Temporary Art Platform and the Reconfiguration of the Public Space in Beirut

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-242
Author(s):  
Carlos Garrido Castellano
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Art ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Art Activism ◽  
The Public ◽  
Civic Agency

Abstract The main objective of this article is to understand the ways in which Lebanese artists are dealing with issues of normativity and legibility while operating in public spaces. By looking at the work developed by Temporary Art Platform (TAP) during the last ten years, I argue that public art has been crucial in the production of alternative understandings of civic agency and the public space. Simultaneously, by looking at A Few Things You Need to Know When Creating an Art Project in a Public Space in Lebanon, a toolkit designed by TAP in 2014, I intend to problematize the lexicon and strategies that are usually associated with understanding art activism, both as forcefully contextual and provisional.

scholarly journals Graffiti as a communication tool in public space: the case of Beyoğlu, Yüksek Kaldırım StreetKamusal mekânda iletişim aracı olarak grafiti: Beyoğlu, Yüksek Kaldırım Sokağı örneği

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Gizem Erdoğan
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Art ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Communication Tool ◽  
Functional Characteristics ◽  
Functional Roles ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Responses

The term of Graffiti originated from Greek graphein can be explained simply as a critical expression including social-cultural and political responses to opposing ideologies in urban public spaces. The aim of this study to asses the concept of graffiti in the context of public space–public art with respect to the urbanism and also, examine its spatial and functional roles in urban public spaces as a communication tool.These examinations are focused on the debates over the public spaces, theirs individual usability and also theirs spatial and functional impacts on social and cultural life.It is considered that this study contributes to define both spatial and functional characteristics of graffiti phenomen as a social commnunication tool in within the the context of the public space and public art. ÖzetAntik Yunanda yazmak filline köklenen Grafiti olgusu, yaygın ideolojik düşüncenin karşısında sosyal-kültürel ve politik içerikli muhalif ifade biçiminin mekânsal düzlemde yansıması olarak ifade edilebilir. Bu araştırmanın amacı; kamusal mekân–kamusal sanat bağlamında grafiti olgusunun kent bilim alanı açısından değerlendirilerek, bireysel temsiliyet kavramı temelinde iletişim aracı olarak mekansal ve işlevsel rolünün sorgulanmasıdır. Bu sorgulamalar; kamusal mekân kavramının sosyal yaşam ve birey üzerindeki yansımalarının belirlenmesi, bireylerin kamusal mekânlar üzerindeki mekânsal–işlevsel etkilerinin ortaya konulması ve kamusal mekân kullanımının tartışılmasına dayanmaktadır. Bu yönüyle, araştırmanın “kamusal mekân” ve “kamusal sanat” bağlamında grafiti olgusunun sosyal iletişim aracı olarak mekânsal ve işlevsel karakteristiğinin tanımlanmasına katkı koyacağı düşünülmektedir.

‘Party in the street’: The partisan politics of space

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
David Jenkins ◽  
Lipin Ram
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
State Power ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Public space is often understood as an important ‘node’ of the public sphere. Typically, theorists of public space argue that it is through the trust, civility and openness to others which citizens cultivate within a democracy’s public spaces, that they learn how to relate to one another as fellow members of a shared polity. However, such theorizing fails to articulate how these democratic comportments learned within public spaces relate to the public sphere’s purported role in holding state power to account. In this paper, we examine the ways in which what we call ‘partisan interventions’ into public space can correct for this gap. Using the example of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM), we argue that the ways in which CPIM partisans actively cultivate sites of historical regional importance – such as in the village of Kayyur – should be understood as an aspect of the party’s more general concern to present itself to citizens as an agent both capable and worthy of wielding state power. Drawing on histories of supreme partisan contribution and sacrifice, the party influences the ideational background – in competition with other parties – against which it stakes its claims to democratic legitimacy. In contrast to those theorizations of public space that celebrate its separateness from the institutions of formal democratic politics and the state more broadly, the CPIM’s partisan interventions demonstrate how parties’ locations at the intersections of the state and civil society can connect the public sphere to its task of holding state power to account, thereby bringing the explicitly political questions of democratic legitimacy into the everyday spaces of a political community.

