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URBAN + INTERIOR Paramita Atmodiwirjo Suzie Attiwill URBAN + INTERIOR Barbara Camocini Gretchen Coombs Luciano Crespi Davide Crippa Els De Vos Barbara Di Prete Chunfang Dong Davide Fassi Elena Enrica Giunta Martí Guixé Belén Hermida Evelyn Kwok Emilio Lonardo Valerie Mace Carlos Martínez-Arrarás Antto Melasniemi Daniela Petrillo Mark Pimlott Tine Poot Agnese Rebaglio

Verarisa Anastasia Ujung IDEA JOURNAL 2015 Maarten Van Acker Jing Xiao Yandi Andri Yatmo

ISSN 1445/5412 JOURNAL URBAN + INTERIOR

JOURNAL The Journal of the Interior /Interior Educators Association Formed in 1996, the purpose of IDEA (/ Educators Association) is the advancement of IDEA JOURNAL 2015 URBAN + INTERIOR by encouraging and supporting excellence in interior design/interior architecture education and research within Guest Editors: Suzie Attiwill, Luciano Crespi, Davide Fassi, Elena Enrica Giunta and Belén Hermida Australasia; and being the regional authority on, and advocate for interior design/interior architecture education and research Executive Editor: Suzie Attiwill

The objectives of IDEA are: PROVOCATION - to be an advocate for undergraduate and postgraduate programs at a university that provide a minimum 4 years education in interior design/interior architecture; Unprecedented movements of people, growth in population density and forces of capitalism and globalism shape the - to support the rich diversity of individual programs within the higher education sector; twenty-first century urban environment and transform how people live in the world – spatially, temporally and subjectively. - to create collaboration between programs in the higher education sector; In the disciplines of interior design, interior architecture, architecture, and , one encounters the - to foster an attitude of lifelong learning; coupling of the conditions of ‘urban’ and ‘interior’ with increasing frequency. Urban interior, interior , urban - to encourage staff and student exchange between programs; interiority and urban interior design are used as provocations for designing, teaching and writing – researching and thinking - to provide recognition for excellence in the advancement of interior design/interior architecture education; – in and cultures as diverse as Milan, Madrid, Melbourne, Jakarta, Austin, London, Stockholm, Bangkok, Singapore and - to foster, publish and disseminate peer reviewed interior design/interior architecture research. Bogotá. www.idea-edu.com While some might see this as the bringing together of vastly distinct conditions and scales, the conjunction – urban and interior – seeks to engage the potential of practices and techniques of disciplines concerned with interior and in MEMBERSHIP new ways involving multi-scalar, multi-cultural, multi-discipline approaches. A rethinking of the concept of interior is invited Institutional Members: where the defining characteristics of enclosure, form and structure are opened to other possibilities than an equation with Membership is open to programs at higher education institutions in Australasia that can demonstrate an on-going the inside of a . ‘Interior’ is introduced here in an expanded sense. A thinking differently about urbanism and the commitment to the objectives of IDEA. concept of ‘urban’ is also invoked. Current members: AUT University, Auckland The question of, and conjunction of, urban + interior is a critical one in the contemporary context where the inhabitation Curtin University, Perth of urban environments and cities has exceeded the population living in rural areas. We are keen to explore this condition Massey University, Wellington through actual proposals, scenarios and solutions that address the challenges, as well as historical, anthropological, sociological Monash University, Melbourne and epistemological reflections. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane RMIT University, Melbourne The aspiration for this forthcoming issue of the IDEA JOURNAL is to gather this emerging trajectory composed of Swinburne University, Melbourne practices, techniques, and genealogies for future practice. With our call for submissions, we have not specified research University of New South Wales, Sydney questions or positioned in advance what, how, when or why ‘urban’ and ‘interior’ are/might be connected. Our strategy is University of South Australia, Adelaide to be open to what comes in and from this make an arrangement of connections where the potential of urban + interior University of Tasmania, Hobart can be grasped, offered up and discussed. University of Technology Sydney, Sydney Victoria University, Wellington The conjunctions, conversations and debates have already begun. The editorial approach for this issue of the IDEA JOURNAL is different to the individual guest editor of previous issues. Five people from three cities are already in discussion Affiliate Members: about this emerging trajectory of urban + interior: Suzie Attiwill from Melbourne and the research group Urban Interior Affiliate membership is open to programs at higher education institutions in Australasia that do not currently qualify for Laboratory; Davide Fassi, Luciano Crespi and Elena Enrica Giunta from Politecnico di Milano – Design Department and institutional membership but support the objectives of IDEA. Affiliate members are non-voting members of IDEA. Belén Hermida from University CEU San Pablo in Madrid – who are co-directors and co-coordinators of [MUID] the International Master in Urban Interior Design, a program that is offered between POLI.Design in Milano and University Associate Members: CEU San Pablo in Madrid. And now we would like to invite others who are researching urban + interior – through design Associate membership is open to any persons who support the objectives of IDEA. Associate members are non-voting and projects, through historical and theoretical research, through teaching – to contribute and participate! members of IDEA.

Honorary Associate Members: In recognition of their significant contribution as an initiator of IDEA, a former chair and/or executive editor: Rachel Carley, Lynn Chalmers, Jill Franz, Tim Laurence, Gini Lee, Marina Lommerse, Gill Matthewson, Dianne Smith, Harry Stephens, Julieanna Preston, George Verghese.

IDEA JOURNAL 2015 © IDEA (Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Association) 2016 ACN 135 337 236; ABN 56 135 337 236; www.idea-edu.com Published at: Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia Registered at the National Library of Australia. ISSN 1445/5412 EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Dr Suzie Attiwill (Executive Editor) Dr Daniel Huppatz

EXTERNAL EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Graeme Brooker, Professor, Royal College of , UK. Dr Deidre Brown, Associate Professor, University of Auckland, New Zealand. Dr Jooyun Kim, Professor, Hongik University, Seoul, South Korea. Dr Stephen Loo, Professor, University of Tasmania, Australia. Dr Julieanna Preston, Professor, Massey University, New Zealand. Dr Gennaro Postiglione, Professor, Politecnico di Milano, . Lois Weinthal, Professor, Ryerson University, Canada.

COPY EDITING Marie Shannon [email protected]

PRODUCTION Design: Propaganda Mill www.thepropagandamill.com [email protected]

Printing: Fergies Print and Mail www.fergies.com.au +61 (7) 3630 6500 [email protected]

Cover Image: Photograph by Mark Pimlott Stockholm S 2003.

Correspondence regarding this publication should be addressed to:

Dr Suzie Attiwill c/o IDEA Journal Interior Design RMIT University GPO Box 2476 Melbourne 3001 Australia [email protected] Contents Stockholm S 2003 Cover Photograph: Mark Pimlott

2 Editorial URBAN + INTERIOR Suzie Attiwill, Luciano Crespi, Davide Fassi, Elena Enrica Giunta and Belén Hermida

12 Lapin Kulta Solar Kitchen Restaurant Helsinki 2011 Martí Guixé, Antto Melasniemi. Photograph: Inga Knölke/Imagekontainer

14 'E-urbanism': Strategies to develop a new urban interior design Barbara Di Prete, Davide Crippa and Emilio Lonardo

28 Densifying Lilong: Micro-scale design strategy of S.O.F.T. of the shikumen housing in urban Shanghai Chunfang Dong and Jing Xiao

44 The Public Interior: The meeting place for the urban and the interior Tine Poot, Maarten Van Acker and Els De Vos

56 The Transfigured Phenomena of Domesticity in the Urban Interior Valerie Mace

78 Outside Interior: Traversed boundaries in a Jakarta urban Paramita Atmodiwirjo, Yandi Andri Yatmo and Verarisa Anastasia Ujung

90 Inside Out: When objects inhabit the Gretchen Coombs

102 Agency In Appropriation: The informal territory of foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong Evelyn Kwok

118 Refereed Studio Reloading Spaces: How design makes urban spaces more liveable Barbara Camocini, Daniela Petrillo and Agnese Rebaglio

130 Biographies

136 Saturday Morning New York’s Central Ice Rink, March 2012 Photograph: Carlos Martínez-Arrarás

DISCLAIMER To the extent legally permissible, the editors, authors and publishers exclude or disclaim all and any liability (including liability arising in contract and tort) to any person, whether or not through this publication, for any loss howsoever arising and whether or not caused by the negligence of any of the editors, authors and publishers resulting from anything done or omitted to be done in reliance, either whole or partial, upon the contents of this publication. 2 3

In November 2013, in a restaurant in Milan, a group of us – academics from three different universities and cities, and sharing a passion for the potential of urban interior design – decided to propose a special issue of the IDEA Journal to bring attention to the topic and extend the URBAN + INTERIOR conversation to other colleagues around the world. We were also curious to see what kinds of propositions and concerns arose from putting urban and interior together. Suzie Attiwill, Elena Enrica Giunta, Davide Fassi, Luciano Crespi and The fact that this proposition came from design academics inflects the nature of the call for Belén Hermida. submissions. There is a focus on the conjunction as a design proposition that could be posed to students in design studio briefs, and a motivation to gather current thinking and practice with a view to informing and teaching practice. There is an aspiration for the articulation and capturing of this research to enable and give further impetus to the new discipline – urban interior design and interior urban design – that is emerging. INTRODUCTION Like the lunch in Milan, this issue of the IDEA Journal brings us together to share and discuss the conjunction of urban + interior and its potential. By way of introduction, we will each describe The conjunction ‘urban + interior’ brings together two conditions which are often posed as our urban + interior conjunctions situated within different institutions and cities – RMIT University, dichotomies. Here rather than a relation of either/or – either interior or urban – the relation is one Politecnico di Milano and the Universidad CEU San Pablo; Melbourne, Milan and Madrid respectively. of addition, of putting together in a propositional manner. And then – by way of concluding and also opening up potential trajectories and future concerns – Making relations between interior and urban is not new, and especially not in the discourse of we gather some of the refrains that circulate through the submissions, brought into focus by those interior design and interior architecture. The writings of the philosopher Walter Benjamin are often who have joined the conversation, critical thinking and research. cited in histories and theories of interiors – dynamics between interior and urban expressed in the relation between the private interior of the collector and the urban industrial ; the flâneur’s We hope readers will also make their own connections and that the emergence of urban interior urban meanderings and outside-in gaze. Over a hundred years later, the question of how to inhabit design will continue to flourish, as it is evident that it is a rich and fertile area for research, designing, the urban is still pertinent but the conditions are different. Delineations of private and public, spatial thinking and transformation; and for the disciplines of interior design, interior architecture, urban and temporal relations inflected by industrialisation, globalisation, migration and digital technologies design and architecture. have transformed interior and urban environments. URBAN + INTERIOR | {UI} URBAN INTERIOR The proposition of the conjunction urban + interior posed in the current issue of this journal invites Suzie Attiwill consideration and experimentation in relation to questions of inhabitation in urban environments and how might the urban infiltrate interior environments. This involves not only thinking about the Since the early 1990s, the Interior Design program at RMIT University has had an intense conjunction coming from interior design in relation to the urban but also the transformation of engagement with the city of Melbourne as an interior project. At this time, an expanded idea of the interior by the urban. The photographs and writings of Mark Pimlott, addressing the issue of what interior design practice could be was introduced and for the past twenty-five years the city interior territories and the public interior, and the architectural historian Charles Rice and his work has been a laboratory for design studio projects. This was also due in part to the fact that the on interior urbanism are significant contemporary contributions to and examples of the criticality RMIT is located right in the city of Melbourne and also that Melbourne is a city of interior and potential of this conjunction. qualities and atmospheres. The central city area is composed of laneways and arcades – many of which, in the early 90s, were overlooked and neglected spaces. Student projects addressed ‘the The impetus for this issue is the pressure of an expanding discipline – interior design and interior in-between’, ephemeral happenings and events with the Situationists as precedents for many architecture – developing practices and techniques in ways that are not necessarily framed by an design studio topics and final major projects. A culmination of this period was the publication architectural context as a determining factor but focus on ways of living, questions of wellbeing and of Interior Cities (1999)1 – a book that documents seven years of outcomes from the Interior belonging, social and cultural practices Design program, addressing the design of interior space through ‘work that is deeply urban and the

