“Bouger, ce n’est plus se déplacer d’un point à l’autre de la surface terrestre, mais traverser des univers de problèmes, des mondes vécus, des paysages de sens.” p. 10

I am discovering. J’adore !

[1] Antoine Picon, Culture numérique et architecture – une introduction (Birkhäuser, 2010)
[2] Jeffrey Kipnis, “The Cunning of Cosmetics,” El Croquis 84 (1997): 22 – 28

Lynch developed his system of rules for analyzing cities by looking at three urban case studies, Boston, Jersey City and Los Angeles. He interviewed for about an hour and a half a sample of citizens and observing their habitat. The goal was to test his concept of “Imageability” – of which he distinguishes five elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks.

INTERVIEWS

Researchers interviewed 30 people in Boston, about 15 in Jersey City and Los Angeles. Lynch thought of this sample to be “inordinately small.” He writes that “clearly, a retest with a larger sample is needed, and this requires more rapid and precise methods.” (p. 152) Respondents were primarily from a middle class background (hence omitting some areas of the city), which might have skewed the results.

During a first interview, respondents were asked to sketch a map of their city, describe in detail some of their city travels (for example the trip they normally take from home to work and inversely), and tell what their strongest connection to the urban environment was.

The interview was recorded on tape, and then transcribed (carefully recording pauses and inflections). Some of the respondents were willing to be interviewed a second time.

During the second interview, researchers showed respondents photographs of their cities and of other cities (the photographs of the respondent’s cities covered “the entire district in a systematic way, but given to the subject in random order.”). Respondents – the “subjects” – had to identify and classify the pictures: “The photographs recognized were then reassembled, and the subject was asked to lay them out on a large table as if they were placing them in their proper position on a large map of the city.” (p. 142)

Researchers went with some of these respondents to the field and enacted the city travel they described during the earlier interview. This was also tape-recorded. “The subject was asked to lead the way, to discuss why a particular route was chosen, to point out what he saw along the way, and to indicate where he felt confident or lost.” (p. 142)

Researchers organized the data collected. They checked it by running informal interviews (asking directions) of four to five passersby in each of the chosen places in the city – 7 destinations and 5 origin points.

The sketch map had a strong correlation with the “verbal interviews” yet bore differences when it came to connection and organization.

FIELD ANALYSIS

The researchers who covered the field survey were conditioned, taught the concept of “imageability” before hand, prepared accordingly a map of the area to study. They hence came back with a structured set of information. During the field analysis (three to four working days), researchers tested the concept, assessed what were really landmarks and what were not for example.

The field analysis corroborated with the interviews conducted for the cities of Boston and Los Angeles, less so with the city of New Jersey.

“The field analysis done on foot developed two faults: a tendency to neglect minor elements important for automobile circulation, and a tendency to pass over certain minor features of districts that are especially important to subjects because of the social status they reflect. Our field method therefore, if supplemented by automobile surveys seems to be a technique that can predict the probable composite image with some success, allowing for the “invisible” effects of social prestige, and for the more random fixing of attention in a visually undifferentiated environment.” (p. 144)

The method described was meant to develop urban design directions. Lynch thought on complementing the study of the five single elements of “imageability” with an understanding of “element interrelations, patterns, sequences and whole”. (p. 155) Lynch even suggested using the method for city areas of different scales: buildings, landscapes, and transportation systems etc. According to Lynch, the study could also be used to understand how strangers or children build their personal image of a city, so to anticipate urban city design. He also writes that “as our habitat becomes ever more fluid and shifting, it becomes critical to know how to maintain image continuity through these upheavals [external changes].” (p. 158)

Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960)

« Pour nous, le design n’est pas l’apanage des designers, mais il s’étend à tous les concepteurs, créateurs qui appliquent une logique d’innovation itérative, transformatrice, centrée sur l’utilisateur, avec une haute exigence de compréhension et d’esthétique des productions. [...] Nous partageons l’avis de ceux qui pensent que le design, plus qu’un style, est une façon d’aborder les projets dans une démarche méthodologique, au croisement de la créativité et de la conception industrielle »

– Romain Thévenet, chargé de mission design à la 27ème région. La 27ème Région, labo de transformation publique, Design des politiques publiques (La documentation Française, 2010) : p. 11

“What if, like the Invisible Sandwich, Re:CP is an intelligent carpet-bag of opinions, views, comparisons, open-discussions and doubts? Then the importance of identifying with its intentions and appetites should be replaced by the reader’s using it with constructive greed as another tool with which to turn his own mind. It contains in a consumable form, a mix of ideas and images, some of which are new, and some of which I have seen and thought of before. Now they can be used, in which ever order you choose and at your own frequency.
I hope you will devour this book, as if a pig.”

Cedric Price, Re:CP (Birkhäuser, 2003): p. 13

Les activités mises en scène au cours de cette exposition qui réunit artistes, penseurs et innovateurs ont pour but de questionner l’identité des espaces hybrides de la ville – le corps est aussi un espace – et d’envisager les lieux hypertextes de demain.

Yasmine Abbas, Direction Research & Design
Marion Daeldyck, Design
Nadine Branellec, Research

Corps – technologie – habitat – peau – information – mobilité – néo-nomade – identités hybrides – espaces hybrides – hypertexte – interface – ecotone – architecture – urbain – numérique – augmenté

Body – technology – habitat – skin – information – mobility – neo-nomad – hybrid identities – hybrid spaces – hypertext – interface – ecotone – architecture – urban – digital – augmented