scholarly journals Activating Data through Eco-Didactic Design in the Public Realm: Enabling Sustainable Development in Cities

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4577
Author(s):  
Carmela Cucuzzella ◽  
Morteza Hazbei ◽  
Sherif Goubran
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Knowledge Exchange ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Design Data ◽  
Art And Design ◽  
The Public ◽  
Community Based Design ◽  
The City

This paper explores how design in the public realm can integrate city data to help disseminate the information embedded within it and provide urban opportunities for knowledge exchange. The hypothesis is that such art and design practices in public spaces, as places of knowledge exchange, may enable more sustainable communities and cities through the visualization of data. To achieve this, we developed a methodology to compare various design approaches for integrating three main elements in public-space design projects: city data, specific issues of sustainability, and varying methods for activating the data. To test this methodology, we applied it to a pedogeological project where students were required to render city data visible. We analyze the proposals presented by the young designers to understand their approaches to design, data, and education. We study how they “educate” and “dialogue” with the community about sustainable issues. Specifically, the research attempts to answer the following questions: (1) How can we use data in the design of public spaces as a means for sustainability knowledge exchange in the city? (2) How can community-based design contribute to innovative data collection and dissemination for advancing sustainability in the city? (3) What are the overlaps between the projects’ intended impacts and the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Our findings suggest that there is a need for such creative practices, as they make information available to the community, using unconventional methods. Furthermore, more research is needed to better understand the short- and long-term outcomes of these works in the public realm.

Reconceptualizing the Public Spaces of New Urban Areas in Hanoi: The End or the New of Public-Making?

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Minh-Tung Tran ◽  
◽  
Tien-Hau Phan ◽  
Ngoc-Huyen Chu ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Public ◽  
Doi Moi ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Neighborhood Level

Public spaces are designed and managed in many different ways. In Hanoi, after the Doi moi policy in 1986, the transfer of the public spaces creation at the neighborhood-level to the private sector has prospered na-ture of public and added a large amount of public space for the city, directly impacting on citizen's daily life, creating a new trend, new concept of public spaces. This article looks forward to understanding the public spaces-making and operating in KDTMs (Khu Do Thi Moi - new urban areas) in Hanoi to answer the question of whether ‘socialization’/privatization of these public spaces will put an end to the urban public or the new means of public-making trend. Based on the comparison and literature review of studies in the world on public spaces privatization with domestic studies to see the differences in the Vietnamese context leading to differences in definitions and roles and the concept of public spaces in KDTMs of Hanoi. Through adducing and analyzing practical cases, the article also mentions the trends, the issues, the ways and the technologies of public-making and public-spaces-making in KDTMs of Hanoi. Win/loss and the relationship of the three most important influential actors in this process (municipality, KDTM owners, inhabitants/citizens) is also considered to reconceptualize the public spaces of KDTMs in Hanoi.

scholarly journals Using Virtual Soundwalk Approach for Assessing Sound Art Soundscape Interventions in Public Spaces

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 2102
Author(s):  
Tin Oberman ◽  
Kristian Jambrošić ◽  
Marko Horvat ◽  
Bojana Bojanić Obad Šćitaroci
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Subjective Responses ◽  
The Public ◽  
First Order ◽  
Sound Source Identification ◽  
Acoustic Environments ◽  
Positive Effect

This paper discusses the soundscape assessment approaches to soundscape interventions with musical features introduced to public spaces as permanent sound art, with a focus on the ISO 12913 series, Method A for data collection applied in a laboratory study. Three soundscape interventions in three cities are investigated. The virtual soundwalk is used to combine the benefits of the on-site and laboratory settings. Two measurement points per location were recorded—one at a position where the intervention was clearly perceptible, the other further away to serve as a baseline condition. The participants (N = 44) were exposed to acoustic environments (N = 6) recorded using the first-order Ambisonics microphone on-site and then reproduced via the second-order Ambisonics system in laboratory. A series of rank-based Kruskal–Wallis tests were performed on the results of the subjective responses. Results revealed a statistically significant positive effect on soundscape at two locations, and limitations related to sound source identification due to cultural factors and geometrical configuration of the public space at one location.