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configurations, reflections, references and forms of expression A series of {UI} colloquia have been held with key figures from textiles. I was invited to guest edit an issue of Craft Design Enquiry makes relations between bodies (users, inhabitants, citizens, emerge from the study of urban space’. 2 government, organisations, other universities and professions addressing design and the urban environment – the title became travellers and so on), objects and spaces (both temporary and being invited. Undergraduate design studios offered resulting in a A World in Making. Cities Craft Design.10 permanent), and other ‘non-designed’ aspects such as nature.14 In more recent times, the criticality of being situated in the city series of design scenarios. An example is Urban Rooms – an interior In this process, the can engage directly with ‘users’ of Melbourne, and a focus on the urban, became central to design studio that asked students to propose an urban interior All of the above signal the vibrancy and vitality of this emerging or make open-ended design solutions in order to promote RMIT University’s strategic plan (2010-2015). The changes to for central Melbourne. 4 There was also an expansion of urban discipline for practice, research and education as a field of participation and belonging and thereby activate co-producing the city of Melbourne over the past twenty years have been interior’s activities to Berlin as part of an academic exchange by one experimentation that embraces diversity and change; where by use. Participatory processes are necessary to evolve public significant – transforming from a central business district (CBD) of the founding members, Rochus Urban Hinkel. During this time, concepts and conditions of urban and interior – separately spaces into collective ones. to a residential environment, and this continues (between Rochus ran a colloquium and offered design studios at TU Berlin and conjunctively as urban interior and interior urban – are 2004 and 2014, the number of residents increased by 142 addressing the provocation of urban interior. Colleagues in other transformed and transforming. More recently, I managed DeCA ( Accoglienza, percent3). There is also an increase in cultural diversity and cities also contacted urban interior to establish potential exchanges. which translates as ‘design that welcomes diversity’)[15], whose hence different ways of inhabiting the city – such as informal One of my co-editors for this issue – Elena Enrica Giunta – joined URBAN + INTERIOR | DESIGNING SCRIPT aim was to underline the impact of design of the interiors eating, small bars, and all-night weekend transport (introduced us while we were in Berlin for a {UI} Colloquium and participated Elena Enrica Giunta on the everyday lives of refugees in urban reception centres; in January 2016). in the Temporal Occupations field trip I organised with RMIT Interior redefining qualities and design criteria (comfort of environment, Design students. At that time, Elena was working on her PhD, The nature of design disciplines, which are underpinned by of , visibility of services and structures in In 2007, as part of the development of research groups which addressed the concept of urban interior. Exhibitions were a concern with the user’s/community’s perspective and an the city, and potentiality of citizens' engagement) in order to within the university, Professor Leon van Schaik, leader of the another important mode for experimentation. While there were approach towards radical , means that this concern establish better conditions of welcome, shared living, dignity and Customising Space research cluster at RMIT’s Design Research several, the Urban Interior Occupation at Craft Victoria in 2008 has and approach is brought to the condition of the urban. The effect citizenship reciprocity. This experience further developed the Institute, initiated the Urban Interior Research Group. He brought been the most significant and involved a ten-day occupation of a is a focus on issues of regeneration, appropriation, temporary concepts investigated in my PhD and led to further reflection together a trans/multidisciplinary group of researchers from the gallery space.5 In 2011, the group published a book that included a inhabitation and the urban environment as a participatory and the identification of ‘cultural affordance’ as a key value, as School of Architecture and Design to address the significant chapter by each {UI} member and also invited others to contribute laboratory. My professional and academic practice is sensitive to well as making clear the profile of the interior designer as an changes happening to the urban fabric of Melbourne as a result their research, thinking and/or practice connected to the topic of these topics in relation to the design of spaces and supportive actor able to engage in a multidisciplinary design team, as a of increase in population and cultural diversity. urban interior: Urban Interior. Informal explorations, interventions and equipment for more livable interiors of our cities. socio-technical professional who can support change-making occupations. 6 and activism with his/her own tools and nurture a deep cross- This became urban interior {UI} – a term which acts an umbrella A first step on this trajectory was my PhD research: a cultural approach. under which people gather. A temporal and mobile space And from there, the connections have proliferated. Davide Fassi, survey about the changed paradigm of living starting with which opens to accommodate and connect people – U and another co-editor of this journal, initiated and edited the book anthropological literature and terms such as Homo Videns11 or URBAN + INTERIOR | TEMPORARY URBAN I – in processes of exchange and production. urban interior is Temporary Urban Solutions, inviting me to contribute a chapter on the idea of Barbarian Age.12 The need for new habitats due to SOLUTIONS not a term which is defined in advance of activity so much as a the urban interior research I was doing – the chapter is titled changes in the social habitus where the emic perspective as the Davide Fassi problematic continually posed through research and projects. As ‘A Temporal Consistency’.7 This was followed by an invitation subjective experience of space interaction, and the ephemeral a collective, its composition changes as different people connect to offer a workshop in November 2013 as part of the Masters nature of inhabiting both in physical and in semantic dimensions, Temporary installations, performances and urban actions and collaborate on projects. To date this collective has included Intensives, School of Design, Politecnico di Milano – an invitation is valued. The research drew on a series of transactions organised in public spaces are nowadays a response to social, different practices and disciplinary nuances from interior design, extended by my co-editors Luciano Crespi and Davide Fassi. The between people and things to develop a model of ‘personhood’ cultural and spatial differences. Since 2008 my research and , architecture, architecture, visual workshop addressed the topic of ‘urban interior’ and invited the in which goal-directed action and the cultivation of meaning didactic activities have been focusing on how can art, craft, , performance-based practices and sound. students to become interiorizts.8 Further connections have been through signs assume central importance. Recent literature be re-shaped, infrastructured and made responsive to people’s The professions traditionally charged as experts of the urban made with colleagues at the Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta who on the ‘sharing economy’ uses the word ‘sharing’ rather than needs by moving from a top-down approach to a grassroots one. environment – urban planners and urban – are absent held a conference addressing interiority and urban conditions.9 ‘possession’ and changes the concept of meaning as something as new ways of inhabiting and experimenting in the urban The conjunction of urban and interior has – much like the carved out of things to one of collective sense-making practice I have explored these issues through three main actions: the environment are foregrounded. The group transforms according multidisciplinary beginnings of the Urban Interior Research Group by use.13 This changes the approach to the design of interiors, masterclass Temporary Urban Solutions (with one of its successful to the project, the space and time. – engaged other design and craft disciplines such as jewellery and creating a practice of ‘scriptwriting’ which considers others and outcomes: Coltivando – The convivial garden at the Politecnico di

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Milano), the research project campUS – Incubation and settings for social practices (with the support pushed people into searching in the private sphere for that which is denied in the public realm, we of the DESIS Network – Design for Social Innovation and ) as well as the Master of are now facing the revival and appreciation of public space for a purpose that, however, appears Urban Interior Design (MUID). profoundly changed when compared to the past.

In 2011, I began an investigation into how hidden public space – such as the Politecnico di Milano’s Contemporary cities are composed of a population expressing different expectations, in which Bovisa Campus – could be opened up by the university community (students/designers/staff) to images are represented overlapping one another and in which different ideas of the city coexist. create extra space for the everyday life activities of residents who live in the area. As part of the In each of these ‘desired cities’ it is precisely the nature of public space that plays a decisive role. investigation, I tested a experiment by offering a masterclass called Temporary Having long lost its character as a specialised place, the contemporary urban space is now required Urban Solutions based on user/community-centred design, using co- and creating to accommodate the user’s multiple modes of consumption, allowing each one of us to build a a deep immersive experience in the neighbourhood for postgraduate students. We challenged sort of personal palimpsest, on the basis of which one can also interact with existing devices. In the theory of designers as solution-developers for people and instead posed a model that allows other words, public space can be understood as a pause in the city’s choreography, which must people to design by and for themselves16 asking the students to open a dialogue with the local be able to take care of other requirements besides living, in which the individual and the collective community, with associations or informal groups.17 The students tested the design actions in a dimension must somehow coexist.21 one-day event in the campus area called C’è spazio per tutti / There’s room for everyone. One of the outputs was carried forward and became a permanent project: Coltivando, a community This is why one can now think that urban interior design represents a new discipline, for which garden that brought residents back to the university campus more regularly by involving them in the reference to interior represents both the need to work in the wake of a culture that focuses continuous activities (set-up, maintenance, etc.). on the relationship between people and environment, and the search for a new culture of living. The reference to design recalls the need for action in the unresolved spaces through a fit-out The bottom-up actions of active groups of citizens are often combined with top-down actions approach. Therefore, in the belly of the ‘showcase city’ the fit-out culture has the opportunity to of institutions18 that, together, trigger a virtuous process of social engagement. This creates test its ability to ‘stage’ events that have their own time, whose ephemeral quality is actually far opportunities for social transformation and sustainable growth that modify the current pattern, less significant than the need for them to be a ’meaningful event’. And it is when the fit-out ‘comes replacing the old individualistic values with a new sense of community, sharing, exchange of out’, bursts into the city, that new, unthinkable prospects of disciplinary redefinition appear; even knowledge and information, and mutual support. These two initiatives, a temporary event and a new interdisciplinary dialogues. The goal is to make urban interiors not only hospitable, but also permanent community garden, generated awareness in the local neighbourhood of the role of the full of new cultural, anthropological, symbolic meanings thanks to the use of languages that can campus and the university as public space. synthesise the various disciplines involved to confront the issue of ‘imageability’ in contemporary environments. campUS – Incubation and Settings for Social Practices, a funded research project I applied for and which is now financed by the Polisocial Award (2014) – a prize that awards social innovation In that context, Luisa Collina – president of Cumulus Association, president of the School of Design research projects within Politecnico di Milano – explores how projects dealing with urban interiors of Politecnico di Milano and our mutual friend – introduced us in Milan, back in 2011. As chair could be scaled up: from an output incubated in a design department as a temporary solution in of Interior Design at Politecnico at the time, I (Luciano) was already interested in developing an a university campus, to long-term solutions to be put into the local context. academic context for urban interiors and looking for an international partner in this endeavour. Politecnico di Milano is world-renowned in interior design, while Universidad CEU San Pablo in URBAN + INTERIOR | THE [MUID] APPROACH Madrid is very strong in architecture and urbanism, granting professional registration in Spain. That Luciano Crespi and Belén Hermida initial meeting was crucial to discovering common interests and combining the know-how of both universities in an innovative way. ‘Imageability’ is the term used by Kevin Lynch in his masterful 1960 work The Image of the City, to define the ‘quality that gives a physical object a high probability of evoking a vigorous image in Many other meetings and long conversations finally resulted in the first edition of the Master in any given observer’ and therefore allows the object not only to be seen but also to be ‘presented Urban Interior Design: Public Living Spaces in Contemporary Cities, [MUID]. Taught entirely in sharply and intensely to the senses’.19 After the supposed death of public space – according to English, this one-year, full-time program includes a dual study experience in Milan and Madrid, in the American sociologist Richard Sennett20 – due to the irruption of intimacy in daily life that has which theory lectures alternate with intensive design workshops. Upon successful completion

