This paper explores how displays can be used to support human needs and activities in public spaces rather than be employed for commercial purposes only. Based on our analysis of screen usage around the world, eight different categories of usage are described and motivated. For the purpose of illustration, this paper discusses the results of a user study of BiebBeep, a touch screen application built to enhance the social and information function of a library.
This collection of articles contains contributions to the research project ‘From Prevention to Resilience’ (FPtP). In this project, the research team has generated insights and tools for designers, policymakers, and other professionals to contribute to more resilient cities and neighborhoods. The point of departure was public space as a site for intervention, while learning from the ongoing developments revolving around the Covid-19 pandemic. During the early phases of the pandemic, governments initially focused on preventing the virus from spreading. Public spaces came to be seen as potential places for contamination. In response, fences, markings, and barrier tapes were put into place to orchestrate people’s movement and promote physical distance. With our research project, we explored the role that public space could play besides such often ad hoc preventive measures. What other challenges can public space tackle with regard to the various shocks and stressors that hit cities and neighborhoods, now and in the future? And how to tackle these challenges in an integral way? An integral approach to designing public spaces involves many disciplines, and it is to a great extent dependent on local governments’ take on public spaces. To this end, we asked relevant experts to share their disciplinary reflections on a design perspective we have developed in the FPtP project, called Human / Non-Human Public Spaces. An earlier version of this design perspective was handed over to experts to provide feedback from an urban climate adaptation perspective and from a governance and cultural change perspective. Stephanie Erwin and Jeroen Kluck provide concrete feedback on the design perspective and offer a discussion in relation to the field of urban climate resilience. Alex Straathof offers an essayistic text in which he reflects on some of the key notions of the design perspective, reflecting on some of the key notions of the design perspective based on cultural theory and his experience with interventions on the neighborhood level. In parallel, we commissioned two independent experts in the field of spatial development and governance to make a preliminary analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on the government perspectives on public spaces. Both experts were given the same question, but they applied different methods. Hugo Verschoor Plug conducted an analysis on two national policy documents and six ‘omgevingsvisies’ – i.e., strategies on spatial planning and the environment – of large and middle-sized cities: Amsterdam, Breda, The Hague, Groningen, Rotterdam and Zwolle. Denise Vrolijk was asked to interview professionals from a cross-section of Dutch Cities in order to obtain their perspectives on how local governments viewed the role of public spaces in relation to resilience. Together, these analyses provide an overview of the current state of affairs in public space and urban resilience. We thank the authors for sharing their expertise and insights and thereby contribute to the FPtR project. This project is funded by The Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), part of the subsidy round ‘COVID 19: Maatschappelijke Dynamiek’, project nr. 10430032010029.
MULTIFILE
Designing cities that are socially sustainable has been a significant challenge until today. Lately, European Commission’s research agenda of Industy 5.0 has prioritised a sustainable, human-centric and resilient development over merely pursuing efficiency and productivity in societal transitions. The focus has been on searching for sustainable solutions to societal challenges, engaging part of the design industry. In architecture and urban design, whose common goal is to create a condition for human life, much effort was put into elevating the engineering process of physical space, making it more efficient. However, the natural process of social evolution has not been given priority in urban and architectural research on sustainable design. STEPS stems from the common interest of the project partners in accessible, diverse, and progressive public spaces, which is vital to socially sustainable urban development. The primary challenge lies in how to synthesise the standardised sustainable design techniques with unique social values of public space, propelling a transition from technical sustainability to social sustainability. Although a large number of social-oriented studies in urban design have been published in the academic domain, principles and guidelines that can be applied to practice are large missing. How can we generate operative principles guiding public space analysis and design to explore and achieve the social condition of sustainability, developing transferable ways of utilising research knowledge in design? STEPS will develop a design catalogue with operative principles guiding public space analysis and design. This will help designers apply cross-domain knowledge of social sustainability in practice.
