Public engagement and context in the key of life

April 19th, 2009

71% of adults used to play on the streets when they were young. 21% of children do so now. Are we designing children and play out of the public realm?

This project is a study into different ways of bringing play back into public space. It focuses on ways of incorporating incidental play in the public realm by not so much as having separate play equipment that dictates the users but by using existing furniture and architectural elements that indicate playful behaviour for all.

It asks us to question the current framework for public space and whether it is sufficient while also giving permission for young people to play in public.

Play as you go…” Bruno Taylor.”

Cities have inhabitants, but in transport hubs, everyone is transient – it becomes a non-space or a space without meaning – like a bus stop – says John Thackara. Richard Sennett writes

When public space becomes derivative of movement, it loses any experiential meaning of its own. On the most physical level, these environments of pure movement prompt people to think of the public domain as meaningless…. they are catatonic space.

That in my view is a really big deal. And reflects in many ways why public space bears witness to the tears in the fabric of society. But it could also be interpreted by those wishing to understand the core principals of engagement within an organisational or commercial framework. Without context there is no meaning, without meaning one becomes irrelevant and irrelevancy leads to the knackers yard of obsolescence. John Thackara writes

A culture of community and connectivity has to be fun and challenging, as well as responsible. An Asthetics of service and flow should inspire us, not just satisfy us.

Communities Dominate Brands, and the idea behind “Engagement” as a principal although acknowledges that the tools of the communication revolution are digital, the drivers behind that are human – our hands and our minds. Philiospher John Gray says. “Being embodied is our nature as earth-born creatures”. But the technologies of cooperation, which in fact is the DNA of the moniker web/mobile 2.0 are the layering and refining of our ability to do what we as humans can do best, collaborate.

Thackara writes

Creating community is only marginally about technology. What matters is the co-presence through time of bodies and the emergence of shared meaning as we interact with each-other in meaningful activities… For hundreds of years, when the majority of the population was illiterate, participatory ritual and performance were the main ways that beliefs were shared within a culture.

The DNA of our ancestors is still hard-wired into our collective and individual bodies. Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty constructed a view that perception is a process in which an active body enters into a communion with its surroundings. And Lucy Suchman argued that understanding is not only embodied is is situated. Indeed she writes

human activity is not primarily as rational, planned and controlled as we like to think. It is better described as situated, social and in direct response to the physical and social environment.

Perhaps there are some learnings here for understanding the Eden project in Cornwall or indeed the extraordinary success of the Apple stores.

Environments where situated play+community=meaning?

Now where’s my bus stop swing and who is going to give me a push?

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