urban play

Play Uncertainty Space Transformation

Emerging Design Issues KISD

Play !

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Introduction City is a process of everyday life rather than merely the collection of material objects. Through design process human have redefined the natural ground into site , then transit site into place, where provides different various functions for citizens to meets their different needs. Thus, we have various defined space, office for working, mall for shopping, restaurant for eating out‌Even in side a house, we define different space meets separate needs, kitchen for cooking, bedroom for sleeping, living room for meeting guests at home‌.Accumulation of those design process express as the control of space by architects,urban planners and designers.The control gradually becomes the invisible governing of individuals at place.

If seen everyday life as a non-stop circled travel jump form one well-defined and designed space to another. Then public space is the open travel road link from specific space to another. Public space,at lest literarily, should be open and accessible for everyone. However,in reality it has been been break down, subdivided,redefined, controlled intentionally or unintentionally. This emerging issue of lost public space shows the limits of everyday life. It has been consider for decades and be in a mixture result from top-down governing , design, materialism and consumerism of Capitalism‌ However, aware of this danger, people have seek/are seeking to different approaches to re-taken-control and re-make urban space by individuals in cities. There is a growing body of work that articulates and analyses the increasing interest in smallscale, unsanctioned, community-led urban interventionist activities (Edensor et al. 2010). Iveson(2013: 941) has grappled recently with the variance in lexicon and argues that,

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We are not sure how to describe what is happening.Those seeking to come to grips with practices have begun to group them together for consideration under banners such as ‚insurgent’, ‘do-it-yourself ’(DIY), ‘guerrilla’ , ‘everyday’, ‘participatory’ and/or ‚grassroots’ urbanism.

All those lexicon aims to explain the phenomenons of remaking space via bottom-up individuals (covers meaning of groups and communities). The action of transform or transit always have two simple elements, original space as the stage and the movement as the outside expression of inner energy.

Back to the essential and original phase—grassroots individuals, within the criteria of loosen-function, which can express the loosen-control of space, Space of Uncertainty is selected as the most loosen-control urban space, as opposite of well-designed and defined urban space. In this sense ,those virtual margin urban space can be seen the breeding bed of numerous spontaneous activities. By investigating it, could better understand the natural re-making space via everyday spontaneous activities of people in cities.

Play as an ambiguous contradiction energy that plays an essential part and meets the inner desire of individuals in cities.

Escaping, adventuring, unproductive …all those characteristics expands the limits of both human body and everyday life have the potential meets other needs of individuals in cities.

As fact of the spontaneous activities always express the loosen control, instead traditional design of space express s the control, current movement such as Tactical Urbanism is the groups of designers who are seeking the new intervention towards old urban realm. In this trend, play is not only interesting phenomenons as results but also a powerful tool of urban interaction between individuals and the city itself that meets the ambiguous inner needs of people in cities of everyday life.

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Beyond Functional “The city must be a place of waste, for one wastes space and time; everything mustn't be foreseen and functional…the most beautiful cities were those where festivals were not planned in advance, but there was a space where they can unfold.“ —Lefebvre 1987

The urban population in 2014 accounted for 54% of the total global population, up from 34% in 1960, and continues to grow. The urban population growth, in absolute numbers, is concentrated in the less developed regions of the world. It is estimated that by 2017, even in less developed countries, a majority of people will be living in urban areas. The global urban population is expected to grow approximately 1.84% per year between 2015 and 2020, 1.63% per year between 2020 and 2025, and 1.44% per year between 2025 and 2030. (GHO1 data) Thus the city will be the place where major people spend almost their whole life.

A city is not only as „a large and permanent human settlement.“(Kuper, A. and Kuper, J) or “a relatively large, dense and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals “ (Wirth), but an inconstant dynamic process that contains the various interactions among individuals via everyday life, which make the city lively and attractive.

The multiple and complex reason that people are attracted to cities is shifted from the outcome of actions to the qualities to the experience itself. And the range of experience of everyday life is eager to newer, border, multiple and personal.

1 Global Health Observation data, from World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/gho/urban_health/situation_trends/ urban_population_growth_text/en/

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“An occasion to which the workers can devote himself of his own free will, outside of professional, familial and social needs and obligations, in order to relax, to be entertained or to become more cultivated“ —Lefebvre 1991

“…that city is both experienced instate of distraction and also distracts people from teleological actions and prescribed meaning.“ —Quentin Stevens

In the one hand people experience the city, interact with people and materials objects in city.Those experience action isn't only contain a typical action, moreover contains the emotion and actions.

On the other hand, the experience of individuals represent the material urban space in their mind, mass of those representative image of city together create a representational urban space.

Those representation of the city of individuals contain happy, fear, bored, angry, prejudice….various emotions and also further virtual imagination, all those affect the urban image. Is shows that people contains emotional and irrational needs beyond functional world of urban life. And somehow all those needs will be finally turn back to the material world.

