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"public space" Tag


Problematic relationship between humans and nature


Saturday, May 25, 2019

I browsed the design blog with a photographer’s eye: I looked through the posts for an internal voice that whispers me to capture this moment and make it mine — creating a folder of inspiration for my future self. I screenshotted words and images that spoke to my heart. I then collected them and zoomed even more inside each screenshot to seek for more visual information. By the end of the day, when my mind was still processing all the information, I understood I wanted to write about this specific screenshot.

 

 

I wanted to explore what it feels to be one of these little plants and live among humans. This topic became the focus of my post.

 

LIVING TOGETHER

Plants talked to humans.
Plants explored the consciousness before us;
The humans.
They breathe, and eat, and act, and love, and laugh in their own ways.
Sometimes they whisper to people passing by; with a voice that sounds like a laughing soul
and sometimes like a wave of freshness.
The moments I am unaware of my body, they act to bring me back.
They are in desperate need of my cooperation.
Roots.
I don’t have roots; I think,
my thoughts do the same thing.
They can be strong thoughts that keep me in a place forever.
A place could be a city, a country, a way of thinking, and much more.

 

ROOTS THAT KEEP US SAFE

A longing for safety and I can not remember why.
I feel like a tree.
Let my roots grow deep enough to the source and connect; then I will grow.
Opening my leaves and blooming to see the world, but to also move in it.
Trees. Wise, strong and safe.
Am I rooted in this land that I call mine?
A tree. A land. A root. A laugh.
Laughing makes me feel safe, makes me feel rooted, makes me feel like a tree,
but I can also move.

 

 

PLANTS AND PEOPLE — PLANTS WITH PEOPLE

There are so many plants I see daily outside; I used to notice only the big and beautiful trees and the blooming flowers. I was unaware of the little grass and the plants that seem to grow by themselves without human interaction. I have seen a lot of people being annoyed by these plants — they take them away, they break their roots, and throw them inside plastic bags. They call this “clear the space”. I saw the government hiring people to clean the streets from these plants. The images of these plants somehow are creating discomfort, they grow fast and they don’t need people to take care of them. This sounds scary for them. I try to understand how it all started and how we normalized it.

 

 

 

CLEARING THE SPACE

A city is not a forest. A city is a place for people, not plants. It is a place that only plants that people like can enter. The lucky ones; the ones made to be with people. The others are hiding in dark corners in the parks, where I have seen them grow up into beautiful green big leaves. They are unique and charming, and they are homes for little creatures that want to live in the cities — close to people that they love.

 

 

MAKE THE INVISIBLE, VISIBLE

Have you seen that nowadays people put plants in glasses with water, and they grow, and people can see their beautiful roots?
I wonder if it’s only me who sees the irony.
I hope we see their roots and reflect on them.
I want my roots back and I feel like I am flying.
I love the Earth. It’s okay to feel like you want to be in a different world when you are young.
It is a sign of awareness that grown-ups should remember.
I love the Earth so much.
I want to be like a tree who can be connected all the time with this planet.
But I am lucky to be a human that has roots in her fingers,
and can make stuff, can touch, and move.

 

 

 

 

 

MY MIND, EYES AND FEELINGS

I dreamt I was one of these plants.
I saw how it feels.
I can tell you one thing:
they love to laugh.
“Why?” I asked.
They looked at me with wonder.
They didn’t realize I was a human dreaming to be one of them;
I didn’t tell them.
They continued to look at me with wonder — and I got it.
I woke up laughing.

 

 

 

highlight our movement


Wednesday, May 3, 2017

DSCN2325

When we have an appointment ahead of us there is all kind of preparation, there is a planning, and there is a lot of expectations. On the other hand the beauty of having an appointment with someone that you do not know, I have to admit, is in the fact that just a little of what you have planned or imagined will happen.

The most important thing the public space means to me is when it allows you meeting something or someone unknown. When we are surprised, it will add to our life an emotion of discovering, and participating. Meeting someone or something that you do not expect, something that you have not seen before. Where does this encounter leave to you?

Many people feel alone in a city, and are living an unpleasant and isolate life.

Why? There are probably several reasons: is it because there are so many impressions that a modern city offers to us and make us feel lost? Or is it because the individualist way of living, where everything is centered on what one wants for her/himself, making people isolate from each other?

I want to participate in creating the feeling that we are creating and using the public space. That means that we ourselves are the ones who can make this space as we want. I start asking my self what and how I want the space I use and I share with the others?

