critical view of architecture is on the periphery of practice and pedagogy although it is growing more prevalent in research and practice outputs across the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe under the collective term of agency or ‘spatial agency’.61 There is also greater range of debate since 2005 of more outreach and studies focused on the issues – for and against – greater participation in architecture and urban design.62 As part of this growing concern, Urban Research Belfast reinforces aspirations for future architects and urban designers to take on all the aspects of participation and collaboration as part of their ‘‘embedded knowledge, skills and imagination” in Till’s terms, to be used “in an open curious way in order to contribute to the making of new spatial possibilities”.63 For URB this means using creative skills to influence the discussions about public and private space in the first instance, challenging and contributing to aspirations and visions for new spatial possibilities of place, whether by shaping existing spaces or making new ones.

In last fifteen years promoting the quality of place in architecture and urban design has bloomed from a small numbers of grassroots groups into a numerous mainstream professional and government supported organisations in all areas of the built environment.

Signs of a previous time: Commercial lettering uncovered by students in a disused shop unit that had been a covered alleyway.

Mapping the terrain; illustration/infographic/map

VISUAL COMMUNICATION PEDAGOGY, PRACTICE AND THE URB PROJECT

Liam McComish

The distribution of meaning and the built environment has many intersections

hysical place is not often a priority in graphic design pedagogy unless that place happens to be a printed page or a digital screen. With a long history in print, publishing and packaging, a more recent history in cinema and television and a digitally networked present: graphic design practice is dominated by the two-dimensional planes of print and screen, and rightly so. It is certainly not the case that environmental scale projects are ignored: signage, wayfinding, exhibitions, retail, out-door advertising and livery are notable areas of graphic design for space and place. However there is Places teach us about how the perhaps a tendency to conceive these as extensions world works and how our lives to, or larger format versions of, the core business of fit into the spaces we occupy. communication through print and digital means: perhaps Further, places make us: As one of the few occasions when it is acceptable to ‘make occupants of particular places the logo bigger’. with particular attributes, our Since the 1990s there has been a growing trend in identity and our possibilities are professional graphic practice towards engaging graphic shaped. 1 design with site-specific and cultural requirements and this has expanded the possibilities for environmental scale projects. Studios such as Intégral-Ruedi Baur, Paula Scher (Pentagram), Why not Associates and Morag Myerscough have been particularly notable in this regard. The Society for Environmental Graphic Design SEGD established in the 1970s has developed an increasing profile through awards and events in areas relating to wayfinding, exhibitions and urban branding. The scope and depth of discourse is growing and matching pedagogic engagement seems opportune. Place-making and designing for Place are now established themes in urban design and architecture and increasingly so in graphic design. Kevin Lynch’s Image of the City2 and Scott Brown and Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas3 are regarded as seminal in framing contemporary urban design discourse – the former in establishing perceptions of spatial orientation for the urban dweller and the latter in explicitly auditing the graphic communication in an urban landscape. Place-making is evolving with a growing realisation that joined-up thinking in the form of crossdiscipline collaboration contributes to a more successful sense of place. Collaborative design looks beyond the requirements of singular buildings, or singular developers or singular professions. In our post-industrial4 city 1 Gruenwald,2003 2 the role of graphic design, architecture, planning and how they contribute Lynch, 1960 3 Scott Brown, Venturi, 1968 to the construction of meaning for citizens is an active debate that should 4 Hunt 2005 be reflected in interdisciplinary education. 5 Bartram 1976, 1978 6 Graphic designers have a particular interest in typography and lettering Gray, 1960 7 Baines , Dixon, 2003 and Alan Bartram5, Nicolette Gray6, Phil Baines, Catherine Dixon7 and

Jock Kinneir8 have provided some of the best published overviews of typographic and lettering phenomena in built environment contexts. The following taxonomy is put forward by Farias, Gouveia and Souza and provides an excellent starting point for the graphic designer engaging with the urban environment: “1 Architectonic typography: permanent inscriptions, such as a building name or number,which are usually designed and built at the same time as the building. 2 Honorary typography: inscriptions designed to honour historical characters or events,such as those found on most public monuments. 3 Memorial typography: funerary inscriptions found in restricted urban spaces, such as gravestones found in churches and cemeteries. 4 Registered typography: trade inscriptions, by public or private companies, such as telephone and sewage services providers, usually located in gratings and manholes. 5 Artistic typography: artistic lettering designed on commission, such as paintings and sculptures using letters and numbers. 6 Normative typography: inscriptions that are part of regulatory and information systems for city traffic, such as road and directional signs 7 Commercial typography: lettering found on temporary signs, such as those on shop fascias, attached to a building after its construction and, in most cases, replaced by other signs from time to time. 8 Accidental typography: unofficial, unauthorized inscriptions, such as graffiti and tags, usually not planned, and inscribed without the permis sion of architects, construction companies, developers and owners”9 This taxonomy and the books by Bartram, Gray, Baines and Dixon reflect the fact that much of the graphic communication in the environment is task-oriented – helping you find your way, identifying the nature of the activity or commerce and, when that task is no longer needed, hinting at past histories and former uses. Much of what we see or experience, then, is an accumulation of relatively small independent decisions by municipalities, shop-owners, advertising agencies, signwriters and graffiti artists. Dr Robert Harland has further developed theoretical understanding of our perception of what he terms ‘graphic objects’ in the built environment through a range of micrographic, mesographic and macrographic levels of understanding. “The mesographic level is the most decisive when influencing human behaviour in a defined context. These arguments introduce a system of analysis that may be useful to the urban design process, especially when considering the visual dimension of the discipline, at a time when more than ever the design of urban environments is of paramount importance.”10

