Minutes December 06 2011

Lecture by Bertram Weisshaar on Strollology

Bertram introduced a recent project on landscapes as seen from long-distance busses and bus stations in different European cities. He further presented a walk along a highway in Austria looking for food production areas next to this communication line. One important message was that it is important to make landscapes visible, in particular the everyday landscape that is surrounding us. Furthermore, it was mentioned that people's perception is more and more guided by images from outside, produced by mass-media, rather than images from our everyday surroundings.

The recording is available here:

• 'Strollology' by Bertram Weisshaar

Bertram Weisshaar invites you to stay in touch with him in particular if you have old images of city bus stations in your countries. You can get his contact details and also current information of his projects from his website: Atelier Latent

Lecture by Damian Perez on Street Traders' Everyday Landscapes

The way we see and value landscapes is in large part a function of what we do in them. (Ittelson 1973)

Damian Perez showed an interesting collection of images illustrating the life of street vendors in Buenos Aires. The street traders are a very characteristic element of the everyday landscape, following a particular pattern of rules and habits. They also create an important communication level in the urban landscape.

The recording is available here:

• 'Street Traders' Everyday Landscape in Buenos Aires' by Damian Perez

Damian recommends the following books for further reading:

• Zube, E.H.; R.O.Brush and J.G. Fabos (Eds). (1975). Landscape assessment: values, perception and resources. Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross Publishers, Stroudsburg, Pensylvania.
• Carys Swanwick. (2009) Society’s attitudes to and preferences for land and landscape. Land Use Policy 26S (2009) S62–S75
• Jones P. M., Dix, M. C., Clarke, M. I. and Heggie, I. G. (1991) Understanding Travel Behaviour. Gower, Aldershot.
• Carr, S., (1992). Public space, Cambridge [England] ;New York  NY  USA: Cambridge University Press.
• Jean-Christophe Foltête, A. Piombini. (2007) Urban layout, landscape features and pedestrian usage. Landscape and Urban Planning, Volume 81, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 225-234
• Goffman, E., (1966). Behavior in public places : notes on the social organization of gatherings, New York: Free Press.

Tasks for the next session

Comments to your Group Members

• Write a comment on your group members' discussion pages until 5th of December. In this comment you may explain what you think is a relevant character feature of this area. This judgement should be based in what you have learned from the wiki page and the discussions so far.

Capturing Behaviour Patterns

The second part of the seminar will be dedicated to observing and reflecting people's behaviour in the everyday landscape you have chosen.

There are different ways of how you can gather this information. This list is not complete, but it should help you to identify approaches that are suitable for your area. You may pick out 2-3 of them and develop your personal approach to this theme:

• observe people and identify repeating aspects, these can be clustered to form patterns
• ask people about what they frequently do in your area. This may give you additional information on summer activities which you may not find at the moment (at least not in Europe). You may also get some valuable information about people's attachment to the place.
• identify the patterns on a map (all this can be hand drawn if you wish)
• identify the most frequent paths/directions/circuits on a map
• sketch/draw/design pictograms of the behaviour patterns
• make a small movie with your mobile or any other device, add it to youtube and add the link to this wiki
• collect photos illustrating behaviour patterns (but be careful with this: you are not allowed to publish images of people who have not explicitly agreed on being published)

Questions for the Group Discussion on 13th of December

• Which behaviour patterns are characteristic?
• Do you find any surprising behaviour patterns?
• Do space and behaviour correspond?
• How does people's behaviour change the place?

Time Frame

• Results need to be uploaded by Monday, 12th of December
• Please add short explanations
• Again, your findings will be discussed in parallel small groups on 13th of December and eventually also on the 20th of December

Resources

A valuable resource for this part is Christopher Alexander's book 'A Pattern Language' (it should be available in any library)