I would like to create something that could connect people through the action. A  kind of action that we are used doing in every day life.

I started by analyzing mistakes or things that I dislike – or in other words those that I was looking for ….

First mistake would be to design something for people without observing what people do or want. I want something that connect people who don’t know each other. Some one asking to a stranger to help him to sit, for instance?

I started to understand that I had to design something for somebody else (out of my personal sphere) and in this case something for any kind of person: something universal

I reached the conclusion that you can not force someboy to do what you want but you must follow the organic situation that is present and that is important to put the subjects in question at the same level to each others.

I went far from the image of an object and I finally started by giving the importance to the fact that “If the actions are what unify people, what about if the actions are the one that tricker something?” so instead of the people having to go and do something to make that happen, it will focus on what they are already doing that will create an external factor. A factor that could be an emotion but could also be an aid.

Scan 20.47.57.jpeg Scan 7.jpeg

I started to imagine it in a more playful circumstance.
My elements became the sidewalk floor, and the walking the triggering factor. As I said before there is no better meeting than with a stranger. I wanted to refer to people who don’t know each other… My project consists in a non platform.

Untitled-1 Untitled-2pdf

This platform will be positioned under the tiles that form the sidewalk and connect only with the three of them. I imagine the Amsterdam Central Station as a starting point, because it is a place were many people from different backgrounds and identities are passing and walking.

Scan 2 Scan 8

While people are walking, tree people are activating a system that generates something. The soap bubble represents a good element for this situation, because it is an element that does not intimidate, and more important does not need to be cleaned up. The element could vary from different situation to different environment: for example if tree people are waiting for the bus and they are standing on the tiles. The tiles can pull out an umbrella for example that protects you from the rain or the sun. This means it can be open to us for many different choices but the goal will remain the same.

 

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I want to give a special thank to Jesse Jorg who inspired me in this project.

 

Concrete Choreographies


Sunday, November 14, 2010

I have a big love for dance, where space is explored, described, by the moving body. This interest for dance, inspired me to reflect on body, space dance and architecture.

Our bodies are always in a dialogue with their surroundings. Looking at our everyday environment, streets, buildings, its intersections, they shape our movement through the space. Sometimes there are stairs, floors, curves, or slopes, which have more choreographic potential than others, they challenge me to make a certain movement or walk in a different rhythm.

film still from Michelangelo Antonioni’s film ‘l’eclisse’

Choreographers and architects both work with space. Like architecture, a choreography is constructed in a well considered way. The big difference is that a choreography includes the aspect of time, a sequence in its construction, where architecture doesn’t.

‘body/space’, a project by choreographer Krisztina de Châtel

together with the Academy van Bouwkunst Amsterdam.

Myself being a designer I tried to bring these two worlds of dance and architecture closer together, by making a product.

Concrete choreographies, is a series of concrete paving stones, which will encourage people to dance in the streets. Varying in shape, size and surface, every tile is designed to facilitate a specific movement.
With these tiles, building choreography gets materialized. Depending on the paving patterns, the stones will give rise to new choreographies, leading the stroller into a dance where rhythm, repetition, balance, speed, direction and gesture play a part.

photo by Vincent van Gurp

The movements I chose for designing the tiles originate from a personal experience during modern dance class. With these basic movements multiple choreographies are possible.
After mapping and understanding these movements I searched for shapes and finishing, which would serve and even strengthen them.

The size of the tiles, 30×30 cm, fits the grid of existing streets and squares. The used material, concrete, also fits the existing surroundings. But, as a contrast to the straight grid of the street, my tiles have curved forms, which is more fitting the dance and the human body.

With this project I would like to show how interesting moving by foot can become. Now things designed for movement or play in a city, are always for either skaters or children. But why not for someone who is walking outside, and who likes to take a dance path?
With concrete choreographies I try to move people, invite them to see the urban space as a place to dance a little.





Pomme van Hoof is a 2010 graduate from the Design Academy Eindhoven dept "Man and well being" www.pommevanhoof.com

Shield and Shelter


Thursday, July 15, 2010

 

enclosureflevoparkbath-etching

intuitive fear spaces

 

Architectorial anxiety.
Can I design a space that uses my experience of fear to design the perfect safe zone? How can I shape a space which gives one freedom and privacy but which is not enclosed?