Kinneir 1980 Gouveia, Farias, Souza, 2009 10 Harland 2012 8 9

Our perception of these elements contributes towards our spatial guidance and sense of place. There is a growing awareness that our sense of what makes a place attractive and/or distinctive can be significantly affected by the graphic artefacts present. The flip-side is the realisation that, when unchecked, the graphic elements can trigger adverse reactions, as John Thackara states: “The World is awash in print, and ads, and billboards, and packaging, and spam. We suffer from semiotic pollution: brand intrusion at every turn. Too many buildings and public spaces are now about one-way communication: sports stadiums, museums, theatres, science and convention centres – they all deliver pre-cooked experiences to passive crowds. In modern cities everywhere, the creative class has optimised the society of the spectacle. But just as tourism kills the toured, the society of the spectacle creates culturally barren ‘clonetowns’.”11 While the tone is polemical, the sentiment reveals a tension between design and branded space that resonates with a body of opinion towards branding, in particular – popularised by Naomi Klein12 and expanded on in relation to places by Porter.13 This strand of thought would alert us to the pitfalls of corporate/municipal ‘ownership’ of our shared and public spaces. The outdoor advertising ban initiated in Sao Paolo, Brazil in 200714 tapped into similar popular sentiment but also reflected the wide variety of checks and balances that civic society chooses to implement in these circumstances. In many developing economies, the ‘semiotic pollution’ is the result of planning and advertising regulations struggling to keep up with the pace of change. In the more developed economies, commerce looks for new ways to communicate marketing messages in the public sphere often with clumsy results as highlighted by Klein’s No Logo. As Porter states: “If product and corporate brands provide ‘ideas that people can live by’ [Grant], place brands provide ideas that people can live in – a conceptual platform for ordering the complexity of place. Place branding ‘involves the creation of a recognisable place identity and the subsequent use of that identity to further other desirable processes, whether financial investment, changes in user behavior or generating political capital’ [Kavaratzis]”.15 This desire to project-on-to,manage,control or otherwise influence the geosemiotics or semiosphere16 need not always come from ‘faceless’ corporates or governments. This imposition of branded value is not always top down. Belfast has a well-documented17 tradition of territorial branding through murals, colour coded street furniture and community symbols expressing explicit allegiances to political and religious ideologies that often require tactful traversal – a geosemiotic minefield. This sensitivity to, and awareness of, urban terrain takes many forms

Urban Research Belfast project provided an articulation of interdisciplinary teaching events that brought together graphic design and architecture students

Creativity and the City:185 Klein 1999 13 Porter 2012 14 Creativite Review 15 Porter 2012 16 Scollon and Scollon 17 Rolston 1992, 1995, 1998 11

Guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/2011/ aug/12/shepard-fairey-beaten-danish-mural 19 Muschamp www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/ garden/critic-s-notebook-tibor-kalman- seeing-disbelieving.html?src=pm 20 www.h5.fr 21 Supergraphics movement 1960-1970s Unit Editions 2010 22 Jenny Holzer, american artist working often in large scale and projected messages in public spaces since 1977. 23 Whynotassociates, design studio noted for site specific graphic design 18