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of courses and workshops, internships at leading firms and institutions in the public and private URBAN + INTERIOR | CALL AND REFRAINS sectors offer students the opportunity to put their studies into practice. The call for submissions sent out through the editors’ networks attracted 83 registrations of [MUID] is an innovative inter-university program based on the of the physical identity interest that resulted in 41 full submissions, all of which were double-blind peer reviewed by 58 embedded in the millennial culture of public space in Spain and Italy. It is an opportunity to enhance reviewers, and from which a maximum of eight submissions could be selected for publication. specific professional skills in an academic and professional context in between two cultures, two The numbers are cited here to give a sense of the rhizomic nature of the network and the many methodologies and two countries. The program is a challenge to pay attention to the seams connections that confirm urban + interior is a significant emerging research area (and as discussed between elements in a city, the interstitial spaces: to ‘mind the gap’, so to speak. It underlines the above, one can say discipline given there are now masters programs in this area). The conjunction importance of urban voids in the collective life of people, offering the experience of a multi- creates a new lens for seeing existing practices and developing new ones. disciplinary international faculty of , intellectuals, designers and media professionals in a relationship of inter-disciplinary creativity. To follow is a gathering of some of the reiterated concerns that course through the papers. The individual contributors have not been identified, in order to focus on what might be considered What makes [MUID] special is its dual focus on the design of urban interiors. The program requires collective expressions of urban + interior. The phrases and concerns of each author(s) will become a gradual approach to public space from its urban configuration to its vitality and role in civic life, evident when one reads the individual contribution. focusing on non-built areas such as squares, streets, , roundabouts and other undefined urban voids, taking into consideration both the container and the content. Such urban voids are designed, The dominant refrain is one that comes from an interior position and engages with urban, rather equipped, furnished, connected and networked. To design the void is not the same as to design than the other way around. Perhaps one could speculate that this is evidence of the expanding in a void. In the first case, we design the urban spatial structure that gives meaning to the city. In nature of interior design as discipline – and that the disciplines of urban design and are the second case, public space is developed and confronted with a people perspective and the yet to consider to the concept of ‘interior’. temporary nature that characterises our collective life. Some refrains: Thus, Madrid courses and workshops focus on the design OF public spaces – the CONTAINER of public life in contemporary cities. Classes and workshops address the long term and the taxonomy In relation to the urban, the contemporary city as a place of transience and its effect on a sense of public space; exploring topics of creation, transformation, preservation, implementation and of belonging and hence wellbeing inflected many papers, raising questions of how to inhabit the management through historical and contemporary case studies. urban environment and the impact of and new technologies on inhabitation and everyday life. Conversely, Milan courses and workshops focus on the design IN public spaces – the CONTENT of public space in contemporary cities. Classes and workshops address the short and medium Domesticity is a repeated reference – the connection here with interior design in relation to the term, the ‘temporary city’, exploring topics of diversity, reuse, reversibility, event, hospitality and urban environment proposes the potential for a new term for urban + interior: domesti[city]. entertainment. The issues addressed in Madrid are developed and confronted with the temporary In the submissions, domesticity is often connected with ideas of comfort, intimacy, familiarity, nature that characterises current and future uses of contemporary public living spaces. atmospheres and hence belonging and meaning, and how these are transferred outside the through need, which may also produce political as well as social collective cultures. One refrain Our alumni and students are architects, interior designers and urban planners who come from all was that of the domestic boundaries of inside-outside continually shifting in response to social over the world and have different language, culture and education backgrounds. In the first two events. editions, [MUID] has bred a new generation of urban interior designers – from Spain, Lebanon, Pakistan, Italy, Bolivia, Syria, Canada, Iran, Mexico, Indonesia, Pakistan, Uruguay and Vietnam to name Boundaries are challenged and traversed, in moves away from defining interiors by enclosure to some of the countries involved – who were able to rise to the challenge launched by these two positioning ‘interior’ as a relational condition and in the process redefining private and public, inside prestigious academic institutions: learning a state-of-the-art design methodology to give concrete and outside. Urban + interior can produce ‘informal territories’ according to a temporal situation; form to urban interiors that will host new collective needs and opportunities, according to our where boundaries become porous. New technologies redefine many existing differentiations places and time. In October 2016, we will offer the third edition of [MUID]. between physical and digital space.

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The focus on social and cultural production is also foregrounded where urban + interior produces NOTES a collective sense of belonging, social cohesion and ‘emotionally-involved participation’ producing ‘instant communities’, social networks, ‘social streets’ and an 'increasingly cosy city'. Crowdfunding 1. Ross McLeod, ed., Interior Cities (Melbourne: RMIT University, 1999). and social media become strategies for the production of urban interiors. Temporal occupations 2. John Andrews, “Designing Education,” in Interior Cities, ed. Ross McLeod, 9. created by a sense of continuity through the social and cultural connections where ‘spaceless 3. City of Melbourne. “Future Population (Central Business District).” http://melbournepopulation.geografia.com. au/areas/CLSA01/tables/future-population [accessed 23 January 2016]. subjects’ find a place of ‘temporary ownerships’. The experimental and provisional as event-based 4. For a discussion of this studio and others see: Suzie Attiwill, “Urban and Interior: techniques for an urban temporal occupations are foregrounded. interiorist,” in Urban Interior. Informal explorations, interventions and occupations, ed. Rochus Urban Hinkel (Germany: Spurbuchverlag, 2011), pp.11-24. Suzie Attiwill, “Urban Interior: interior-making in the urban environment,” (paper presented The importance of the ‘micro-scale’ as an affirmation of interior scale that involves people from the at the 2011 IDA Congress Education Conference, Taiwan, October 4-26, 2011). beginning, as distinct from an overview, is reiterated. The idea of a new ‘bottom-up 5. A discussion of the Urban Interior Occupation, Craft Victoria is also included in the texts cited above. 6. Rochus Urban Hinkel, ed., Urban Interior. Informal explorations, interventions and occupations (Germany: urbanism’ based upon collective responsibilities is poised in a shift of roles from urban planners to Spurbuchverlag, 2011). interior architects/designers. Urban activations and transformations through interior interventions/ 7. Suzie Attiwill, “A Temporal Consistency,” in Temporal Urban Solutions, ed. Davide Fassi (Rimini: Maggioli Editore, extensions into the urban environment become strategies for engaging ‘interior’ in the urban. The 2012), English pp.147-55; Italian pp. 179-85. effect of the urban on inside spaces is also addressed – and the development of new strategies 8. For a discussion regarding ‘interiorizt’ see: Suzie Attiwill, “interiorizt,” in The Handbook of Interior Architecture and Design which are based on interior design priorities; ‘soft densification’ and the contribution of an interior , eds., Graeme Brooker and Lois Weinthal (UK: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013), pp. 107-116. 9. Suzie Attiwill, “A produced interiority,” (paper presented at Interiority and Interior Architecture, conference of the strategy to these situations as distinct from urban policy. Interior Architecture program, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, West Java, September 10-11, 2014). 10. Suzie Attiwill, ed., “A World in Making. Cities Craft Design,” Craft + Design Enquiry #5, Canberra: Australian Pop-up urban planning, virtual networks, activism via installations in the urban environment, National University Press, 2013. http://press.anu.edu.au?p=255421. bottom-up approaches, ‘designing new scenarios to reactivate urban spaces', design studio labs to 11. Giovanni Sartori, Homo videns. Televisione e post-pensier (Torino: Laterza, 2014). I barbari. Saggio sulla mutazione actualise different scenarios; interdisciplinary approaches bringing together interior design, social 12. Alessandro Baricco, (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2006). 13. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Halton, The Meaning of Things. Domestic Symbols and the Self (UK: Cambridge and urban planning/design – are offered throughout the journal. University Press, 1981). 14. Elena Enrica Giunta, PRO_OCCUPANCY. Il design dei microambienti urbani contemporanei tra performatività CLOSING | OPENING REMARKS dell’allestimento e appartenenze (Rimini: Maggioli, 2012). 15. DeCA project was developed by a multidisciplinary group based in Milan involving public actors, designers and an environmental psychologist, with the aim of creating some practical guidelines to evolve spaces for temporary So, by way of a closing remark that opens up the potential that is apparent in bringing urban accommodation of refugees and asylum seekers within the city. In particular, the challenge was to favour a process of and interior together it is worth noting that the call for urban + interior has collected the cities empowerment, projecting some lo-fi design solutions that would be able to transform an environment perceived as totally of Shanghai, Manhattan, Jakarta, Hong Kong, London, Stockholm, Madrid, Manila, Melbourne and precarious to a place of virtuous temporariness, also enabling new forms of individual place attachment and identification Milan. The twenty-first century is a time of significant continuing change to urban environments [Irwin Altman and Setha M. Low, Place Attachment (USA: Springer, 1992).]. Scientific coordinator: Agnese Rebaglio. Partners: and cities. In 2015, the momentous and unrelenting movement of people seeking refuge in cities Cultural Heritage and Environment Department, Università Statale di Milano, ALER, Consorzio Farsi Prossim and Comune di Milano. other than their own brings to the foreground all of the above issues that have emerged in this 16. Tim Brown, Change by Design (New York: Harper Collins, 2009). journal through the conjunction of urban + interior such as the need for belonging, wellbeing, 17. Ezio Manzini, Design when everybody (Boston: MIT Press, 2015). ‘temporary domesticised spaces’, ‘informal territories’, social and cultural participation. The urban 18. Geoff Mulgan, Social innovation: what it is, why it matters and how it can be accelerated (Oxford: Said Business environment is being transformed in social and cultural ways – perhaps more so than through the School, 2007). The Image of the City built environment. From the discussions in this journal, the emerging discipline of urban interior 19. Kevin Lynch, (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, UK: The MIT Press, 1960), 9-10. 20. Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (London, UK: Penguin, 2003). design is well placed to address these pressing challenges through interior strategies and techniques. 21. On these issues see: Luciano Crespi, Da spazio nasce spazio. L’interior design nella trasformazione degli ambienti contemporanei (Milano: Postmedia Books, 2013); Luciano Crespi ed., Design for Contemporary Interiors and Civic Art (Hershey, US: IGI Global, due for publication 2016).

Overleaf Martí Guixé, Antto Melasniemi Lapin Kulta Solar Kitchen Restaurant Helsinki 2011. Photograph: Inga Knölke/Imagekontainer

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INTRODUCTION

We usually pay little attention to the cities we live in, appreciating only a small percentage of 'E-urbanism': Strategies to develop a new urban the surrounding landscape and using just some of our five senses – mainly sight and hearing. We find ourselves enraptured by the beauty of some glimpses; alternatively seduced or horrified interior design by contemporary , which are often the result of administrative decisions of those holding powerful positions. Because of these overwhelming sensory inputs, we are nothing but Barbara Di Prete, Davide Crippa, Emilio Lonardo : sleepy viewers nervously jumping at the sound of ' horns and at their relentless speeding up Politecnico di Milano, Italy and slowing down. In an increasing number of spaces, moving around is as easy as a click, which considerably increases our space accessibility; we rest in those tiny and impersonal places that we ABSTRACT used to call , without even realising that the ‘spaces we live‘ actually no longer have walls and furnished floors but rather roads, pathways and surfaces.1 We no longer have blood ties but In the contemporary world, the virtual dimension prevails over the physical one, but some interesting design de facto relationships based on virtual contacts and fortuitous encounters; we find ourselves experiments use social networks and channel their characteristic digital participation into a new urban sensibility, swimming in an apnoea where social touch and the pleasure of commitment are drowsy senses, that we could provocatively define as ‘e-urbanism’. Marketing strategies like , place-branding and just like the sense of community. We are the inhabitants of contemporary cities. crowdfunding involve the ‘cyber-citizen’ and give rise to a multiplicity of ‘interior’ territories, identified as ‘ours’. In such a changeable and variable landscape, we still look for places that could welcome us and make us feel safe, recalling memories or suggesting new imaginative readings. When we explore the urban environment we focus on its various ‘interiors’, identifying them as familiar spaces because of their creation of a welcoming hospitality that is greater than that of undifferentiated housing. Conceptually speaking, the former can be associated with the definition of ‘interiors’ just because such open spaces evoke the pleasantness, readability and ‘figurability’2 of domestic living.

These spaces, still too few in metropolitan contexts, are ontologically similar to participatory experimentation where participation, as a means for putting city and citizens into a closer contact, could foster the designing of highly recognisable spaces marked by an ‘aggregation of belongings’ that enable them to be regarded as familiar by every individual. Therefore, if we mean by ‘urban interiors’ strongly recognisable, warm, readable and widely involving places, and we are confident that these places are the effect of participatory experimentation, they could also be regarded as a symbol of postmodern living which, now more than ever thanks to the new-technologies revolution,3 we can explore new ways of urban ‘extension’ as well as new forms of extroversion, storytelling and collective participation.

