Perhaps a way to compensate for my lack of traveling would be to spend an hour each day observing people in a different environment. Tomorrow it could be the roasting company I tend to work at, the next it could be the bus stop, the next it could be... well.. i don't know. The choice of places is just as important as the observations themselves.. but it could be interesting. I can go to various places in Park City, which is full of different environments that attract different people, and then to Salt Lake.. if I can find a way there. This could be a time I continue as I travel back to california and to cincinnati.. giving vastly different cultural lifestyles as well as environments..
Any ideas you have on this or other ways I can compensate toward this research would be very helpful. Thank you, Jess
if your on your way back and want to people observe, rest stops pull in lots of different people. Not sure you can relate that to the environment, but you'll get to see all types while you're there.
ReplyDeleteI was actually thinking about that today! By time I am on my way back something will have to have been "concluded" and there would already need to be some sort of culmination of this project, but I think it would be interesting to do anyways. And if my car isn't coming back with me I guess airport terminals will have to suffice =(
ReplyDeleteChris, do you know Eric Shearer? He is a drawing teacher at NVC? Well he is pretty much one my Mentors, if you will, and every day when he wakes up he sits down with a stack of small paper (the size of large notecards maybe) and draws about fifty quick sketches of whatever is on his mind, whatever he sees, has been thinking of, ect. I have used this whenever I get in a rut but I have also always envied this habit he has created for himself. Maybe mine can be setting this time aside each day to sit, sketch, observe, ect. Sounds like a nice way to spend some time each day to me ha.. too bad chaos of school ensues and I lose sight of taking that time. We'll see though =D
Jessica,
ReplyDeleteI would think carefully of observing behavior in bus stops, terminals, and the like. Each bus stop will have its own set of behaviors, actions, and reactions as determined by a culture of place. (As an aside, can a bus stop have a culture of its own?) What I would suggest would be to choose one or two and consistently observe those as case studies.
It seems to me that you are after a more universal understanding of the nature of dwelling. Studying a series of bus stops will allow you some small insight in the specific ways in which people interact at those places, maybe even to some degree in relation to this act of dwelling. However, if you continue the study in one location it becomes much more about general or universal qualities of dwelling as they are manifest in that one place.
Use the place that you choose as a tool. It is not about the place, but rather the inferences you can draw from it regarding this set of universal qualities of dwelling.
Also, read Auge before choosing the airport terminal - he will change your mind about that. And, as noted before, Michel Serres text on spatial operation will help you define and decode these ideas that you are generating. Semper will give you a lot of ability to consolidate those ideas into a set of architectural principles that you will be able to outline. Go to the bus stop - or any place where people gather/dwell, and see the ways in which they do it. Find the methods they use to modify their environment to facilitate this act and interaction (the act of building as a response to the need to dwell) Are there commonalities between the ways in which people modify (build) their environments in the tent cities when compared to the metropolis? If there are commonalities, do those commonalities frame a set of universal conditions for the act of dwelling and the making of dwelling? Can you observe these commonalities in your "bus stop" case study as a way of reinforcing the notion? At this juncture, what implications do these commonalities have for Heidegger's "Four-fold?"
JE