and is unique to the location or place. The raw emotion that can be stirred was clearly demonstrated in Copenhagen in 2011. Celebrated street artist, Shepard Fairey, found to his cost the danger of mis-reading the terrain when invited to create a public piece in the city in 2011. Fairey was seemingly unaware that his mural was at a contested location – previously the site for a left-wing collective. Fairey suffered a physical assault – accused by some of government endorsed propaganda,he felt he had to publicly defend his role in the matter; “The work commemorates the demolition of Ungdomshuset a nowdemolished youth house that was a base for left-wing Copenhagen and has long symbolized the divide between the city’s establishment and its more radical edge”.18 It seems therefore that the range of graphic possibilities in the built environment ranges from the details and subtleties to the monumental and emotionally charged. The architect and critic, Herbert Muschamp coined the term ‘artist of the distribution system’ to describe the graphic designer, Tibor Kalman.19 This turn of phrase makes a useful entry point in a discussion regarding the value and aims of interdisciplinary education regarding architecture and graphic design, implying as it does the distributed and therefore non site-specific nature of much graphic communication. Graphic design contributes to the effective distribution of meaning. Identities are constructed and stories told of corporations and governments, churches and charities, products and services, communities and ideas. The distribution of meaning and the built environment has many intersections. This intersection between the notion of graphic and built culture is compellingly illustrated/animated by H5’s award-winning work, The Child and Logorama.20 Does the graphic designer have a more active role in shaping place? From super-graphics21 and Jenny Holzer22 to Why not Associates,23 can designers be taught/encouraged to take a more holistic view of urban space. Graphic design pedagogy for the built environment should acknowledge the heritage as encompassed by Farias, Gouveia and Souza, while also being alert to the pitfalls of brand intrusion, propoganda and the homogenising impulse of globalisation. As Büro Destruct stated in their LosLogos manifesto: “Loslogos.org, wants to protect, or at least conserve the graphic appearance of the world’s cities. Through globalisation, large international companies are changing the face of streets all over the world, with the omnipresence of their brands. A lot of unique and characteristic local type and logo-artwork has to make room for marketing strategies and corporate design of the global players. Sooner or later, we lose the unique spirit that inherits each city.”24

From studio to street

Students learn to see the urban environment and its texts as a dynamic dialogue, one that integrates public and private messages and readings’

Loslogos,urban brands project curated by Büro Destruct 25 Klingmann 2007 26 Berbic in Heller and Talarico 2009 27 Utility box project: site-specific graphic design project, University of Ulster, 2005 28 Bush in Heller and Talarico 2009 29 McComish, Montgomery, 2006 30 Stein, Coller, Gardner 2008 24

Anna Klingmann, a leading exponent of the integration between architecture and branding also expresses reservations “Despite its intention as a catalyst for generating a distinct message in the global marketplace, branding has contributed to the growing homogenisation of people and places. More often than not, branding strategies fail to establish sensitive connections to particular contexts by imposing standardized forms and formulas on the urban or suburban landscape.”25 In another example from graphic deisgn education, this local/global theme is continued: “The idea of local identity has become ubiquitous; it has been reduced, simplified, and, in some respects, made obsolete by the reach of global marketing.”26 Previous graphic design projects relating to urban interventions carried out at the University of Ulster had produced some valuable outputs. In particular the ‘Utility Box’ project27 and the exploration of specific items of street furniture suggested the potential for designed interventions that would alter perceptions and behaviours in the urban environment. This project yielded useful experience in the realities of dealing with public locations and physical objects but also in the student perception of their role in wider societal context– as graphic design educator Anne Bush states: “Students learn to see the urban environment and its texts as a dynamic dialogue, one that integrates public and private messages and readings”28 In addition, some research studies undertaken at the University of Ulster in 200629 suggested the value of not only further perception research but also the pedagogic value for incorporating urban context into the graphic design curriculum. Urban Research Belfast provides a platform for interdisciplinary teaching events that brings together graphic design and architecture students to explore the relationship between abstract and concrete notions of urbanism and to seek and convey meaning through design processes, whilst perhaps developing the sensitivity and awareness not possible through studio practice alone. Silo mentality is an oft used cliché in many areas of modern life and one of the problems any educator or manager hopes to tackle. Identifying and the key differences between the disciplines of graphic design and architecture or what Stein, Connell and Gardner might call ‘basic viewpoints’30 seems a sensible basis for meaningful dialogue and collaboration. The following list serves only for initial discussion and for every item, examples can be found to contradict or invalidate some aspect. Nevertheless in general terms they may prove useful in providing context for an interchange of design thinking relating to this specific interdisciplinary project.