Indeed, in such a context, where virtual reality and communication increasingly prevail on physical conditions, some interesting experimental projects engage the participatory tool offered by digital technologies with a new urban sensitivity that makes ‘cyber-citizens’ become responsible and deeply involved players. It now seems possible to reply to Italian philosopher and politician Massimo Cacciari's philosophical and aesthetic question regarding the paradox of post-metropolitan cities as one of a ‘de-territorialising and anti-spatial’ destiny: ‘[I]s post-metropolitan territory the negation of any possible place, or will they “invent” suitable places for their time in which its life will appear Opposite Figure 1: A place in the ‘e-city’, 2015. Drawing by Emilio Lonardo.

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to be eventually solved?’4 Recent design scenarios seem to outline a possible answer to such 1978, for example, in Otranto, Renzo Piano had a question: where, according to the traditional meaning of urban planning, these are unplanned already started one of the ‘neighbourhood workshops’ planned reticular approaches that often spread around spontaneously. Today's urban planning seems mainly and sponsored by UNESCO for the requalification of some based on micro-initiatives, on ‘bottom-up’ processes that develop like a map of events and practical Italian historical sites, verifying the possibility for a workforce of connections that in turn become ground for hybrid . craftspeople to intervene in the old recovery process.

The result of this is increasingly predictable cities made of episodes which create spaces, and spaces that Since then many similar initiatives have followed: in 2012 in welcome urban living like theatre settings. We might ironically call this a ‘pop-up’ urban planning, a self- Calama, Chile, the people of a small went out into the sustaining and self-dissolving mechanism which uses the web as a privileged ‘building’ tool. However, to protest against the devastating social inequalities. In although being based on temporary actions and extemporaneous tools, such initiatives often leave order to quell the revolt, the local administration initiated the indelible marks on cities' physical (and even mind) space: they contribute to structuring new identities development of a strategic urban requalification plan which and increasingly improve communication potential, quality of perception and usage comfort. owed its success to an ‘open house’ located in the city's main square; this provided a real operation centre accessible to the Nowadays, from the virtual, ‘social’ and communication dimension to the physical one; from the community, with housing debates and discussions broadcast by collective to the individual sphere (and vice versa); from ‘co-urbanism’ to what we might explicitly streaming, as well as design workshops, that became a strong call ‘e-urbanism’: public space building processes can be summarised in a few operating macro- civic and democratic drive in just one hundred days. categories. A participatory and planning-oriented workshop that saw the THE FORERUNNERS: FROM PARTICIPATORY PLANNING TO citizenry get involved in the building of a communication and PLACEMAKING exposition totem has been recently carried out in Lissone (close to Milan) within the wider framework of the Lissone Work in Among the first experimentations aimed at actively involving the citizenry in a renovation of their Project strategic plan. The result of that is the Museo Verticale living spaces, participatory planning still plays a crucial role. Originally, it did not use the web's (Vertical Museum) that transformed an anonymous area – a customary tools, but it probably anticipated some of those dynamics that are now a commonplace residual space between basic road networks – into a place with – the involvement of many, ease of access, democracy and pervasiveness. Such operations have a potential identity and an inherent aggregation power: a new been a much debated issue especially over the last decade: detractors of participatory planning and metaphorical ‘urban door’, a symbolic visual and functional highlight its need to involve people who sometimes lack adequate design skills and who are epicentre, a landmark which may offer the opportunity to create not always able to understand the socio-cultural changes occurring today. On the contrary, its a small-scale economy and become a trigger for micro-events to advocates maintain the strategy is a fruitful collaboration between administration and citizens, so increase the tourist appeal of the area. as to (re)create a supportive and stable relationship with the territory that could not easily be imposed from the top.5 One of the first people to discuss was , These early experiments show that the interest towards this a Scottish , biologist and . Besides being a pioneer promoter of participatory planning practice has not disappeared, although law These first experiments are the theoretical and practical basis for the importance of landscape quality inside cities, in the early twentieth century he developed land has never regulated such practice. Sometimes it is rather used as a a more contemporary approach to participatory planning that reclamation plans through generative matrices of participatory urban planning.6 justification to express the closeness of the administration to the can be summarised in the large movement of placemaking. The community, and even as a ‘self-protection’ of the administration need by people to feel that they are full ‘citizens’ triggered these According to this view, citizens are no longer passive individuals subject to a ‘top-down’ application itself in case of failures. dynamics of spontaneous appropriation and free structuring of of ‘aseptic’ statistical data. They become active players giving their contribution at different levels: public spaces: these practices aim at breaking with the top-down sometimes by showing a conscious and respectful approach to the context, or giving a mainly Participatory planning, meant as a ‘concrete system of multiple urban planning approach to promote a bottom-up one which analytical and cognitive support, or even planning a sort of creative workshop where every single interaction',7 is today not just a democratic operation, but also a starts from urban experience, from the knowledge and initiative inhabitant can give a substantial contribution to the physical building of urban spaces. Back in technical prerequisite supporting the . of the local people. Above Figure 2: MoVE in Lissone (MB), Italy. Photograph: Davide Crippa.

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If comparing the above with traditional participatory workshops the gap is not so big, yet it the pure physical extension: the spaces we live in are no longer composed of univocally defined represents an essential discriminating factor: the latter were still based on processes not imposed areas; our pathways and relationships, even when ethereal, draw new urban sprawls that don’t but rather guided and ‘suggested’ by public players, while the placemaking experience generates actually exist. These are fluid entities, subjective and changeable that sometimes from the community itself and is based on unstructured logics.8 This approach became popular in annul and sometimes amplify real distances, spaces of the mind rather than physical ones, points the 1990s but actually dates back to the visionary ideas of urban planners and anthropologists such apparently scattered on personal maps that exclude each other and mutually mix with those of as William H. Whyte9 and ,10 who already in the 1960s had tried to make citizens feel others. responsible by encouraging them to keep watchful eyes (the well-known ‘eyes on the streets’) and tried to spread a planning culture that was not solely driven by economic motivations. The spread of social networks initially led every individual to extend their own ‘habitability range’, but now, due to the evolution of some ‘location-based services’, even people’s personal Indeed, creating a place is not the same as building a house; the value of a place cannot be movements and reciprocal connections have become visible: the geo-social-network Foursquare, measured only in aesthetic or quantitative terms, but mainly by the way its spaces are used. For this for example, stores personal information to create intersecting maps that can be consulted reason a placemaking project must consider physical, social, ecological and cultural factors as well online. On the other hand, Livehoods analyses users’ behaviours according to their check-in as psychological and personal ones, in which the community can find its identity and self-replicate. areas and, by spotting the links between the places they visit, it highlights unexpectedly hybrid spaces whose hearts are defined by people’s everyday use. However, the stochastic jump occurs Because this inherent form of wide representation constitutes its core aspect, placemaking is when these social networks change from simple indicators of habits and pathways into collectors actually an open process; however, as urban planner Kevin Lynch reminds us, ‘a landscape in which of physical territorial actions: they are becoming increasingly driving forces of neighbourhood every rock tells a different story might make it difficult to create new ones. Although this might solidarity campaigns, but also unplanned ‘urban’ or ‘subversive intrusions’ and ‘guerrillas’ outlining not seem a crucial problem in the urban chaos in which we live today, it [indicates] that what we new appealing epicentres. are looking for is not a definitive order, but rather an open one that continuously allows further developments.’11 Neighbourhood blogs and sites like Nextdoor and Circle are becoming a widespread phenomenon, a platform focusing on the history of places and giving access to social and job opportunities in In general, all the related experiences focus on the micro but actually contribute to structuring the local areas. Similarly, the platform VicinatoVicino (very widespread in Denmark but also in many macro, as a combination of individual contributions aimed at building a collective ‘public image’, a Italian, Portuguese and English cities) was created from ‘bottom up’ by listening to the streets and ‘common mind framework that most of the people living in a city bring with themselves: consensus people sharing the same urban spaces and is meant for people who want to play a new role within areas that might arise in the interaction between a single physical reality, a common culture and an the community.14 identical physiological structure.’12 Streetbank is a project based in London in which a neighbourhood's inhabitants can exchange FROM CO-URBANISM TO ‘E-URBANISM’ objects as well as simple favours, considering material and immaterial values as equally important for enhancing the intangible structure of the community and improving the tangible one, at the Today, the web is a source of nourishment and a ground for further stimulus and experimentation same time. In Italy, a phenomenon similar to Streetbank boomed thanks to the movement of ‘social for these participatory experiences that promote an urban planning based on the active streets’, established in Bologna by a group of people who started organising via Facebook a series involvement of the population and suggest a collaborative approach – defined as ‘ Co-urbanism’ – of small events to be held at the local theatre, as a chance for the reciprocal sharing of knowledge: to the project. In a world where social life is often no longer physical but virtual, the digital element if in our anonymous contemporary we live closely but we don't know each other might be an engine for progress even from an urban point of view and require a shift from the – and in the amplified relationships that we build in social networks we become close friends traditional Co-urbanism to an updated E-urbanism. The emerging scenario has a twofold nature: with strangers – in the ‘social streets’ of Bologna the digital medium has paradoxically allowed the the identification of new maps other than the mere geographical borders and the building of restoration of neighbourhood ties and facilitated a wide range of activities.15 participatory dynamics supported by social networks. The same approach was also used in a few areas of Milan such as via Maiocchi, where citizens turned In the first case, the famous Situationist motto ‘Living is feeling at home everywhere’13 should be a traffic island into a community garden, or via Morgagni, where people organise extemporaneous more deeply interpreted in the light of increasingly labile perception boundaries that go beyond and provocative picnics in a flowerbed right in the middle of the street.

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phenomena that concerned vanguards of five hundred people, ‘reward-based’ model donors receive a gift in return – usually but now we are talking about the action of tens of thousands of acknowledgements, thanks and merchandising. These two individuals.’16 If these spontaneous and associationist movements types apply a Maussian anti-economic logic.17 A third is ‘equity become viral and self-replicate through the web, it is simply crowdfunding’ where the donor becomes to all intents an because of the failure of institutions to interpret the territory's investor, gaining property and corporate rights on the financed real and current needs. project. Finally, to these first three types we must add ‘social lending’, which is not really a donation, but rather a loan that CROWDFUNDING AS A NEW FRONTIER TO allows people to help private citizens or social initiatives for a CONTRIBUTE TO THE COMMON GOOD well-deserved cause.

Another way to interpret people's commitment to the common Over the last few years many cultural and artistic projects good is their willingness to support co-funding, which is not and initiatives have been carried out thanks to crowdfunding based on pre-set project development practices but rather on an campaigns launched on portals like Kickstarter or Voordekunst. equally strong attachment to place. It is a different form of equally The idea of managing to support assets of common use by effective and emotionally involving participation. Indeed, putting joining collective resources also led to the use of crowdfunding an idea into practice requires exploring this delicate (and often at the urban level, making such tools extremely popular among inhibitory) phase of researching financial resources, which always environmentalists. The first examples of projects supported leads us to seek new potential partnerships. In a time of financial by crowdfunding campaigns can be found in the U.S. and the crisis, where people's trust towards banks and institutions has Netherlands. The most well-known example in New York is the significantly decreased, these new types of funding – generally floating swimming pool on the Hudson River: a high number called crowdfunding – are obviously getting more and more of people were so happy with the project that they launched successful. an online campaign that raised the US$41,647 required for its implementation. Another urban project carried out thanks to By crowdfunding we mean a tool that allows the collection of the Kickstarter community through a reward-based campaign material resources, historically used by both public and religious was the Whitelock Community Farm in Baltimore. Thanks to the institutions and based on small donations. Take, for example, the support of over one thousand donors, the city can now use a system of religious offerings or the more sophisticated mutual- big community farm and, depending on the contribution given, aid initiatives, which already in the nineteenth century allowed every donor received in turn personal accessories or fresh workers and farmers to safeguard themselves through collective food produced by the farm. Crowdfunding is also successful in guarantees. While in the past this technique was based on door- small communities like Atwater Village, near Los Angeles, whose to-door, limited-scale recruitment, today the use of the web residents created an ecological market based on Slow Food allows this phenomenon to become viral and deterritorialised. principles to provide everyone with fresh and healthy food. Thanks to technological progress, crowdfunding has extended its traditional boundaries, going beyond local communities and A similar initiative, Make Rotterdam, was launched in Rotterdam reaching a global scale by means of portals working as real ‘digital by the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) windows’, in which each donor can choose among a wide variety together with ZUS studio, which allowed the making of a bridge That said, according to the writer and philosopher Franco Bolelli, the internet ‘has sparked a very of projects ‘in search of trust’. to link the Central Station with one of the main sites of the important psychological revolution. People discover something and now they have the means to exposition. In this case the contribution made by every individual share it instantaneously, deriving from it a global vision of the reality in which they live and the desire To sum up, we can identify four types of crowdfunding: in the could be seen in the bridge's boards, marked with the name of to change it, to improve it through a collective use of objects and places. Once these were élite ‘donation-based’ model donors get nothing in return; in the each patron. Opposite Figure 3: Facebook home profile of ‘Social Street Italia’, May 2015.