Fashion has become inextricably linked with digital culture. Digital media have opened up new spaces of fashion consumption that are unprecedented in their levels of ubiquity, immersion, fluidity, and interactivity. The virtual realm continuously needs us to design and communicate our identity online. Unfortunately, the current landscape of digitised fashion practices seems to lack the type of self-governing attitude and urgency that is needed to move beyond commercially mandated platforms and systems that effectively diminish our digital agency. As transformative power seems to be the promise of the virtual, there is an inherent need to critically assess how digital representation of fashion manifests online, especially when these representations become key mediators within our collective and individual public construction of self. A number of collectives and practitioners that actively shape a counter movement, organized bottom up rather than through capital, are questioning this interdependence, applying inverted thinking and experimenting with alternative modes of engagement. Starting from the research question ‘How can critical fashion practitioners introduce and amplify digital agency within fashion’s virtual landscape through new strategies of aesthetic engagement?’, this project investigates the implications of fashion’s increasing shift towards the virtual realm and the ramifications created for digital agency. It centers on how identity is understood in the digital era, whether subjects have full agency while expected to construct multiple selves, and how online environments that enact as playgrounds for our identities might attribute to a distorted sense of self. By using the field of critical fashion as its site, and the rapidly expanding frontier of digital counter practices as a lens, the aim of this project is to contribute to larger changes within an increasingly global and digital society, such as new modes of consumerism, capital and cultural value.
Sinds de corona reset wordt in de culturele en creatieve sector volop geïnnoveerd om tijdelijke sluitingen en financiële verliezen te compenseren. Aanbieders van hoogwaardige culturele programma’s, zoals presentatie-instellingen en zelforganiserende collectieven, coördineren in hoog tempo digitale expositieruimtes, livestreams en online debatten, waarmee ze hun bestaande (offline en lokale) en nieuwe (online en mondiale) publiek bedienen. Soms ook tegelijkertijd, in een hybride evenement; met een beperkt live publiek én een onbeperkt aantal online bezoekers. Hoe zorgen zij dat beide groepen bij deze livecastings een gelijkwaardige ervaring hebben? En hoe benutten ze de potentie van dit opgenomen materiaal voor publicatie en blijvende publieksinteractie in hun digitaal (web)archief? Ad hoc coronaoplossingen behoeven nu toekomstbestendige doorontwikkeling. Met MKB’ers ontwikkelen we een langetermijnvisie op off/online kennisdeling van hun culturele aanbod, op voorwaarden van duurzaamheid en technologische onafhankelijkheid in het beheer en de data-opslag van hun gepubliceerde materiaal. Verregaande digitalisering en klimaatoverwegingen geven namelijk naast corona urgentie aan een visie op hybride programmering. In het onderzoek worden werkende principes ontwikkeld voor een langetermijnvisie op een hybride en kwalitatief hoogwaardig programma-aanbod, met het oog op het bedienen van nieuw en bestaand publiek na de corona reset, via participatieve livecasts van evenementen, de samenhangende verslaglegging daarvan middels publicaties die uiteindelijk in levende archieven te komen: Om het knelpunt van ‘schermmoeheid’ bij eindgebruikers van programma-aanbod te voorkomen, ontwikkelen we werkende principes in het oplossingsgebied ‘participatieve livecasting’, om de succespijler ‘gezamenlijke publiekservaring bij online evenementen’ te bewerkstelligen. Om het knelpunt van ‘gefragmenteerde informatievoorziening’ bij programma-aanbieders te voorkomen, ontwikkelen we werkende principes in het oplossingsgebied ‘hybride publicaties’, om de succespijler ‘samenhang in off/online programma-aanbod’ te bewerkstelligen. Om het knelpunt van een ‘reactieve houding’ bij programma-aanbieders te voorkomen, ontwikkelen we werkende principes in het oplossingsgebied ‘levende archieven’, om de succespijler van een ‘anticiperende houding in de werkwijze van programma-aanbieders’ te bewerkstelligen.