Graphic Design Architecture distributed fixed mental space physical space transient permanent giving form to meaning giving meaning to form explicit implicit ephemeral material unregulated regulated Embarking on a collaborative project of any sort suggests the participants understand each othersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; capacities and contributions to the shared endeavour. Interdisciplinary educational pedagogy would seem, on the face of it, to be such a contemporary imperative that it needs no justification. The reality can be less clear and careful consideration should be given to suitable modes of engagement based on mutual understanding. There is strong consensus of opinion regarding the value of teaching and learning experiences at university undergraduate level which involve the dissolution of discipline boundaries. The value of team working and negotiation are widely recognized by industry and wider society as crucial to successful personal and professional development.The term we use throughout is â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Interdisciplinaryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. In recent years there has been a proliferation of discipline-boundary

Design Council

blurring in institutions, departments and training programmes, all aimed at meeting a global demand for individuals capable of producing high quality syntheses from disparate sources and types of information. One distinction proposes that ‘multi-disciplinarity’ describes situations in which several disciplines cooperate but remain unchanged, whereas “in interdisciplinarity there is an attempt to integrate or synthesise perspectives from several disciplines.”31 This interdisciplinary architecture and graphic design project consisted of three distinct phases equivalent to 4–5 weeks of activity. The initial phase consisted of a joint briefing attended by students from both courses. The students had been sent a number of readings32 ranging across key issues regarding design for public space. The texts provided stimulating background to notions of narrative of place, constructed meaning and the affordances of place in the city.

The students were divided into groups and each group was allocated a distinctive33 city area. The groups were then tasked with conducting an open-ended visual exploration of their allocated area and where possible to develop their awareness and appreciation of each others approach and perspective. This initial phase was interrogative in nature and required the students to generate a sketchbook of responses to the location. The term sketchbook was deliberately loose in the sense that any media could be used and photography and motion sequences were encouraged. Individuals and groups were given the opportunity to explore the urban environment and discover for themselves the nature of the experience of place by recording and interpreting, and analysing the signs and stories accumulated over time, erased and refreshed at different rates and with different sensibilities.

Baur, 2001, Crow, 2003, Lidwell et al., 2003, Newark, 2002, Binns, 2007, Jewesbury, 2007, Kravagna, 1998, Lippard, 1995. 33 See page 37 32

34 See page 83 35 Latham 1974

These mixed group explorations were an attempt to dissolve the discipline boundaries by concentrating on the sketchbook as a common tool. By using a shared language of visualisation it was hopes that the students would be able to engage in a more meaningful way and value the other’s perspective. At the end of this initial task students reconvened for a ‘world café34 where multi-media presentations were made and discussions held about the nature of place and the comparison of the various locales explored by the different groups. Phase two came some months later when the students were again allocated to mixed groups and given a joint task. MUEL was a method initially developed to provide a means of student engagement with notions of Urban Place. This had provided the architecture students with a physical construction project by which they could put their propensity for model-making and construction to effective use in the investigation of place. In order to expand the interdisciplinary possibilities this methodology was adapted to create a new potential: the Machine for Experiential Urban Learning or MEUL. Students were to work together on the creation of an intervention that would enable them to evaluate the possibilities for design potentiality in the urban environment. On this occasion the student groups were tasked with selecting small, defined locations — street corners, unused spaces, buildings — within one district close to the university campus. Over a two-week period the groups had to meet and devise a plan for developing a compelling urban intervention and then to implement and document the process. A key development in the methodology was the more temporal nature of the joint endeavour—a less construction focused activity. The participation in and the performance of the MEUL provided an opportunity to observe and be observed, to engage and be engaged to delight and disrupt. The shared intervention provided a conceptual and directed framework for active participation in the city. Students felt able to: conduct surveys and interviews with the public; alter functions and perceptions of locations; create events, objects and images that generated awareness and debate; propose possibilities for future use. “We designers . . . can begin to build a meaningful aesthetic culture if we are willing to prepare ourselves for a new learning experience, and we cannot learn unless we participate.”35 The MUEL process provided the means for a joint articulation of purpose – an intersection of philosophy and capability that provided a means for urban investigation. The third and final phase was reflection through design process.

A graphic design artefact in the form of a poster publication provided a method of closure to the process that consolidated the rationale for urban investigation within a graphic context and in effect, brought it home, to the graphic designers who could be considered at a disadvantage in the field of urban design compared to their peers in architecture. One of the guiding principles behind this joint pedagogic initiative was that of genuine engagement with place, society and the community. With a curriculum dominated by paper and computer based exercises and an academic bubble of fellow-travellers in design, and often of demographic homogeneity, this project offered the opportunity for an out-door urban experience in a pedagogically meaningful context. Meeting people, discussing plans, surveying attitudes, measuring responses, negotiation, argument and debate, overcoming challenges, discovering new information, listening to others, these are some of the activities we considered enhanced and expanded as a result of participation. The MEUL process afforded designers the opportunity to excavate narratives from the street for representation in visual form. These additional skills are crucial to contemporary and aware citizen designers.36 Awareness of and facilitating participation by a wide constituency of users and audiences provides valuable experience to the student designer and improves their understanding of the sophisticated and multi-faceted nature of design projects in real environments. Interdisciplinary benefit and further research Ruedi Baur’s Intégral practice has been a leading proponent of intelligent civic design. On the subject of interdisciplinary projects he advocates ‘controlled interdisciplinarity’: “Observing that art schools which had removed the barriers between the different disciplines were, whatever the intellectual value of such an approach, producing professionals who lacked assurance because they were insufficiently grounded in their own particular practice”37 Typography, layout, branding, text, illustration, still and moving imagery, combined in static, moving or interactive arrays are the kit of parts which the graphic designer seeks to direct in the most effective way possible. This is a large visual and technical resource that permits multiple creative and professional pathways from apps to advertising and pivots on a combination of researched and/or intuited understandings of the effect of the visual language on the users and audiences. What then are the tangible outcomes of such interdisciplinary projects? Subsequent projects by Graphic Design students who had participated in MUEL revealed a perceptible increase in capacity and confidence relating to large scale material and format use: planning and management;