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through this practice, citizens really manage to ‘take possession’ of Consider how an effectively applied city-branding policy may fragments of their city, leading them to establish a deeper bond represent enormous potential for a community to both enhance and sense of ‘belonging’ and, hence, ‘care’. their image to tourists and give residents a valuable sense of belonging to the territory. In 2013, the of Lissone A CASE STUDY: LISSONE WORK IN PROJECT started a complex plan of urban branding called Lissone Work in Project, consisting of a number of communication and project In building the identity of a place, a crucial role is played by the initiatives. These projects are interesting because they were image that a specific geographical area, city or neighbourhood developed with a strategic use of the web, through a ‘call’ for citizens has for residents living inside and outside such place. In a time as well as an opportunity for testimony and storytelling, as an of loss and flattening of diversity due to the establishment engine for new spontaneous initiatives and a collector of common of a now-apparent global culture, the concepts of territory interests leading to concrete actions to improve urban quality. and typicality are slowly becoming more relevant to local economic policies. Given the importance of communicating MoVE, described above, has set the foundations of a much more a clear image that could be useful and have a touristic and complex strategy of place-branding, which saw the various commercial appeal, some administrations are behaving like ‘peoples’ of the city involved in a wide number of projects aimed real enterprises and adopting innovative tools to convey their at renewing the faded charm of the ‘ Capital’ (Lissone lost identity. Urban branding or territorial branding appears is a centre for furniture production and trade) and increasing its to be one of the most effective tools to give a strong identity appeal for Expo 2015, as well as rethinking its wider perception. to the city. The aim was to create an ‘open-air territorial regional museum’ built around business, design and craftsmanship itineraries, to In particular, a territorial is the making of ‘a face, a dress, a be initially coordinated by public institutions but also supported set of gestures that are typical of a city, […] a sort of etiquette by private initiatives all around the city: stories, installations and for citizens/users.'18 In other words, this can be considered an expositions that could occupy shop windows, colonising the ‘ongoing dynamic building process in the mind of the territory's streets and expanding public space living, mixing indoor and users, who are therefore influenced by experiences, memories outdoor and eventually building new participatory and self- and judgments expressed by other users they get in contact implementing spaces. with.’19 Mihalis Kavaratzis – a researcher on place marketing, place branding and place identity – clearly states, 'the object Thanks to a viral communication launched on social networks, of city branding is not the city “itself”, but its image.'20 In his the flash mob Walking Design performance in Milan during the description of a territorial brand he mainly focuses on the 2014 Salone del Mobile attracted a high number of students and weight placed on it by the target community and their view of citizens, who took part in this symbolic parade to demonstrate it, analysing how the management of a city brand may influence the continuing propositional attitude of Lissone, a city that in the spatial behaviour. last few years has blended in with Milan’s anonymous outskirts. Through this ‘collective performance’, Lissone claimed not only a In any case, an effective city-branding strategy must consider the craftsmanship heritage based on the status of the branding ‘Made place's image for community members (collective memory which in Italy’, but also a vision for the future that restated its value on The founding idea of these initiatives is to use private self-funding Urban crowdfunding seems to be gaining more and more weight becomes a source of pride for the individual) as well as non-members today's global markets. to finance works that do not garner the government's attention, not only as a means to finance projects that would otherwise (the imagination of each individual fulfilled by a collective vision): yet are important for citizens who are no longer willing to wait have never been implemented, but also, more importantly, for its both these elements are essential for the correct development of At the same time and as part of the same project, the building for the intervention of institutions to give life to these projects. inherent power to increase the community's civic sense. Indeed, the city's communicative and promotional potential. of the portal ‘Design stories’ aimed at involving well-known Opposite Figure 4: Homepage of the project Make Rotterdam, May 2015

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– some new chaises longues were presented to the citizens. These seats were made thanks to the active contribution of the residents, who had regular meetings with the administration to give some input and raise critical issues also shared by the project designers. These are soft and playful seats where you can lie down and rest as if you are at home. Their curved structure makes them pleasant as well as comfortable, while the shape of the base allows flexible planimetric features that can fit any urban context: a square, a street, a pathway in the trees. The seats, which form a mobile block, can potentially be moved and rearranged for any occasion. This project is an opportunity to give shape to a new kind of square; a place to meet but also to relax and have fun; a new engine of socialisation and community sharing.

The orange colour, which recalls the tones used in all the new urban works, is the only decorative code applied as people's movements and the variety of ways they use the seats represent an unpredictable ‘moving décor’ in itself. Once again, although reference to the creative and productive value of the territory. It with an aesthetic and process-oriented approach rather than a is the invisible memory of the place which now metaphorically planning one, people's direct contribution creates the physical emerges through expressions accompanying tourists from the matrix of a city that is increasingly investing in a participatory station to the , giving residents an imagined city in urban planning based on ‘social’ and self-organised activities. which they actively participate, or maybe just contributing to improving the quality of inconclusive, neglected and anonymous CONCLUSION spaces. It is a pervading, limited and limitless urban graphic, an open-air museum made of memories and thoughts belonging All the approaches analysed above are frequently combined and designers and also citizens (students, artisans, retailers, designers to all of us: this is the heritage we share that permeates all the mixed to create hybrid experiments, which find a possible synthesis and ordinary people) who gave their own definition of design, streets of a city; an ‘urban book’ yet to be written. in urban interiors. Indeed, the common objective of all these thus becoming part of a collective storytelling process of operations is to find a purpose for public spaces that are often ‘thinking’ and ‘making’ design that has always found fertile ground Colours also contribute to reinforcing this identity-building too homogeneous and undifferentiated. Such initiatives are aimed in the Monza and Brianza province. The result was an informal operation: the officially registered colour ‘Lissone orange’ at involving people in sharing personal ‘mind maps’ and physically ‘museum of the immaterial’; a growing platform, an open project becomes a further recognition element for a city that is painfully building interiors and structures for an increasingly cosy city. supported by the community that was self-sustaining thanks trying to gain credibility in the eyes of the world as well as, on the to the word of mouth that has now become a common good, other hand, offering new visual and spatial quality to its residents. Using involvement as a method to get citizens closer to a space witness and keeper of the community's aspirations and talents. so that they no longer consider it an unknown place. The idea In addition, with a view to improving the use of urban areas of a ‘soft project’22 is pursued as an answer to heterogeneous This impressionistic ‘digital collecting’ gave birth to the so called so far considered as neutral – a terrain vague where finally, as ‘human geographies’ that no longer identify themselves in the ‘Design itineraries’, a territorial marketing operation that saw hoped for by anthropologist and architect Franco La Cecla, previous pragmatic, often ‘speciously objective’ urban planning the statements selected by the portal literally enter the city, ‘the misunderstanding [becomes] a boundary with a shape,’21 a tradition:23 a collection of microstories, not legends; an urban becoming a graphic and decorative code as well as a clear creative and imaginative force free from any pre-set standards planning that structures precise and cosy spaces because they Opposite Top Opposite Bottom Figure 5: Lissone Work in Project logo in the city, 2014. Figure 6: Performance of the ‘flash mob’ during the Milan Design Week 2014. Photograph: Davide Crippa. Photograph: Davide Crippa.

Above Figure 7: Facebook home profile of Racconti di design, September 2015.

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are recognised and feel familiar; an urban planning that sets up as private spheres, as the first extroversions of the individuals NOTES fragments of city around the individual (or groups of individuals) into mutual spaces. It is within these semantically hybrid themes with the ambition of conceiving a new shared idea. This is the that it is possible to test out the ‘layering of belonging’, which 1. Ugo La Pietra, Abitare La Città: Ricerche, Interventi, Progetti Nello Spazio Urbano Dal 1960 Al 2000 (Turin: U. reason why, in this summary, through the individual and collective Allemandi, 2011). develops the individual identity while at the same time creating 2. Kevin Lynch, L’immagine della città (Venice: Marsilio, 1964), 31. interpretations, urban interiors are the key points. They are the collective dimension. The result is a collage of situations, a 3. Jeremy Rifkin, L’era dell’accesso (Milan: Mondadori, 2000). already part of the shared urban space but are still perceived mix of fragments that find a positive synthesis in this variety for a 4. Massimo Cacciari, “Nomadi in prigione”, in La città infinita, ed. Aldo Bonomi and Alberto Abruzzese (Milan: city made of memories, expectations and energies of individuals Mondadori, 2004), 51-58. Competenze Possibili. Sfera pubblica e potenziali sociali nella città who literally ‘network’. 5. Paolo Cottino, (Milan: Jaca Book, 2009). 6. Patrick Geddes, Civics: as Applied Sociology (Charleston: BiblioLife, 2004). 7. Pier Luigi Crosta, “Le pratiche dell’uso sociale del territorio come pratiche di costruzione di territori. Quale All the planning processes listed in this essay – and codified as democrazia locale?,” in La democrazia locale tra rappresentanza e partecipazione, ed. Francesca Gelli (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2005). declinations of an emerging ‘e-urbanism’ – are fully contemporary, 8. Fred Kent, “Place Making Around The World,” UrbanLand 8 (2008): 65. The Last Landscape simply because they interpret urban space as a sum of ‘weak 9. William H. Whyte, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968). 10. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961). 24 25 thoughts’, highlighting those aspects of ‘vulnerability’, that foster 11. Lynch, L’immagine della città, 28. the sense of temporary and consider the space of fragments as a 12. Anna Foppiano, “Corpo a corpo,” Abitare 523 (6) (2012): 63-67. chance to give voice to small actions. 13. Francesco Careri, Constant. New Babylon, una città nomade (Turin: Testo & Immagine, 2001). 14. http://myNeighbourhood.eu (accessed April 24, 2015). 15. Paola Tavella, “Social Streets,” Abitare 542 (2) (2015): 49-53. This provisional nature is what facilitates the creation of new 16. Ibid., 53. planning alphabets that welcome the unknown and accept the 17. Marco Aime and Anna Cossetta, Il dono al tempo di Internet (Turin: Einaudi, 2010). uncertain and unexpected, and it is probably only in an urban 18. Giovanni Anceschi, “L'interfaccia delle città”, in L’interfaccia delle città, ed. Giovanni Anceschi, conference interiors theme – intrinsically designated for experiments – that proceedings, C.F.P. Albe Steiner, Ravenna, 1994. 19. Alberto Pastore and Enrico Bonetti “Il brand management del territorio,” in Synergie – Rapporto di Ricerca 23 it could have found its first physical development. (4) (2006): 79-100. 20. Mihalis Kavaratzis, “From city marketing to city branding: Towards a theoretical framework for developing city These dynamics permeate all Western societies, as they contradict ,” Place Branding 1 (2004): 58-73. the pensée unique (mainstream ideological conformist thinking), too 21. Franco La Cecla, Il malinteso. Antropologia dell’incontro (Rome Bari: Laterza, 2009), 162. 22. Loredana Parmesani, ed. Alessandro Mendini. Scritti. (Milan: Skira, 2004). often disconnected from the real social corpus, while fostering that 23. Guido Morbelli, Introduzione all’urbanistica (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2005), 280. stratification of memories, thoughts, approaches and heterogeneous 24. Edgar Morin, “L’età dell’incertezza. La forza del pensiero debole,” Lettera internazionale 88 (2) (2006): 9-10. identities which constitute the wealth of the post-modern urbs, today 25. Alessandro Guerriero, Psycho-Fragilità https://appuntidivista.wordpress.com/category/polimi-%20autoritratto- made accessible by the power of the internet. dellio-multiplo-milano-11-12/ (accessed April 26, 2015).