scholarly journals Simulation, Control and Desire. Urban Commons and Semi-Public Space Resilience in the Age of Augmented Transductive Territorial Production

2019 ◽  
pp. 179-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfredo Manfredini
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
External Control ◽  
The Public ◽  
Spatial Production ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right ◽  
Urban Commons

Considering place-based participation a crucial factor for the development of sustainable and resilient cities in the post-digital turn age, this paper addresses the socio-spatial implications of the recent transformation of relationality networks. To understand the drivers of spatial claims emerged in conditions of digitally augmented spectacle and simulation, it focuses on changes occurring in key nodes of central urban public and semi-public spaces of rapidly developing cities. Firstly, it proposes a theoretical framework for the analysis of problems related to socio-spatial fragmentation, polarisation and segregation of urban commons subject to external control. Secondly, it discusses opportunities and criticalities emerging from a representational paradox depending on the ambivalence in the play of desire found in digitally augmented semi-public spaces. The discussion is structured to shed light on specific socio-spatial relational practices that counteract the dissipation of the “common worlds” caused by sustained processes of urban gentrification and homogenisation. The theoretical framework is developed from a comparative critical urbanism approach inspired by the right to the city and the right to difference, and elaborates on the discourse on sustainable development that informs the United Nations’ New Urban Agenda. The analysis focuses on how digitally augmented geographies reintroduce practices of participation and commoning that reassemble fragmented relational infrastructures and recombine translocal social, cultural and material elements. Empirical studies on the production of advanced simulative and transductive spatialities in places of enhanced consumption found in Auckland, New Zealand, ground the discussion. These provide evidence of the extent to which the agency of the augmented territorialisation forces reconstitutes inclusive and participatory systems of relationality. The concluding notes, speculating on the emancipatory potential found in these social laboratories, are a call for a radical redefinition of the approach to the problem of the urban commons. Such a change would improve the capacity of urbanism disciplines to adequately engage with the digital turn and efficaciously contribute to a maximally different spatial production that enhances and strengthens democracy and pluralism in the public sphere.

scholarly journals Post-pandemic scenarios and design strategies for public spaces transformation

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Galluzo ◽  
Ambra Borin
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
Inclusive Development ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Collective Interest ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
Urban Transformations

Almost two years later of a pandemic condition, one thing is sure: the pandemic will change permanently the world and its systems. Nowadays, the reflection on public space is crucial within a more sustainable and inclusive development at urban scale, amplified also by the ongoing experience of the pandemic that still presents. Public space is a real opportunity to test new urban and social models, thus becoming a principal catalyst for positive changes in the entire urban context. It is therefore necessary to re-establish a relationship between the public space and its inhabitants, providing a system of proximity by highlighting the human and non-human dimensions and consequently connecting services, relationships, and opportunities. Acting in public space is the first step in the development of innovative urban transformations, generated by collaborative phenomena working in the collective interest. The use of participatory practices within the design processes favors the reconnection between people and territory, generating a shared sense of belonging that leads to taking care of one's own places. The reversibility of the intervention and its adaptability are key characteristics that allow experimenting with new ways of experiencing public spaces and responding to unforeseen experiences, thus accommodating the inevitable changes in society. This scientific contribution aims to set forward distinctive points of view on the planning strategies implemented in the pandemic and post-pandemic period to achieve intelligent transformations on a small and large urban scale with an impact from short to long-term; hence shaping the future cities.

scholarly journals NYC POPS: Exploring Human Agency of the Public Sphere

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Anna Constable
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Privately Owned