‘Observing that art schools which had removed the barriers between the different disciplines were, whatever the intellectual value of such an approach, producing professionals who lacked assurance because they were insufficiently grounded in their own particular practice’

Heller.and Vienne 2003 Braunstein in Baur 2003:13

36 37

advocay and negotiation; construction of displays and exhibits; use of and sensitivity to urban and built space for communication events. In a curriculum increasingly perceived, often incorrectly, to be dominated by the student laptop, the opportunity for a more diverse learning experience provides a platform for encompassing learning styles as put forward in VARK38 and for experential learning as put forward by Kolb.39 â&#x20AC;&#x153;Teaching strategies that encompass varied learning styles in the design classroom will allow students to learn through their preferred individual styles and be challenged to learn through their less preferred styles.â&#x20AC;? 40 At a time when public space and the high street in particular are in, what some have termed, a crisis and therefore in need of new means of tranformation, this research contributed to a sense of engagement, awareness and self-actualisation for designers hoping to contribute to our shared urban spaces.

38 39 40

vark.com Kolb 1984 Watson 2003

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PLACE PARTICIPATION, PRACTICE AND POLICY IN NORTHERN IRELAND Michael Hegarty

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The need for future sustainable cities, towns and villages in which all people can live, work and enjoy is widely recognised. Creating safe, attractive urban places also relieves development pressure on the natural environment

PLACE-making Northern Ireland has fantastic urban assets that can help deliver a dynamic economy and vibrant society. PLACE , Northern Irelandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Architecture and Built Environment Centre, seeks to help accomplish this by supporting efforts at public, professional, academic and Government level to understand what makes our place special; how to capture its essence, to nurture it to thrive for future generations to enjoy. PLACE promotes joined up thinking and commitment at a strategic, governmental level to link policies and programmes which can deliver leadership for successful places across boundaries, and from the bottom up; working together to protect and enhance this special place. Northern Ireland also has a complex and fragmented history that is reflected in its government structures. Multiple agencies tend to act in isolation, delivering only their own component of urban and rural development; from housing (NI Housing Executive) to roads (Department for Regional Development), and planning (Department of Environment) to urban regeneration (Department for Social Development). Under a more stable devolved administration since 2007, Northern Ireland politicians have begun the process of the Reform of Public Administration (RPA) . This consolidation of local councils and Government departments aims to address disconnection among competing agencies, and streamline decision-making while giving local councils more powers over local community and spatial planning to address disconnection within our society. As part of their devolved powers the Northern Ireland Government also set out a regional Architecture and Built Environment Policy with aspirational guiding principles and objectives to help deliver a dynamic economy and vibrant society for Northern Ireland. PLACE sees its role in helping deliver these aspiration by taking action to promote awareness, participation, understanding and debate of the broad range of built environment issues that are inter-connected across landscape, townscape, architecture and planning.

A PLACE for people PLACEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s facilitation of community participation across Northern Ireland has become well established, particularly through recognition that ordinary people of all ages are key to improving the built environment. Numerous projects, exhibitions and support of academic research bring together built environment professionals, academics, developers and policy makers with the public around Northern Ireland; using international experience to address local, sometimes highly contentious sites and issues.

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An important part of these projects has been encouraging young people to increase their understanding of good design and the power of architecture and landscape. Throughout 2010, PLACE brought together primary school teachers and design professionals to generate new ideas for the classroom through a program called Architecture in the Curriculum, which uses the built environment as a resource to aid teaching the core Key Stage 2 curriculum. Classrooms across Northern Ireland explored topics such as History, Geography, Language & Literature, The World Around Us and Mathematics, using the real-world examples of the buildings, structures and townscape of Northern Ireland, especially in the immediate locality of the schools. In 2011 PLACE was appointed the Northern Ireland delivery body for ‘somewhereto_’, the UK wide legacy element of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad . This initiative is aimed at providing 16-25 year olds with places to do the things that interest them. This grows directly from PLACE’s ongoing work connecting problems of commercial vacancy and lack of resource spaces in Northern Ireland’s towns, villages and city centres. At the higher education level in Northern Ireland, PLACE has actively supported teaching research and education practice for the next generation of planning and design professionals at both the University of Ulster and Queen’s University Belfast. This book is one example of the growing efforts in academia to engage and influence the next generation of professionals with lessons drawn directly from the real-world and wider society. In the sections that follow, PLACE’s own involvement, and lead, on real-world projects will be described further in the light of UK and Ireland’s developing cities, urban policies, increasingly international recognition and the many challenges still facing Northern Ireland’s built environment.