'E-urbanism' is a possible representation of this contemporary paradigm: it is a new ‘bottom-up’ urbanism, which reinterprets the traditional 'co-urbanism' in the light of the current tools, technologies and opportunities (such as social networks and information technologies). By recalling 'collective responsibilities' and by combining social and virtual dimensions with the physical one, the aim is to build places (both recognized and recognizable) and not only spaces.

Opposite Top Figure 8: Graphic texts become a decorative and narrative urban pattern in Lissone (MB), Italy, 2014. Photograph: Davide Crippa.

Opposite Bottom Figure 9: New chaise longues by Studio Ghigos in Lissone (MB), Italy, 2014. Photograph: Davide Crippa. IDEA JOURNAL 2015 URBAN + INTERIOR 28 29

structure and limited interior space in association with the socialist incentives.8 The government envisaged a commercial city urban patterns of residents’ lives.2 A micro-scale consideration that could reflect its former glory. Authorities were eager to has long and largely been overlooked due to several reasons as redevelop central areas for potential incomes from land lease, Densifying Lilong: Micro-scale design strategy vast construction of commercial housing dominates the housing a major source of local revenue.9 It was, however, only after policies and becomes privileged in social, planning and economic 1990 that the reforming policies accelerated the consumption of of S.O.F.T. redevelopment of the shikumen housing studies. Thus traditional residential blocks often face the danger housing. After 1993, local real estate became available to foreign of cultural eradication because they are not protected by investments, and a deluge of money created a boom in domestic in urban Shanghai governmental conservation regulations;3 the maximisation of real estate.10 This transition oversaw a confrontation between for commercial needs has resulted in exceptions being urban transformation and rising land prices.11 Large numbers of Chunfang Dong : Tongji University, China given to the redevelopment plans for announced historical traditional residences in the old industrial districts were cleared conservation sites and this, in turn, challenges local residents and replaced by new types of private, foreign-styled residential Jing Xiao : City University of Hong Kong, HK SAR and drives them away to remote and jobless suburban areas.4 properties. There was a substantial improvement in the provision Even with a better relocation plan, relocation may not succeed of housing floor areas; nonetheless this was not true for the old ABSTRACT without systematic land acquisition and financial compensation lilong districts (Table 1). To justify the housing policies in command, under specific government regulations.5 Further to this, there is scholars paid attention to macro-scale residential mobility This paper examines theories of urbanisation and redevelopment in contemporary China. Reviewing the historical little strategic research on architectural design to minimise this according to and market equilibrium, etc.12 Others transformation of urban Shanghai, it argues that routine urban policies are insufficient for redeveloping the colonial kind of relocation in practice. examined individual responses to economic and societal changes.13 urban context of traditional shikumen lilong housing. The paper identifies that a more humanistic, micro-scale design strategy – ‘S.O.F.T.’ guideline – from the perspective of architectural and interior design may help modernise However, it appears to anthropologist Non Arkaraprasertkul that We argue that lilong housing reflects various historical problems and densify the interior residential efficiency in protected districts without interfering with external urban patterns. the authoritative studies of urban economy and quantitative It is concerned with aspects of supplementary function, spatial optimisation and structural technique and secures faced during the transformation of urban Shanghai. Its inability sociology as such prove insufficient to underpin the sustainability the financing basis from stakeholders by transforming the design activity into cultural products of consumption. In to provide adequate living space became critical, especially of housing and social patterns of local people.14 The government this way, it encourages a grassroots manner of interior redevelopment especially for the districts where preservation during the last two decades when high-density urbanisation was has long struggled between two ends of urban life: inhabitant and ordinances often limit the potential of external urban fabrics and life patterns. happening. The paper will elaborate on the design strategy of income, living and leisure, culture and commerce. ‘soft densification’. The case study, 0.8 Shikumen House recently finished by the authors’ studio team in the Yangshupu district, On the other hand, we also see some insights from historical demonstrates an alternative way of rebuilding without large-scale studies in the writings of architectural historians like Luo INTRODUCTION 6 relocation of lilong residents. It amplifies four interrelated aspects Xiaowei, Zheng Shiling, Cary Y. Liu, Lu Junhua et al., Feng of this special densification: supplementary functions in vertical A combination of spatial production, consumption, and cultural practices is one of the most Shaoting, D. Louise Morris and the Shanghai Academy of Society. and horizontal dimensions, optimisation of necessary living 16 influential features of contemporary urban theories.1 Principles of privatisation in the economy Their contributions form a preliminary basis for our reading. facilities, potential financing solutions and technical integration of and consumption of capital can be equally applied to the housing policies in contemporary China. Among them, research done by Guan Qian, Huang Lei, Renee structure for interior space. Following this, the housing ownership scheme in Shanghai has undergone a tremendous change Y. Chow and especially Fan Wenbing, Non Arkaraprasertkul, since the late 1980s. Juxtaposing it are the rising concerns about local cultural heritage protection and Chunlan Zhao briefly touches the topic of traditional as a strategy of city branding. Increasingly, studies address aspects that include macro-scale LITERATURE REVIEW: NEW URBAN POLICIES, housing as an architectural and urban solution.17 However, residential mobility, anthropological observation, and the effect of economic policy on urban lives. OLD INTERIOR PROBLEMS interior design research is somewhat excluded from this circle They focus on the redevelopment of lilong housing – a traditional type of residential architecture of housing studies. One of the possible reasons may be that a in the surrounding areas of Shanghai – yet few of them examine the issue from a perspective of Interior strategy in need majority of scholars share the opinion that urban policy is the design strategy, that is, with the eyes of architects and interior designers. Since the first national conference on housing reform in 1988, way to solve lilong redevelopment. A common assumption China unleashed private initiatives, schemes by public bodies and may be that, if external urban qualities were not improved This paper, on the contrary, entertains a potential design strategy for redeveloping the lilong a vision for better living quality.7 Shanghai became a contested beforehand, interior design would contribute little to updating housing. It approaches the question by means of a micro-scale observation of its architecture, frontier of urban space dominated by both capitalist and post- life patterns from within.

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Table 1: Percentage of different housing types in the City of Shanghai (one million square metres). The data for housing types in Shanghai is calculated from Shanghai Statistical Yearbook 2013.15

Production of urban space relies upon negotiations between the the early shikumen house (1870s - 1910s), the late shikumen stakeholders: land-owners, investors, developers and consumers. house (1910s - 1930s), and the new-style lilong house (1910s - For lilong residents, life patterns are not abstract variables in the 1940s). The first type comprises three bays in width and equations of a mobile economy; they also have actual mental occupies an area roughly 10-13 metres by 16 metres. The and physical connections and implications that fall within the situation changed in the early twentieth century when the concerns of architectural design. Therefore we cannot afford to unprecedented speed and density of urbanisation precluded overlook the potential of design to engage with this traditional this larger style. In pursuit of efficiency in land use and balanced housing, especially when problems like limits of finance, spatial distribution among working people, a new type of single-bay inflexibility, and over-commercialisation make it a pressing issue in or two-bay structure was promoted, with supplementary redeveloping urban Shanghai. An historical review will tell us that strategies of construction to accommodate poorer families these are catalysts and by-products of urban change that reflect and maximise spatial function in accordance with tenants’ incomes. A famous farce, The Seventy-two Tenants, attests to the imperfect living patterns of lilong housing itself since the very the common situation of a single lilong dwelling maybe housing shikumen beginning of its design. This was particularly true for the late house (Figure the house was constructed using a brick-walling system. Unlike 15 to 20 people. Later on, wealthier occupants required a 2). To accommodate more families, an attic space was installed the disastrous slums of unstable freestanding wooden structures, new type of lilong – spacious and hygienic. It had good spatial above the kitchen. Front gardens were also sacrificed for shikumen houses at least used integrated brick and wooden IMPERFECT LILONG HOUSING orientation, and was equipped with front , semi- additional living space and bedrooms. Ground floor areas, both systems, which were inexpensive but strong enough to hold the open green gardens, modern construction techniques and front and back living rooms (qian ketang and hou ketang), were integrity of this three- structure. The compact nature of Shanghai’s lilong housing derives made of reinforced concrete. This third type was beyond the converted to allow further subletting. On the first floor was from the emergence of the provision of housing to factory reach of the lower classes. In the shikumen houses, money, land, a front bedroom (qianfang) and a back bedroom (houfang). A Density became even higher through the mid-twentieth century.20 workers and immigrants in the nineteenth century – since the air and even supplies of water and electricity were still often in little room called erceng ge was inserted into the corner spaces According to a 1937 official statistical report by the Shanghai establishment of the International Settlement (Figure 1).18 The danger of deprivation due to the extremity of lot division and between the floors and ceilings. Another little room called municipality, 86% of citizen families in the lilong housing areas of whole development can briefly be divided into three stages: the imbalance of infrastructure. sanceng ge became a bonus on the ‘new’ second floor.19 Overall, the International Settlement lived in a co-resident manner,21 and Above Figure 1: Map of the International Settlement in Shanghai, 1904. The shaded square - above right - shows the location of our project at Tangshan Street. Image: Virtual Cities Project, Lyon.

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of impact of macro-scale redevelopment must be maintained in order to sustain the original urban culture in terms of design. Since 2012, the authors’ design team took the lead in redeveloping a traditional lilong house in the Yangshupu District. It provides an opportunity to rethink the strategies of massive redevelopment and change. Revitalising the area does not simply mean keeping the community intact, but also following a sequence of design, financial and technical concerns to maintain its vitality by implementing the more humanistic approach of ‘soft densification’.

SOFT DENSIFICATION: A CASE STUDY OF 0.8 SHIKUMEN HOUSE

The project is the consequence of an invitation to participate in a TV program organised by the Shanghai Media Group (SMG). SMG set up a project called Mengxiang gaizaojia (Dream Redeveloper), targeting house reconstruction for a group of selected citizens who live in extremely poor conditions. The program manager invited architects and designers to redesign dilapidated dwellings into comfortable houses. Our design studio was invited to lead one of the projects located in Tangshan Street (Figure 1). Typically, this project had only a limited budget and a tight time schedule. Its subject was one of the late shikumen houses in this area built around the 1930s, where low-quality architecture sits alongside a high- density population and extremely poor living conditions. Its marginalised location restricts financial investment, but the governmental planning guideline of the surrounding Tilanqiao Recent redevelopment projects like Xintiandi and Tianzifang Historic Reserve – ensuring its untouchable status – ridiculously (Figure 3) are believed to be successful cases of converting low- forbids any external housing improvements, mega-construction return shikumen residences into highly profitable public space.23 or . The whole district of Tangshan Street is thus a single-bay shikumen house featured an average of 2.8 square metres per person. What is really Imitating the atmosphere of colonial architecture, decorating an impregnable fortress for any normal redevelopment plans, intriguing is that, compared to the statistical data of other housing types, little changed in the recent new alleys, bars and luxury centres with structural elements denying any attempt to solve the micro-housing problem from round of large-scale urbanisation and residential provision.22 From 2000 to 2012, the total housing extracted from the surrounding areas are design strategies a planning or economic perspective. Yet it offers us a precious floor area in Shanghai has increased to 562.63 million square metres, while only eight million that offer nothing but pseudo-historical redevelopment.24 opportunity to see the potential of redevelopment from within; square meters of lilong housing have been converted, renovated or demolished. To complete Despite the context being preserved, the life patterns of ‘three- that is, to make an architectural and interior upgrade without massive relocations in central areas often requires a formidable sum for compensation. As such, bay’ houses are largely interrupted by mass consumption and changing the macro-scale housing patterns and overall historical both foreign investors and local administration find it very difficult to redevelop shikumen houses encroached on by shop houses and restaurants, providing little atmosphere in the protected district. Multiplication becomes into other multiple-use commercial, entertainment and cultural facilities. reference to the collective memory of culture. The minimisation an advantage. It contributes a potential paradigm for similar Opposite Figure 2: A typical layout of the lilong housing. Image: drawn by the authors.