<p>This thesis aims to investigate, through design, spatial agency within the realm of New York City’s Privately Owned Public Spaces. The notion of agency in architecture is directly linked to social and political power. Starting in 1961, New York’s city planners introduced an incentive zoning scheme (POPS) which encouraged private builders to include public spaces in their developments. Many are in active public use, but others are hard to find, under surveillance, or essentially inaccessible. Within the existing POPS sites, tension is current between the ideals of public space - completely open, accessible - and the limitations imposed by those who create and control it. Designed to be singular, contained, and mono-functional, POPS do not yet allow for newer ideas of public space as multi-functional, not contained/bounded but extending and overlapping outward.  As public-private partnerships become the model for catalyzing urban (re)development in the late 20th century, bonus space is an increasingly common land use type in major cities across the world. The quality and nature of bonus spaces created in exchange for floor area bonuses varies greatly. In many cases, tensions in privately owned space produce a severely constricted definition of the public and public life. Incentive zoning programmes continue to serve as a model for numerous urban zoning regulations, so changing ideas of public space and its design need to be tested in such spaces.  These urban plazas offer a test case through which to examine agency, exploring how social space is also political space, charged with the dynamics of power/ empowerment, interaction/ isolation, control/ freedom. This thesis looks at one such site, the connecting plaza sites along Sixth Avenue between West 47th St and West 51st St. This is an extreme example of concentrated POPS sites in New York City. Here one’s perception and occupation of space is profoundly affected by the underlying design of that space which reflects its private ownership. Privately Owned Public Space can be designed that is capable of/ challenging the notion of the public in public space, and modifying the structure of the city and its social life.</p>

scholarly journals Possibilities to Apply the Urban Acupuncture Concept in Kaunas: Social Aspect

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 18-27
Author(s):  
Aurelija Daugelaite ◽  
Indre Gražulevičiūte-Vileniške ◽  
Mantas Landauskas
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Art ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Ecological Design ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The City

The concept of urban acupuncture, which has been gaining ground in recent decades, is based on the activation and revitalization of urban environments using small architectural or landscape architectural interventions in precise carefully selected locations of urban fabric. However, the rapid and unexpected design solutions of urban acupuncture, based on ecological design, nature dynamics, street art, material re-use, can cause different social and psychological reactions of urban population and these reactions may vary depending on cultural contexts. Consequently, in order to implement successful urban acupuncture projects in Lithuanian cities, it is very important to find out public opinion and priorities in the fields of public space management, aesthetics, and public art. The aim of the research was to analyze the opinion of Kaunas city residents regarding these issues. For this purpose, a sociological questionnaire survey was used. The questionnaire containing 20 questions was designed, with the aim to find out the trends of use of public spaces in the city, the attitudes of residents towards street art and other small-scale initiatives in public spaces implemented in the recent years, possibilities of creating landscape architecture based on ecological ideas in urban environment, the attitude of inhabitants towards community spaces and community space design in the city, etc. 100 residents of Kaunas participated in this online administered survey. The survey has demonstrated general positive attitude towards contemporary design trends of public spaces and public art; however, the surveyed population expressed preferences towards fully equipped public spaces offering possibilities for a wide range of activities.

scholarly journals Recovery of residual public spaces to improve the quality of life of the inhabitants of San Borja, Lima

2021 ◽  
Vol 2089 (1) ◽  
pp. 012051
Author(s):  
O Facho ◽  
T Cama ◽  
D Esenarro ◽  
J Livia ◽  
C Cuetoand ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Public Places ◽  
The Public ◽  
Phase Study

Abstract The present research aims to propose a model for the recovery of residual public spaces to improve the quality of life of the district of San Borja’s inhabitants. San Borja is in the process of densification and requires a more significant number of public spaces that offer, in addition to vegetation, public places for active and passive recreation, such as spaces for sports and games, walking pets, and relaxation. These needs have increased due to the confinement caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, it was noted that the median strip, or central reservation of the avenue, can be recovered for people to use. Therefore, a four-phase study was carried out that included reviewing the literature and observing two cases. In conclusion, a model was proposed to recover the public space of the median strips of San Borja Norte Avenue and San Borja Sur Avenue to improve the quality of life of the inhabitants of San Borja, which can be replicated in other avenues with residual spaces with similar characteristics.

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