A PLACE to do things Our city centres are where we continue to interact as a society on a large scale. In the past we needed our city centres for trade. Everything from pigs to pennyfarthings were exchanged and bartered on the streets and in the shops. We now have more choice whether or not to trade, socialise, relax, shop or just meander through city streets. We can also shop out-of-town or on-line, bank from home, work by phone and internet, and conduct business remotely with teleconferencing. The result of these changes in society is that there is less demand for city centre retail space. Yet, experience shows that people enjoy interacting with each other in vibrant city centres . Renewed interest and investment of the last twenty years in existing cities has shown that people especially enjoy centres that combine conservation of the best of

what they have while taking advantage of new opportunities. In Northern Ireland, the two main regional cities, Belfast and Derry~Londonderry , have developed over four centuries and retain strong historic qualities. These provide a basis to support vibrant centres but the challenge of vacant shop units, empty sites and surface car parks threaten their quality . Belfast, at its Victorian-era commercial height, had doctors, solicitors, haberdashers, butchers, bakers and candlestick-makers occupying individual buildings, making the city diverse and vibrant. Derry~Londonderry, the only complete “walled city” in Ireland has also been described as “one of the first major pieces of urban planning in Ireland.” From the 1940s to 1960s the city harboured multinational warships along the River Foyle, while their crews mingled with livestock markets, grain deliveries, opera-house goers, shoppers and traders. These qualities can still be seen in both cities’ centres today, and that of many other market towns, smaller towns and villages across Northern Ireland but people are reluctant to come to a town to walk past rows of empty units, pound shops or charity outlets. All of those uses may have some role but the collective impact of their multiplication in recent years can be to cause a form of urban blight. PLACE, through a recent initiative in Belfast called “Out of PLACE”, has occupied an otherwise empty unit, showing the potential to enrich the city in the absence of retail, even if the absence is temporary . These initiatives provide a model for others to help maintain the richness and variety of city centres, but they require a greater understanding of the value of our cities and buildings from Government, supporting private developers to allow more to proceed .

Creating a PLACE for all The need for future sustainable cities, towns and villages in which all people can live, work and enjoy is widely recognised. Creating safe, attractive urban places also relieves development pressure on the natural environment, which is equally important to Northern Ireland’s cultural heritage and agricultural economy. What PLACE supports are actions and priorities to address and reflect the critical balance required to protect urban and rural environments for future generations, including: • Encouraging an agricultural economy and urban economy that work in tandem, in terms of food and energy to create a sustainable region. • All agencies and neighbouring local authorities working together for the common good, rather than sectoral or parochial interests; strengthening city and town centres as safer attractive urban places to live, work, shop and socialise.

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• Fully integrate land use and transport planning with mixed-use neighbourhoods. Zoning is an outmoded and discredited planning approach that oversimplifies how society operates and causes social disconnection . • Nurture incremental change within a wider strategic vision rather than comprehensive redevelopment that stagnates areas awaiting wholesale change. • Create shared uses that encourage a shared future and promote community cohesion. Shared futures should not simply be restricted to bridging the historical Northern Ireland cultural divide but include all aspects of life such as good quality, accessible and safe public spaces. • Promote the use of public transport and discourage the use of private vehicles through more meaningful incentives and infrastructure. • Promote “meanwhile” uses for surface car parks and underutilised areas in our city and town centres, to contribute to their diversity and vibrancy. On the last item, some pilot work has already been done in terms of skate parks built beneath elevated sections of motorway in Belfast. Many of the issues are also addressed through academic research, some of which is explored in this publication. PLACE believes it is now time to make this work more widespread.

Policies for PLACEmaking Delivering high quality design in urban environments is important for many reasons. Safe and vibrant places contribute to our quality of life in terms of health and well-being. High quality city and town centres attract people and in turn investment which is critical to the growth of our economy. Indeed, it is becoming increasing important for economic investment purposes to have a well-planned and designed environment that is attractive, distinctive and properly functional as a place. This is already the conclusion of a recent report for the Northwest Regional Development Agency entitled Places Matter! Economic Value of Good Design in a Recession . Currently, Northern Ireland has limited policies that relate to the quality of the built environment. For example, Quality Development (QD)1 guidance in Planning Policy Supplement (PPS)7 and Creating Places were prepared by DoE to address the quality of residential development, a relatively narrow focus that requires updating to reflect current best practice.