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Figure 01. Onlookers peer at the archeological dig and planned museum site on the Rathaus square in downtown Cologne. (Alex Weisler)2

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http://www.jta.org/2011/08/07/news-opinion/world/with-52m-investment-german-city-banks-future-on-unearthing-jewish-past

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Figure 02. Tony hawk ollie the hydrants3 

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http://eridahuwofo.sourceforge.net/tony-hawk-ollie-the-hydrants.php

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Third Place “Oldenburg calls one's "first place" the home and those that one lives with. The "second place" is the workplace — where people may actually spend most of their time. Third places, then, are "anchors" of community life and facilitate and foster broader, more creative interaction.“ —Pete Myers

According to Oldenburg in The Great Good Place(1989,1991),the third place is a open leverler space, which the contains various participators no matter their different status, financially or others. The regulars are essential participators who help define the space, set the mood, give the space its unit tone,and also help new comers. Social activities here can be various but the casual mood and playful ambience is essential, which built playful feelings of people join inside it.

Public Space, at least literately, supposed open and accessed by public shall serve as part of third place for people in cities.

“the street with boundaries that separate interior and exterior, private from public space does not exist in hunting and gathering societies.

The compound of encampment or village itself, which seems to function as ’a field of interaction’, is not defined as a series of destinations in linear system…The absence of the street in circular villages appears to reflect no strongly felt need for boundaries between public and private behavior“ —Gloria Levitas

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Public space without public, interactions, activities can not been said as public space.

Social relationships in those actions are the essential of the public space, and through the process the space is been remade. Actions not ends, the remaking will never ends.

“The idea of public space have never been guaranteed. It has only been won through concerted struggle.“ —Mitchell 2003

„Public space is always in some sense, in a state of emergence, never complete and always contested.“ —Waston 2006

The reality seems different, even there are no security looking at people, people turns limits their own interactions in public space and behave ‚well‘.

“He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constrains of power; he makes them plays spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles, he becomes the principle of his subjection.“ —Michel Foucault

Outside the hierarchical organization of space, time and energy in current cities, there are space of uncertainty, which shows the virtual urban margins. The losing of control of those spaces make it the breeding bed and catalysts of multiple activities of everyday life. The ambience of loosing control reliefs the role that people plays in everyday life and unfold activities simultaneously.

In-between space, Left-over space, uncertain space, Strange space…

No matter how we call them, they always like the magic sand bunker full of possibilities in our childhood memories that we can build a world.

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Figure 03. Boy walking dog on the restricted sand dune

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Figure 04. Golf-playing bride party

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Play !

“Not only children but also adults increasingly want to use city as their playground. That’s why playful concepts of urban regeneration get more and more attention.“ —Joop de Boer

“Play is spontaneous and creative, a counterpoint to tedium and exploitation inherent in instrumental labor. It is the domain of freedom from compulsion“ —Gilloch 1996

“…escape is impossible, illusory, but this illusion in itself constitutes a perceptual and social reality. The concept of play embraces a variety of ways in which people test and transgress the limits of their social existence. In terms of play within the urban public realm…play means encounters with difference, encounters which contest the fragmentation and alienation of contemporary social experience“ —Lefebvre 1991

“The only success that can be conceived in play is that immediate success of its ambience“ —the Situationist International

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Agnes Heller in Everyday life suggests that everyday life have one of properties as Repetition. On the contrary , the beginning of unique in everyday life can be seen as innovation. In the space of uncertainty context, for example, the first one playing golf in park can be seen as kind of innovation, and the following similar actions just the repetition of these everyday life. Designers and artists always be seen the people to promote innovate actions and thoughts via reading the reality and having knowledge from everyday life but also upon everyday life by various ways.

Play can be the both the motivation and expression of innovation, and those space of uncertainty seems to be the stage for those various and diverse activities. Compared to the conventional process of spacial design, I tend to rough investigate how designers, artists, and other creative groups, in contemporary cities, intended to transform those space of uncertainty, also can be seen the virtual margin of cities, to be more fun and possibility for individuals in cities to explore more and extend their limits via playful actions and interactions.

Here I tend to focus on the solutions of designers, artists, other creative groups that intentionally transform uncertain spaces. And the solutions I attempt to abstract the playfulness as function and the spacial interaction that makes people have the possibility to extend limits of experiences. And evermore how this interaction affect and help create new social form in space.

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Architectural collective OH.NO.SUMO have tucked a miniature cinema into the steps of a building on a busy street in Auckland, New Zealand. OH.NO.SUMO designed the cinema in response to the lack of social interaction happening at the bus stops and launderettes on the corner.

Locals are invited to take a seat on the steps and watch a short film together rather than retreat into their mobile phones.The short films on show are continuously collected from recommendations shared through social media.

Adding an new playful function to a space, OH.NO.SUMO gives the space another form through interaction with people.

Figure 05. Model of Stairway Cinema

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13 Figure 06. Stairway Cinema