Shields and Shelter is a design for the grounds of the public bath – Flevoparkbad [link] – in Amsterdam. For the Rietveld graduation exhibition 2010, I realized a 1:1 detail of my design on the lawn behind the Rietveld Academy.

Kristin_Mauer1

above : a 1:1 detail of my Flevoparkbad design on the lawn behind the Rietveld Academy.

 

In Shields and Shelter I applied step by step the guidelines that I have developed to achieve safe and comfortable zones using my own fear experiences. These guidelines involve architectural concepts like shielding and view, shadow and light, flexibility versus rigidity. The perfect safe zone to me is a flexible space which gives one freedom and privacy but which is not enclosed. As basis for the design drawings I used an aerial photo from Google Earth of Flevoparkbad. From each towel, I constructed lines of sight from 120° angle views. Through shading these 120° triangles a map emerges with different degrees of surveillance. The darker the area, the more views. At the darkest areas the view must be blocked. Therefore I developed shields, which can be slided along rails that follow the lines of sight. This allows the bathers to adjust their exposure to others according to their own wishes.

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tracing the 'feel' zones and the emotion lines and reproducing them in a real situation.

 

From the jury rapport : Kristin Maurer’s installation outside is a whole new interpretation of space. Space can be created by shadows as well as materials. This is what struck our jury-members. Next to this the technical realization of the work is stunning and therefore our members of the jury wanted to celebrate this piece of work.

 

etchings at graduation show Kristin_Mauer3

ICE-etching

The etchings in the thesis, presented as part of the graduation show, are ground plans of remembered fear spaces. A scheme of lines of sight in train, Kristin Maurer, 2009 [etching]

 

Pdf-icon Download thesis: Architectural anxiety. the perfect safe zone
 

Applicable to all aspects of daily life


Thursday, January 28, 2010

If I would come across El Lissitzky’s street decorations today, without knowing what they were, or who they were made by, I’d be wary of calling them decorations.

They just look too much like big paintings.

And calling somebody’s painting “decorative” is usually not good for your relationship with the person.

But that’s what interests me so much about his design for street decorations from 1921: It doesn’t look like any type I have seen before.

I’m actually not sure if the decorations would be terribly effective, the street in the photo does not look particularly festive. Lissitzky’s position seems to be not so much about creating objects that fulfill a purpose in the best possible way, but more about having them embody certain (suprematist) ideals.

It seems to me, that in his street decorations, Lissitzky is not looking for the ideal street decoration, but instead applying his ideals to them.

The Suprematists of whom Lissitzky was part, strived for suprematism as “embracing all aspects of the human spirit”  and thought suprematist forms to be applicable to all aspects of daily life. And you can see this when you look at a sample of Lissitzky’s work put together. It seems he really believed that this style, this way of working, could work for anything.

But there is more to these forms than meets the eye, they follow set standards and, if you know how to “read” them, communicate a clear story. A real form-language if you will. Unfortunately I do not speak this language, or know what the paintings mean, but in Lissitsky’s vision it would be omnipresent, and understood by all.

This really interests me,

is the reason the decorations do not work for me that I do not speak Lissitzky’s language?

Or would they, even if communism had worked out and everyone would understand, still miss something of the festiveness that we associate with street decorations?

I am inclined to think the latter

Bruce Nauman, but not on citizenship.


Wednesday, April 1, 2009

As a final post on flaneurship and neon lights in the city landscape, I chose to write about  Bruce Nauman. This might seem confusing, because his works are usually displayed in a gallery or a museum, quite isolated from the busy city environment that was my starting point for the first post.

Nauman made some installations with neon light, some containing text, others consist of images only. I chose these three examples from the mid-eighties (One Hundred Live and Die, 1984, Seven Figures, 1984, Mean Clown Welcome, 1985) for the more or less brutal messages they communicate.  I still don’t know what the medium neon in itself expresses. This needs a more elaborate research. I’ll try to give a short comparison between Nauman’s work and the neons in Vegas. Comparing these two types of neon signs arise questions about this romanticist (yet uncanny) idea of a flaneur who gets sucked into a dreamworld of lights in the city. The common divider between these works of Nauman and for instance the neon signs in Las Vegas is immediacy. Both types of signs are attacking the viewer, but the effects are parallel reversed to one another. Nauman plays with a system of repulsion, while in a competitive commercial context (such as Las Vegas), neon signs would rather be used to evoke attraction. Still, I think both have to do with desire.

cat.no. -naum-8

keyword: neon


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