An example established across all government departments is The Architecture and Built Environment Policy for Northern Ireland . Out of this policy, the Ministerial Advisory Group (MAG) was created, to advise the Minister within the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) on the Architecture and Built Environment policy . MAG, which comprises a mix of professionals, academics and Government representatives, follows on earlier advisory bodies created after Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) in England and similar bodies in Scotland and Wales . As a resource to independently assess both physical development and development policy, MAG could be more widely utilised across Northern Ireland and across government departments. All too frequently however, policies are being used as checklists rather than opportunities to achieve holistic design solutions to address particular challenges. PLACE advocates our professionals in the public and private sectors working together and collaboratively applying their professional judgement to significantly improve the quality of our environment and leapfrog to a higher standard. Evidence shows that quality design does not necessarily imply more expense and can actually increase development values, attract further investment and stimulate economic growth .

PLACEmaking in Action There are many different ways to analyse places and a lot of the information is available through the different Government Departments, other organisations and universities but not always in a form that can be readily disseminated and mapped. PLACE aims for more meaningful understanding of how our places work on physical, social, and economic levels. PLACEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s activities collectively expand the knowledge and understanding of what makes and sustains successful places to enable councils and communities to address the huge challenges that they will be faced with in future. Working in a more collegiate manner could make the various layers of information more widely available, including health, education, and provision of facilities, deprivation and economic activity. This can be as simple as a capacity building exercise and PLACE argues, should not require additional resources outside those available across existing government departments or local councils. The range of available actions and/or policies that PLACE advocates include: â&#x20AC;˘ Promoting community engagement processes for all major works that can guide and inform the formulation of a design brief for any

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site through proper community participation at each stage; to engender a sense of local ownership by recognising local knowledge, and assist in the long-term social, economic and environmental viability of what is created Bringing new spatial planning legislation together with community planning as the starting point for new local planning to move beyond limited land-use regulation and offer more opportunities to work with local communities and identify the specific and distinctive place-quality of our cities, towns and villages. Build the capacity through training and guidance of our communities and councils, together with support from universities, in advance of the Reform of the Planning System and Public Administration (RPA). Integrate the built environment and related aspects in terms of well-being sustainability, quality design and safety into the education curriculum to support longer-term development of public understanding and awareness.

Bringing it all together – PLACE Andersonstown Case Study Using the above policies and actions – in addition to supporting the type of research and academic outreach projects shown in this book– PLACE also works actively with local communities. The work, which aims to improve local places through more meaningful understanding of how they work on physical, social and economic levels, covers all sectors of the Northern Ireland community and all Government Departments. The following example of a project PLACE formulated, the Expo West community participation process, demonstrates how the implementation of the above proposals can have many local benefits and far-reaching potential. PLACE formulated the Expo West community participation process to guide and inform the creation of a design brief for the redevelopment of the vacated, former Andersonstown Police Barracks site. The demilitarised brownfield site, which to-date has been synonymous with Northern Ireland’s Troubles, is located in West Belfast at the prominent junction of the Andersonstown Road and Falls Road. The underlying principal of PLACE’s involvement has been the recognition that local people have valid, important knowledge to inform what needs to be done to promote the sustainability of their area in terms of improving the social, economic and environmental well-being. In recognition of this, the Department for Social Development provided a channel for local people to be actively involved in the redevelopment prior to formal project inception. By handing over a sense of ownership to the

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local community, the sensitivities associated with the sites historical and political legacy have become less of a barrier to implementing change. The emphasis on local involvement at such an early stage in the design process is unprecedented in Northern Ireland. The project outcomes include an international design competition for an exemplar building to provide a venue for the co-location of a range of community orientated activities and public services, and to act as a focus for wider regeneration efforts within West Belfast. The ambition is that it will set new standards in terms of innovation and design to transform the site into an active, more shared space. The process was only made possible through partnership working between PLACE, DSDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Belfast Regeneration Office (BRO) and West Belfast Partnership Board (WBPB). Significant time and resources were committed by BRO to underpin the future use of the site with the expressed needs of the local community, rather than â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;consultingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; them on some pre-determined proposal and outsider perceptions . The most challenging issue addressed in taking this approach was gaining the trust and support of the local community given the deep sensitivities around the history of the site and the more recent widespread local opposition to proposals for housing. Another issue was reaching people. A range of planning concepts and techniques influenced by theorists including Arnstein has influenced the community engagement process . The engagement process also learned from the experiences of other similar projects internationally and was influenced by the Planning for Real model of community participation, which is a highly visible, hands-on community empowerment tool. Meetings with locals were in small groups in their own environments as much as possible to encourage contributions from more than the most confident speakers or loudest voices. PLACE and WBPB met young people in youth centres, older people after church, business people for business breakfast, cultural groups, political representatives, community organisations and open-door public meetings. The targeted interaction with each group of people was designed specifically with them in mind. In terms of the future physical build, the project design brief has clearly considered the feedback of the local community and accounted for the current challenging economic climate. It has been identified that the eventual redevelopment project will accommodate a range of social, economic and cultural uses, which will be co-located on site. Exemplar and innovative design solutions have also been encouraged. While acknowledging this is not the answer to all the problems of West Belfast, and other contested urban areas, this project is an example of a more fully engaging local partnership as a delivered starting point.

