Public installations or how to reclaim our rights as citizens

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 97-106
Author(s):  
Rana Haddad
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Public Places ◽  
American University ◽  
American University Of Beirut ◽  
Human Scale ◽  
The People ◽  
The Face ◽  
Art And Architecture ◽  
The City

This article focuses on the importance of reclaiming our rights as citizens and our public spaces by documenting two different public installations/performances that took place in Beirut. The first took place in Spring 2018 and was organized by BePublic Lab at the American University of Beirut, and the second was the Architectural Association Visiting School that took place in Beirut in Summer 2019. Both installations led to a series of interventions on the stretch between Gemmayzeh and Mar Mikhael, an area that has been witnessing gentrification in recent years. Both projects aim to trigger political engagement and raise public awareness in the face of the lack of public space, especially for the youth, in a city that is gradually moving towards a near total privatization of its public places. They emerged as a response to the sociopolitical strategies of depriving the citizens of their basic needs by privatizing what was once everyone’s. This article argues that urban interventions are an opportunity to address sociopolitical issues through spatial and temporal public installations. These installations, tailored to a human scale and anchored in the city as both art and architecture, reflect on the power of public interventions as urban catalytic tactics that engage with the people and challenge the blasé attitude of the citizens, pushing them to claim their rights to the city.

Ephemeral venues: Architectural illustrations and depictions of the masses in Perón’s ‘New Argentina’

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigi Patruno
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Urban Culture ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Masses ◽  
The City

During the Peronist years (1943‐55), architect Jorge Sabaté designed several exhibitions and ephemeral installations to be erected in the central streets of Buenos Aires. These interventions were aimed at transforming the face of the city, repurposing its spaces for unprecedented uses and expressing the right ‘the people’ had gained to free time, outings and leisure. In this article, I examine the architectural illustrations that Sabaté appended to the rest of his plans. The incorporation into his drawings of the social practices of metropolitan strolling is one of the ways in which the Peronist exhibitions designed by Sabaté relate to urban culture. By staging the masses in these materials, Sabaté proposes a whole new form of conviviality in public space and depicts the popular sectors aspiring to a new lifestyle made possible by the intersection of technological progress and expanded access to consumer goods.

MURAL, KEKUATAN MODAL, DAN MASYARAKAT

DeKaVe ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Akbar Annasher
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Communication Media ◽  
Mural Painting ◽  
The People ◽  
The Media ◽  
Mural Art ◽  
The City ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Special Region

Broadly speaking, this paper discusses the phenomenon of murals that are now spread in Yogyakarta Special Region, especially the city of Yogyakarta. Mural painting is an art with a media wall that has the elements of communication, so the mural is also referred to as the art of visual communication. Media is a media wall closest to the community, because the distance between the media with the audience is not limited by anything, direct and open, so the mural is often used as media to convey ideas, the idea of ??community, also called the media the voice of the people. Location of mural art in situations of public spatial proved inviting the owners of capital to use such means, in this case is the mural. Manufacturers of various products began racing the race to put on this wall media, as time goes by without realizing the essence of the actual mural art was forced to turn to the commercial essence, the only benefit some parties only, the power of public spaces gradually occupied by the owners of capital, they hopes that the community can view the contents of messages and can obtain information for the products offered. it brings motivation and cognitive and affective simultaneously in the community.Keywords: Mural, Public Space, and Society.

scholarly journals Placemaking in Arab Cities. Realities, Challenges, and Prospects

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Place Branding ◽  
Core Component ◽  
Public Places ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Inclusive Approach ◽  
Distinct Sense ◽  
Urban Conditions ◽  
The City

Placemaking is an inclusive approach to the planning, design, and management of public places by which people create and/or recreate places. In the context of the Arab cities, placemaking projects are often envisaged to transform communities’ spaces into lively and attractive places; to enhance quality of life and opportunity for existing residents. It also aims to (re)create a distinct sense of place or place branding at large. Exploring how contemporary Arab cities have framed placemaking processes within the contemporary urban conditions, and sometimes the threats to the quality of the city, are helping in creating healthier, equitable, and humane public places. Such challenges and opportunities of these processes is a core component of this special edition of The Journal of Public Space, which discusses various aspects of placemaking in Arab Cities, ranges from creating, enhancing, adapting and developing attractive and efficient public places in Arab Cities. In this context, academic papers and viewpoints have manifested a variety of perspectives, theories and practices of placemaking concepts, methods, recent challenges and possible solutions. They portrayed several tools on establishing and revitalizing public places starting from governmental toolkits, reaching unplanned activities fostering community engagement in placemaking.