Above Figure 3: Tianzifang district after commercial redevelopment. Top: Billboards of shop houses covering the façade of old . Below: Sign to keep tourists out of the corner gate of a residence. IDEA JOURNAL 2015 URBAN + INTERIOR Photographs: Authors. 34 35

redevelopment cases where to challenge statutory planning accommodates up to six family members of three generations. seventy degrees are too steep for the elders (Figures 5 and is not an option. We can simply apply the strategy of interior Unusual for a lilong house, this building has been stripped of a 6), and there is only one cramped restroom, hidden on the design to other locations, while altering its feasibility case-by-case. living room on the ground floor, which was sub-divided to other ground floor: even to find your way there appears to be a truly Our bottom-up philosophy avoids changing external features, tenants long ago. We therefore call the project 0.8 Shikumen ‘marvellous’ achievement. Spatial efficiency is compromised by including heights, façade materials and boundaries. It aims not to House. Basically, a gross floor area of 90 square metres of the the disastrous placement and shortage of storage space. Due to build bigger or higher. It seeks to densify the functional variety house lies in chaos, while only 60 square metres of it is available yearly deterioration, the unstable combined brick-wood system within the frame of the main structure by optimising structural for living activities. A kitchen combined with dining room is requires urgent reconstruction. distribution and spatial uses. Ideally, it costs much less than on the ground floor (Figure 4). Four bedrooms are spread demolition and improves the urban qualities of the community. over the floors above. A common room is missing, slating the The case for the project is Mr Ge’s family house, a dwelling that scarce allowance of space and facilities. Stairs of more than

Opposite Above left Figure 4: Plans before renovation. Figure 5: Steep stairs before reconstruction. Legend: 1. Combined kitchen and dining room. 2. Corridor. 3. Restroom. 4. Bedroom. All photographs taken by the authors unless further indicated. 5. Roof with skylight. 6. Bedroom. 7. Bedroom for the elders. 8. Bedroom for the elders. Images: Drawn by the authors. Above right Figure 6: Chaotic interior.

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Table 2: Function analysis before and after renovation. By the authors.

STRATEGIES OF ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN AND THE PROCESS OF RECONSTRUCTION

A key task of renovation was to introduce more spaces to the compound within: that is, to softly densify the house without interfering with the guidelines of urban design or the lives of neighbours. In the meantime, we had to address the needs of both common usage and privacy (Table 2). Top priorities included a first-floor living room and top-floor facilities for the elders. The restroom, dining area and kitchenette offered horizontal convenience for their daily activities. All of the interior spatial expansion relied on the systematic compartmentalisation in both vertical and horizontal dimensions during the process of re-examining and calculating the immoveable load- bearing walls. Solutions needed to address practical problems case by case, especially when official statutory guidelines seem not to be applicable. The whole project had three phases. In Phase I, after removing the floor panels of Room 6, we discovered a mezzanine space of 1.2 metres high, adding the full clearance of that part to 5.1 metres. It was then possible to split this height horizontally and vertically: that is, a passage way and a comfortable private room of 2.4 metres high on the lower level, and an upper attic for dining area and kitchenette attached to the elders’ bedroom (Figure 7 a, b). In Phase II, Room 7 is subject to expansion. While converted into a new living room, it still has enough space between the ceiling and pitched-roof panels to hold an upper bedroom for the elders. It maintains a minimum height of 1.6 to 2.2 metres. This treatment does not meet with the official guidelines for constructing new residential buildings and is seldom used in renovation degrees, avoiding uncomfortable steepness and giving clearer projects in reserve districts. However, it does provide a tailor-made design for the elders, whose interior flow along the corridor space (Figure 9 a, b and 10). body heights are less than 1.5 metres. Meanwhile, this elders’ bedroom and the living room below This method squeezes staircases into central areas and thus shared an ‘interior ’ marked out by a cantilevered structure (Figure 8). This two-level gives more space for the ground-floor dining room. It allows space, with bright south-facing windows, optimises the inner airflow using the stack-effect principle. room for a new bathroom and semi-detached laundry. Handrails It also enhances the visual effects, relieving the dullness of the space. are fixed at a height of 78cm along corridors as well asin bathrooms (Figure 11). The of sheer white panels In Phase III, the interior design aims at the optimisation of circulation using staircases. By adding and contrasting decorations in the corridors further enhance more steps and extending zigzag shapes, new staircases ascend with angles of less than 45 interior qualities, symbolising the modern spirits of the Ge Above top left Above top right Figure 7: a) Kitchenette. b) Dining area on the top floor. Figure 9: a) Stairs on the ground floor. b) Staircase with reduced gradient and handrails Above bottom left Figure 8: Cantilevered space in the living room. Above bottom right Figure 10: New plywood structures for the staircase

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A major achievement during the redevelopment was to run the project in a ‘self-funding’ manner. With the support of SMG, the whole process of design and construction was transformed into a TV program, a contemporary media product subject to mass consumption by the spectators. Architects, interior designers, materials suppliers and tradespeople offered free support and manpower during the various stages. Their efforts, in return, would be compensated by advertisements broadcast free on the TV program in the series. Materials suppliers deserved special emphasis in the show, having donated a large amount of structural materials such as wood and dry-walling systems. It required budget checking by different stakeholders and, above all, a mutually negotiated agreement. In this case, the TV program offered RMB 8,000 (US$1,200) for the show’s production. The clients spent around RMB 30,000 (US$4,500) on interior decoration to their idiosyncratic tastes and needs. The total budget of the whole construction was successfully family’s new life patterns. Figures 12 and 13 show a diagram kept to less than RMB 300,000 (US$45,000), which means the of the design strategy. The architectural expansion creates an clients needed to contribute less than 10% of the cost, and in increase in the gross floor area to 117.6 square metres, adding return, got a new house of 120 square metres with high-quality 27.6 square metres of new space and three more storage areas. design and facilities. The 7.9-metre-high exterior framework remains unchanged and thus indicates no severe interference to the existing urban fabric This mode of financing redevelopment by extracting funds from and neighbourhood. different bodies can be successful only in relation to a one-off, Opposite left Opposite right Figure 11: Bathroom for the handicapped. Figure 12: Spatial densification by reconstruction (upper row, before renovation; lower row, after renovation).

Above Figure 13: Plans after renovation. Legend: 1. Kitchen/dining room. 2. Laundry. 3. Toilet. 4. Bedroom. 5. Roof with skylight. IDEA JOURNAL 2015 URBAN + INTERIOR 6. Bedroom. 7. Living room. 8. Bedroom for the elders. 9. Terrace. 10. Toilet. 11. Dining area. 12. Kitchenette. 13. Bedroom for the elders. 40 41

micro-scale project. We have to accept that to redevelop the whole Tangshan area is beyond the interests. Without either governmental or private funding, self-fundraising is the only option for capacity of the SMG TV program. When more and more people were inspired by the show to local residents. SMG’s brilliant liaison between architects and materials suppliers can be taken as write letters to the media group for help, participants had to be creative to secure adequate funds an ideal model of mass-media co-operation. It transformed the design activity into the ‘social event’ in the long term, either from new tradespeople and suppliers or to devise more fascinating design of a TV program. Social media, commonly believed to be the accomplice of the ‘bad’ capitalist shows as consumable cultural products. Admittedly, this temporary relational system of mutual urbanisation, takes an ironically good role in financing this experiment, helping to make a new benefits is unstable and difficult to maintain. However, it gives us an example of transforming house that the residents could not otherwise afford. On the other hand, participating designers the symbolic values of housing design to find public ‘resources’. There is a rising concern about and suppliers received compensation by means of a ‘solid showroom’ and free TV . the redevelopment of lilong housing in public reviews, and the SMG decided to repeat this This grassroots mode of finance, in other words, saves governmental resources being spent on redevelopment mode in its following seasons of Dream Redeveloper. Two years of the program redevelopment and gentrification schemes. By taking gradual steps and negotiating, it avoids the has succeeded in transforming old houses for nearly thirty families. All the stakeholders, including usual consequences of demonstration and conflict during actions of relocation, and thus sustains architects and interior designers, felt happy as the media referred to them as ‘humanist designers large-scale urban revitalisation in the long run. The fourth concern emphasized by the letter ‘T’ is in this materialist society’. about the appropriateness of technical materials and load-bearing structures to be used. It does not simply mean to consider those regular techniques of preserving historical buildings. Beyond GUIDELINE S.O.F.T. : that, convenience, expenditure, time and even sound pollution during the transportation and REFLECTIONS ON THE REDEVELOPMENT OF URBAN SHANGHAI installation of materials may have severe potential impacts, not only on the integrity of structures themselves but also on the neighbourhood and greater urban life. A mental attitude of tenderness In this paper we challenge the socio-economic theories of contemporary urbanisation in Shanghai. and softness may also determine the qualities of future life. The modern lilong housing reflects the problematic residues of its nineteenth-century colonial urban context. While a plethora of modernist urban policies are failing to sustain micro-scale urban patterns The Shanghai municipality is faced with harsh situations of urban redevelopment and revitalisation. with more humanistic concerns, the potentials of architectural and interior design strategies are still While it is usual to eradicate traditional urban fabrics in exchange for commercial profit, poor overlooked, especially when in the face of the urgency of redeveloping traditional residential areas. families like Mr Ge’s can still have the chance to continue their old ways of life by means of this S.O.F.T. design strategy. The fact that this project recently won the prize for Social Equality in the WA Chinese Architecture Awards We argue that a matrix of design guidelines so-called ‘S.O.F.T.’ is necessary for updating lilong means it is not just a one-off lucky shot. It is only the beginning of housing as in the case of the 0.8 Shikumen House. It is ‘soft’ due to multiple human concerns in the this new-media-aware mode of redevelopment that explores mutual benefits for stakeholders, dilapidated residential areas. It seeks to transform extreme living conditions into comfortable and in projects that are challenged by both rigid authoritarian ordinances of preservation and limited enjoyable environments with lower costs and less interference to the external urban fabric. We finance. This flexible strategy has succeeded in changing various types of residence in the urban must see that it is not a solid framework that can be readily applied to any other districts. It takes area, including alley-corner houses, urban flats, shop houses and even a dilapidated water tower. advantage of discreet flexibility to ice-break the routine governmental ordinances of preservation There should be more financing options in the future under the booming influence of the creative on a case-by-case basis. industries. For example, resources can be found via websites, online game shows, sales of digital products, as long as the creative community becomes the new driving force in renovating old The letter ‘S’ stands for supplementary functions. These are primarily crucial for such redevelopment houses into small SoHo-like workspaces at home. We have to be creative. It is the only way that shikumen – it demands optimising attributes like spatial efficiency, simplicity of circulation and enhancement long-established families in the houses can enjoy the micro-scale but diversified affinity of structural systems. The design philosophy of ‘O’ for optimisation can be further reflected by of their alleys in a humanistic way. better consultancy and exact control over the procedure of redevelopment. For us, the task became very stressful when structural consultants failed to shrink the dimensions of load-bearing NOTES structures to 15cm in thickness, making impossible the proposed insertion of additional steps or partition walls. We needed a balance between function, structure and availability of space, and to 1. For exemplary theories of urban policy and consumption, see Philip Cook, “Modernity, Postmodernity and the Theory, Culture & Society Consumer Culture and Postmodernism Lilong City,” 5 (1988): 475-493; Mike Featherstone, (London: Sage, stick to the budget according to financial resources which the letter ‘F’ mainly concerns. - 1991); Sharon Zukin, “The Postmodern Debate over Urban Form,” Theory, Culture & Society 5 (1988): 431-446. housing redevelopment is different from other types of urbanisation in that the preservation 2. Lilong, as a single word in Chinese, means not only the physical body of housing architecture in Shanghai, but ordinance denies any possibility of rebuilding it into a high-density with commercial also its atmosphere of neighbourhood and other subjective qualities of life. Scholar Chunlan Zhao summarises the different