A way forward Having identified what can and needs to be done in the peripheral empty spaces of Northern Ireland’s urban centres, it is also important to recognize what has already been achieved and is becoming increasingly recognised internationally. For Belfast, 2011 brought recognition at neighbourhood level to its Cathedral Quarter, which was shortlisted by the Academy of Urbanism for its Neighbourhood of the Year Award 2011 for culture and conservation-led regeneration over 25 years. At city level Belfast won the prestigious Urbanistica urban development prize from Italy, for ‘Balance of Interests`, a category ”recognising the joint public and private sector contributions that have allowed for regeneration in Belfast in the last 15 years” . In recognition of the Urbanistica award the Mayor of Belfast, Councillor Niall Ó Donnghaile noted: “Sometimes it takes an outside viewpoint to realise just how far Belfast has come in the last 15 years. There have been so many positive achievements made against a backdrop of change, and often at times when confidence has been low as Belfast emerged from a city of conflict. Being from a new generation of politicians I believe we have an excellent opportunity to build on past successes and work more effectively together to provide even more regeneration for the city as a lasting legacy for future generations.” As evidence that this recognition and change is not just confined to Belfast, 2010 brought Derry~Londonderry the coveted award to be the UK’s first-ever European City of Culture for 2013, during which it will host a year-long international level celebration of its diverse music, history and culture . The city is also shortlisted in for the UK Academy of Urbanism Great Town Award 2012 . As part of its efforts across Northern Ireland, PLACE has been instrumental in promoting how its cities and towns are “specific to here” but also among the best models of urban design in Europe. The successes in Belfast and Derry are also due to the support and close work from Government, statutory departments, professionals, community groups, academics and members of the public of all ages. To address the many remaining “empty spaces” and undervalued areas in Northern Ireland’s cities, towns and villages, PLACE will continue building capacity for joined up thinking and a commitment at a strategic, Governmental levels to link urban and rural policies and programmes with economic growth and social cohesion. PLACE expects to continue its own efforts, and to support others in practice and academia like Urban Research Belfast, as ways to help deliver this leadership for successful places.

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Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge the support and assistance of the staff and students in Year2 BA Hons Architecture and Year1 BDes Hons Design for Visual Communication at the University of Ulster Faculty of Art, Design and the Built Environment 20092011. For their support of events and assistance with editing our developing ideas: Chris Barr, Professor Barbara Dass, Lindesay Dawe, Richard McIlveen, Dr Karen McPhillips, Michael McQueen, Dr. Taina Rikala, Dr. Jenny Russell. We acknowledge a particular thanks to the following people and organizations outside of the University of Ulster, who have directly contributed and supported the student’s workshops, exhibits and other related street activity in Belfast. Without them the goals of our projects would not have been achieved. PLACE – Michael Hegarty, Conor McCafferty, Amberlea Neely Research Facilitators, Janet Hall and Nikki Sherry. Belfast City Centre Management – Geraldine Duggan, Andrew Irvine and Peter Moore. Department of Social Development –Jenny McGuigan. North West City Centre Regeneration Committee – Fergal McElhatton, Michael Deighan. Planning Service Northern Ireland, Geoff Sloan Ulster Architectural Heritage Society – Rita Harkin. Special thanks to our families…. who have endured the ongoing editing and production of this book over the life of the project so far. Finally, with regard to the written sections of the book, we also acknowledge the input from colleagues and peers to adapt portions of previously presented or published aspects of the research: a presentation to the CHEP 2nd Festival of Innovative Practice (June 2011), The Centre for Higher Education Practice Final Project Funding Report: Urban Research Belfast II (August 2011), and three papers delivered at ARCC/EAAE Joint International Conference on Architectural Research (June 2010), the 2012 All-Ireland Architecture Research Group Inaugural Conference at Dublin Institute of Technology, 20-21 (January 2012), and Designing Place, International Urban Design Conference at University of Nottingham (April 2012).

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