scholarly journals Double P! Public Spaces in Dubai: a Paranoiac Panopticon

2020 ◽  
pp. 247-262
Author(s):  
Therese Chidiac
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Design Guidelines ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Cultural Images ◽  
Human Scale ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
Back Stage ◽  
The City

Despite the crisis of the metaphoric growth of its superficiality to its deadening sterility, Dubai stands as an attractive destination in the desert simulating a collage of cultural images from around the world with a centrally-planned free market capitalism attracting investors and developers. This paper is part of my master in architecture thesis at Politecnico di Milano titled: 5km/hr Manifesto and it outlines the problematical aspect of Dubai DNA: Dubai public spaces. The city is metaphorically analysed, as a collage city of exogenous fragments and a system city resembling a biological cell with defects in it’s the so-called public spaces that are designed as a model of a virtual panopticon of social surveillance forged by a set of do’s and don’ts. Built up rapidly over the past few years on the wealth gotten from oil, public spaces in Dubai have no depth of history or indigenous culture, no complexity, no conflicts, no doubts, nothing to stand in the way of its being shaped into the ultimate wonderland. The Arab notion of public has been dramatically ignored in the planning of the city and has been replaced with a collage of regulated western modernist spaces that have failed to create pockets of interaction and communication bringing in mind a problematical situation and an utopic question: How to demystify the panopticon effect and make Dubai more liveable? This leads to the recall of the qualities of the endogenous Arabic Public Space: The Souk. A set of characteristics has been concluded and if integrated, might really change Dubai public spaces from a paranoic panopticon to a more liveable space. Enclosure and privacy, human scale and density, the stage and back stage effect were essential conditions in the souk and are elaborated in this paper presenting a set of new design guidelines for claiming back what is supposed to be public and might develop into further future research.

scholarly journals Contestations for urban space: informality and institutions of disenfranchisement in Zimbabwe—the case of Masvingo City

GeoJournal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 85 (5) ◽  
pp. 1277-1289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chigwenya Average
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Informal Sector ◽  
Global South ◽  
Main Stream ◽  
Development Agenda ◽  
The People ◽  
The Face ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
The City

Abstract Informality has been viewed as the seedbed for economic development especially in the cities of the global South and many cities have been trying to integrate this sector for economic development. The sector has been seen as the option for economic development in cities of the global South in the face of dwindling resources for economic development. However, the development and growth of informal activities in some of these cities have been stunted by institutional reforms that have taken so long to accommodate such activities. Most of the cities have acknowledged the need to integrate informality in their economies but they have remained illusioned by the neo-liberal urbanisation policies that have kept the informal activities on the periphery of the development agenda. As a result the role of informal sector in economic development in cities of the global South has not been fully realised. The study was taken to examine the institutional impediments in the growth of informal activities in the city of Masvingo, to see how the laws and policies of the city have been applied for the integration of informal sector in the main stream economy. The research found out that there are institutionalised systems that disenfranchise the informal sector in the city of Masvingo. These institutions include the planning approach and the way the city has been practicing their planning. These two institutions have been the chief disenfranchising instruments that have denied the people in the informal sector their right to the city. The research utilised a mixed methods approach to the inquiry, where both qualitative and quantitative data were used. The research found that there is space for informal integration in the city of Masvingo, but the existing regulatory framework is stifling the growth and development of the informal sector in the city of Masvingo. There is therefore need for the city to be flexible enough to embrace the realities of the city, because informality is really the new form of urbanisation in cities of the global South.

scholarly journals Letters From Beirut

1970 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura U. Marks
Keyword(s):  
Small Country ◽  
International Media ◽  
American University ◽  
American University Of Beirut ◽  
The City ◽  
Israeli Soldiers

In summer 2006 I returned to Lebanon for a third time. I had lived in Beirut for almost a year in 2002–2003, during which time I fell in love with the city, as so many people do—the generosity, resilience and joie de vivre of so many Lebanese people, the lively artistic scene, the intensity with which so many historical and international forces cross this small country. I built strong friendships then. I returned in 2004, and again in June 2006, this time to study Arabic at the American University of Beirut. On 14 July, in response to Hizballah’s action of taking two Israeli soldiers hostage and shooting across the Lebanese–Israeli border, Israel began an intense bombardment of Lebanese infrastructure, starting with the airport, as well as places where Hizballah supporters lived. A privileged outsider waiting to be evacuated, I was also helpless, afraid, and furious at the pro-Israeli tone of the international media. So I wrote daily letters to family, friends, and a growing email list of interested people. This is an edited version.

The Virgin Mary and the People of Liguria: Image and Cult

2004 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 280-297
Author(s):  
Jane Garnett ◽  
Gervase Rosser
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Local Church ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Corpus Christi ◽  
The People ◽  
The Face ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

We begin with an image, and a story. Explanation will emerge from what follows. Figure 1 depicts a huge wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, once the figurehead on the prow of a ship, but now on the high altar of the church of Saints Vittore and Carlo in Genoa, and venerated as Nostra Signora della Fortuna. On the night of 16-17 January 1636 a violent storm struck the port of Genoa. Many ships were wrecked. Among them was one called the Madonna della Pieta, which had the Virgin as its figurehead. A group of Genoese sailors bought this image as part of the salvage washed up from the sea. First setting it up under a votive painting of the Virgin in the harbour, they repaired it, had it repainted, and on the eve of Corpus Christi brought it to the church of San Vittore, close by the port. A famous blind song-writer was commissioned to write a song in honour of the image. Sailors and groups of young girls went through the streets of the city singing and collecting gifts. The statue became at once the focus of an extraordinary popular cult, thousands of people arriving day and night with candles, silver crowns, necklaces, and crosses in gratitude for the graces which had immediately begun to be granted. Volleys of mortars were let off in celebration. The affair was managed by the sailors who, in the face of mounting criticism and anxiety from local church leaders, directed devotions and even conducted exorcisms before the image. To stem the gathering tide of visitors and claims of miracles, and to try to establish control, the higher clergy first questioned the identity of the statue (some held it to represent, not the Virgin, but the Queen of England); then the statue was walled up; finally the church was closed altogether. Still, devotees climbed into the church, and large-scale demonstrations of protest were held. The archbishop instituted a process of investigation, in the course of which many eye-witnesses and people who claimed to have experienced miracles were interviewed (giving, in the surviving manuscript, rich detail of their responses to the image). Eventually the prohibition was lifted, and from 1637 until well into the twentieth century devotion to Nostra Signora della Fortuna remained strong, with frequent miracles or graces being recorded. So here we have a cult focused on an image of secular origin, transformed by the promotion of the sailors into a devotional object which roused the enthusiasm of thousands of lay people. It was a cult which, significantly, sprang up at a time of unrest in the city of Genoa, and which thus focused pressing issues of authority. The late 163os witnessed growing tension between factions of ‘old’ and ‘new’ nobility, the latter being marked by their hostility to the traditional Genoese Spanish alliance. Hostilities were played out both within the Senate and in clashes in the streets of the city. The cult of Nostra Signora della Fortuna grew up in this context, but survived and developed in subsequent centuries, attracting devotion from all over Italy.

scholarly journals Perceptions of Local Communities on Water Quality in Pagbanganan River, Baybay City, Leyte

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eunice Kenee Labonite ◽  
◽  
Moises Neil Seriño ◽  
Beatriz Belonias ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
River System ◽  
Biological Resources ◽  
Quality Issue ◽  
The People ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City ◽  
Superstitious Beliefs ◽  
Water Quality Issue

Pagbanganan River is a river system that traverses several barangays in the city of Baybay. The river is important to the communities because of its various ecological uses. At this time, however, it is facing major threats which affect its water quality. This study was conducted to find out how the people living near the river utilize the water resources and to determine some economically important biological resources derived from the river. River-related problems, tradtional practices, superstitious beliefs and their perception on water quality were assessed. Personal interviews were conducted to gather data on household charateristics, water usage and assessment of water quality. The communities residing near the river for food and other services. Fish, shrimps, crabs and snails are among the many biological resources derived from the river. Most residents considered the river as important to them. Respondents generally believed that the river's water quality has been slowly deterioration. Overall findings suggest the need to raise public awareness on water quality issue to increase people's understanding and encourage them to adopt practices that can sustain the river's health.

scholarly journals Reviewing Premises on Public Spaces in Democratic, Inclusive, Agential Cities, Illustrated by Amsterdam

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-144
Author(s):  
Maurice Harteveld
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
General View ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The People ◽  
Municipal Autonomy ◽  
The City ◽  
Global Travel

This article highlights the dynamics of values in our reasoning on public space. By means of an epistemological study, illustrated by examples in the Dutch city of Amsterdam, it tests the contemporary premises underlying our ways to safeguard the inclusive, democratic, agential city, and, as such, it aims to update our view on public space. The article raises three subsequent main questions: [i] Is the city our common house as perceived from the Renaissance onward, containing all, and consequently are public spaces used by the people as a whole? [ii] Is the city formalising our municipal autonomy as emphasised since the Enlightenment, in an anti-egoistic manner, and in this line, are public spaces owned by local governments representing the people? And, [iii] is the city open to our general view as advocated in Modern reasoning, restricting entrepreneurial influences, and synchronically, is its public spaces seen and/or known by everyone? - Inclusiveness, democracy, and agentiality are strongholds in our scientific thinking on public space and each issue echoes through in an aim to keep cities connected and accessible, fair and vital, and open and social. Yet, conflicts appear between generally-accepted definitions and what we see in the city. Primarily based upon confronting philosophy with the Amsterdam case for this matter, the answering of questions generates remarks on this aim. Contemporary Western illuminations on pro-active citizens, participatory societies, and effects of among others global travel, migration, social media and micro-blogging forecast a more differentiated image of public space and surmise to enforce diversification in our value framework in urban theory and praxis.

scholarly journals Perancangan Komik 360 sebagai Media Informasi tentang Pelecehan Seksual Cat Calling

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (01) ◽  
pp. 14-24
Author(s):  
Benedicta Alodia Santoso ◽  
Michael Bezaleel
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Public Places ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Facilities ◽  
High Level ◽  
Video Format ◽  
Space Result

AbstrakPerancangan komik 360 sebagai media informasi tentang pelecehan seksual “cat calling” bertujuan untuk menyampaikan informasi kepada masyarakat tentang isu pelecehan seksual secara verbal berupa cat calling serta bertujuan untuk meningkatkan kepekaan masyarakat tentang kejadian yang dihadapi oleh perempuan di jalanan serta tempat umum berkaitan dengan isu ini. Adapun yang menjadi latar belakang tulisan ini adalah karena tingginya tingkat pelecehan seksual secara verbal yang dialami oleh perempuan, sehingga dibutuhkan sebuah media informasi yang dapat memberi informasi dan gambaran tentang isu ini sehingga kesadaran masyarakat dapat meningkat. Komik 360 pada penelitian ini menggabungkan teknologi virtual reality dengan format video 360 dan gaya gambar komik, sehingga dapat menjadi media informasi yang menarik untuk menyajikan realitas yang dihadapi oleh perempuan dalam kesehariannya menggunakan fasilitas umum. Perancangan ini diharapkan dapat meningkatkan kepekaan masyarakat berkaitan dengan isu ini sehingga di masa depan perempuan dapat merasa lebih aman dan terhindar dari pelecehan seksual cat calling di jalan maupun fasilitas umum. Hasil dari penelitian ini menunjukan bahwa hasil perancangan dapat dijadikan sebagai salah satu media informasi tentang pelecehan seksual cat calling. Kata Kunci: cat calling, komik 360, seksual  AbstractThe aims of 360 Comic as a medium of information for cat calling sexual harassment are to convey information to the public about verbal sexual abuse issue and increasing public sensitivity about the incidents that happens to women in streets and public places. The background of this study is due to the high level of verbal sexual abuse that is experienced by women. There should be a media that can provide information about this issue to increase public awareness. 360 Comic in this research combined 360 virtual reality video format and comic images style. This research can be an interesting media to present the reality that women faced in their daily activities at public facilities. This research is expected to increase the public awareness and women safety in street and public space. Result of the research shows that the comic 360 is able to become an information media about cat calling. Keywords: cat calling, 360 comic, sexual

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