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meanings of lilong as: 1) the physical forms of three major housing subtypes being organised along small alleys typical of Tenure Choice in Transitional Urban China: a multilevel analysis,” 39 (2002): 7-32. Shanghai, most of which were constructed since the late nineteenth century; 2) the community being built, based on this 14. Non Arkaraprasertkul, “Urbanization and Housing: Socio-spatial Conflicts Over Urban Space in Contemporary kind of neighbourhood; 3) a particular kind of living style formed by this dwelling space. See Chunlan Zhao, “From Shikumen Shanghai,” in Aspects of Urbanization in China, ed. Gregory Bracken (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012). to New-style: a rereading of lilong housing in modern Shanghai,” The Journal of Architecture 9, no. 1 (2004): 49-76. 15. Website http://www.stats-sh.gov.cn/tjnj/nj13.htm?d1=2013tjnj/C1103.htm. (Accessed: 13 October 2014) 3. You-Ren Yang and Chih-Hui Chang, “An Urban Regeneration Regime in China: a case study of urban 16. Xiaowei Luo and Jiang Wu, eds., Shanghai Longtang (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Meishu Chubanshe,1998); S. redevelopment in Shanghai’s Taipingqiao area,” Urban Studies 44 (9) (2007): 1809-1826. There are two typical ways of L. Zheng, Shanghai chengshi de gengxin yu gaizao [The Urban Redevelopment of Shanghai] (Shanghai: Tongji University Press, redeveloping lilong housing: first, under the protection of the National Priority Protected Sites and the Municipal Level 1996); Junhua Lue, Peter G. Rowe and Jie Zhang, Modern Urban Housing in China 1840-2000 (Munich: Prestel, 2001); Heritage Conservation regulations; second, reconstruction and replacement by commercial or entertainment buildings like Shaoting Feng, Shikumen: Shanghai tese minju yu longtang fengqing [Shikumen, the Traditional Residence and Alley of Shanghai] the areas of Xintiandi and Tianzifang. (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Meishu Chubanshe, 2009); D. Louise Morris, Community or Commodity? A Study of Lilong Housing 4. Yonglie Ye, Shangpinfang dazhan [The Battle of the Housing Market] (Shanghai: Fudan University Press, 1997), in Shanghai (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1994); Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (Research Institute of 195-208. Economy), Shanghai penghuqu de bianqian [The Transformation of Shanty Houses in Shanghai] (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin 5. Xuefei Ren, Building Globalization: Transnational Architecture Production in Urban China (: University of Meishu Chubanshe, 1962). Chicago Press, 2011). 17. Guan Qian, Lilong Housing: a traditional settlement form. Masters dissertation submitted to the School of 6. The design team also published a paper in the Chinese Architectural Journal. See Chunfang Dong, Kexuan Li and Architecture, McGill University, 1996; Lei Huang, Housing Development in the Context of the Modernization, Urbanization Huanhuan Wang, “Kongjian geming: guanyu 0.8 dong shikumen zhuzhai gaizao de sikao [Spatial Revolution: On Renovating 0.8 and Conservation of Chinese Traditional Cities: Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou (Cambridge, MA: Press, 2000); Shikumen House]”, Jianzhu Xuebao [Architectural Journal] (2) (2014): 101-105. An online version of the publication can Renee Chow, “In a Field of Party Walls: Drawing Shanghai’s Lilong,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 73 (1) also be found via the link: http://www.douban.com/note/274802148/, written by Dong Chunfang, the leader of the team. (2014): 16-27; Wen Bing Fan, Shanghai lilong de baohu yu gengxin [The Conservation and Renewal of Lilong Housing Another short essay of anthropological observation of this project in the preliminary stage can be found at: http://www. in Shanghai]. (Shanghai: Shanghai & Technology Press, 2004); Non Arkaraprasertkul, “Towards Modern Urban douban.com/note/264735297/, also written by Dong. However, the structure and content of those writings emphasise Housing: Redefining Shanghai's Lilong,” Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability 2 detailed aspects of architectural design, which differ from the broader concerns of urban design and planning, history and (1) (2009): 11-29. economy addressed in this paper. 18. The expansion of foreign settlements in Shanghai led to the urbanisation of surrounding areas like Zhabei to the 7. Ya Ping Wang and Alan Murie, “Commercial housing development in urban China,” Urban Studies 36 (9) (1999): north and Nandao to the south. The district of Yangshupu to the east was the consequence of the development of several 1475-1494; Li Zhang and Ahiwa Ong, “Introduction: Privatizing China,” in Privatizing China – Socialism from Afar, eds. Li Zhang foreign factories and municipal facilities along the lower Huangpu River. Therefore, the residential buildings in this area were and Ahiwa Ong (Ithaca and London: Press, 2008). new, compared to those in the old Chinese walled city, the international settlement and the French concession. 8. Michael Burawoy and Katherine Verdery, “Introduction,” in Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the 19. Zhao, “From Shikumen to New-style,” 59-60. Also see Chow, “In a Field of Party Walls,” 16-27; Hanchao Lu, Postsocialist World, eds. Michael Burawoy and Katherine Verdery (New York, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 1-18; Beyond the Neon Lights: everyday Shanghai in the early twentieth century (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, Deborah Davis and Hanlong Lu, “Property in Transition: Conflicts over Ownership in Post-Socialist Shanghai,” European 1999). Also see Lue et al., Modern Urban Housing, 64. Journal of Sociology 44 (1) (2003): 77-99. Isabelle Thireau and Wang Hangsheng, eds., Disputes au village chinois. Formes du 20. For a briefing on the urban development and architecture of Shanghai, see Cary Liu, “Encountering the Dilemma juste et recompositions locales des espaces normatifs [Disputes in a Chinese Village. Local Forms of Justice and Reconstructions of Change in the Architectural and Urban History of Shanghai,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 73 (1) (2014): of Normative Situations] (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2001). 118-136. During the three decades from the 1950s to 1980s, nearly 22 million square metres of housing was constructed 9. Si-ming Li and Youqin Huang, “Urban Housing in China: market transition, housing mobility and neighborhood and the contemporary population grew from 5.3 million to nearly 7 million, but the average living space per person was change,” Housing Studies 21 (5) (2006): 613-623. still very low, reaching about 5.4 square metres per capita. See Shanghai Statistics Bureau, Shanghai Statistical Yearbook 1986 10. Youqin Huang, “A Room of One’s Own: housing consumption and residential crowding in transitional urban (Beijing: China Statistics Press, 1986). 18; 412. China,” Environment and Planning A 35 (2003): 591-614; John Logan, ed., The New Chinese City: Globalization and Market 21. “Report of the Housing Committee, 1936-1937,” in Municipal Gazette of the Council for the Foreign Settlement Reform (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); Zhigang Tang, The Urban Housing Market in a Transitional Economy: Shanghai as a Case of Shanghai, 30 (1953): 98. Study. PhD thesis submitted to the Department of , Indiana University, 2006; Fulong Wu, “Housing provision 22. Xiaoming Wang, “From Architecture to Advertising – the changes in Shanghai’s urban space over the last 15 under globalization: a case study of Shanghai,” Environment and Planning A 33 (2001): 1741-1764. years,” trans. Liu Yang, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 11 (1) (2010): 21-44. Wang summarises the change of residential districts in 11. Piper Gaubatz, “China’s Urban Transformation: Patterns and Processes of Morphological Change in Beijing, Shanghai: first, there was a large process of re-distribution of local industrial facilities out of residential areas; second, most Shanghai and Guangzhou,” Urban Studies 36 (9) (1999): 1495-1522; Fulong Wu and Anthony Gar-On Yeh, “Urban spatial of the public spaces were de-politicised, replaced very quickly by of purely commercial and urban purpose. structure in a transitional economy: the case of Guangzhou, China,” Journal of the American Planning Association 65 (4) (1999): According to the Shanghai statistical report, by 2005 the commercial real estate in the city was nearly 3 million square 377-395; Sun Sheng Han, “Shanghai between state and market in urban transformation,” Urban Studies 37 (11) (2000): metres, which was 2.6 square metres per capita. This is more than double Hong Kong’s 1.2 square metres per capita. 2091-2112. Meanwhile, the total floor area of buildings in Shanghai is 4 million square metres. See Shanghai Statistics Bureau, 12. Gina W.F. Lai and Yat-ming Siu, “Residential Mobility and Social Capital in Urban Shanghai,” Asian Journal of Social Shanghai Statistical Yearbook 2005. (Beijing: China Statistics Press, 2005). Science 34 (4) (2006): 573-599; Si-ming Li, “Housing Tenure and Residential Mobility in Urban China: analysis of survey 23. Shui On Groups, “Shanghai Xintiandi,” http://www.shuion.com/eng/sol/pptdev/xin.asp (accessed October 10, data,” Urban Affairs Review 38 (2003): 510-534; Aimin Chen, “China urban housing reform: price-rent ratio and market 2014). equilibrium,” Urban Studies 19 (1996): 17-31; Fulong Wu, “Changes in the Structure of Provision in Urban 24. Qim Kwang Yang, “Xinjiapo jianzhushi zai zhongguo youshi buzai [Singaporean architects triumph China no more]”, China,” Urban Studies 33 (1996): 1601-1627. interviewed by Zaobao.com in March 2011. Website: http://www.zaobao.com/finance/people/story20110327-33989 13. Huang, “A Room of One’s Own,” Environment and Planning; Youqin Huang and William A.V. Clark, “Housing (accessed October 28, 2014).

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The Public Interior: The meeting place for the urban and the interior Tine Poot, Maarten Van Acker and Els De Vos : University of Antwerp, Belgium

ABSTRACT

Architect Manuel de Solà-Morales was one of the first designers to stress the importance of public interiors – places that are used as public spaces although they might belong to a private owner.1 Examples are libraries, hospitals or shopping malls. However, included within the concept of the public interior are also publicly owned spaces such as arcades, passages and inner courtyards, as well as collective outdoor public areas that provide shelter such as bus shelters (Figure1). These are spaces that Kristiaan Borret, the former city architect for Antwerp, describes as ‘secondary public spaces’. They differ from the so called ‘primary public spaces’, that is to say the actual streets, market places and squares.2 Complex interior environments are often subject to commercial logic or developer standards, factors that tend to make them less public. The layout of public interiors ought to be considered a challenging field of design and research, but this is not always the case. Where the ‘primary public space’, in particular, has long been the focus of research within the scholarly field of urban design and urbanism, existing research into public interiors proves to be fragmented. While ‘toolboxes’ for urban planners have been established, they lack the perspectives traditionally found in the field of interior architecture and interior design, such as user-relations, atmospheric variables and furniture design. Yet these considerations are particularly relevant to the conditions found within public interiors. Besides defining the term ‘public interior’, this paper aims to contribute to the development of an interdisciplinary design approach by exploring various methods for the analysis of ‘the public interior’ in the fields of urbanism, architecture, interior design and related academic fields.

INTRODUCTION

In the city today, the traditional dichotomy between the public and private domain is shifting radically. As the architect and urbanist Maurice Harteveld points out: ‘In recent decades, the amount and proportion of public space within buildings has steadily increased, with much of it forming part of a larger interior and exterior pedestrian network.’3 Meeting places in the contemporary city are increasingly less limited to the traditional streets and squares. Moreover, an ever-greater number of buildings possess conditions that allow them to be claimed as internal public spaces, including shopping malls, train stations and care homes. For example, the once-vilified typology of the , one of the defining features of suburban America, can be viewed as having provided Above Figure 1: Atelier Bow Wow, Canal Swimmer’s Club, Bruges Triennial, 2015. Example of a collective outdoor as a public interior. Photograph: Tine Poot.

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an alternative ‘sense of community’ within outlying urban districts, many of which traditionally York resolution in 1961 that gave private developers a floor-area bonus by providing POPS, lacked a truly public centre.4 But also some enclosed public interiors receive the status of ‘private many of these places were realised in the city. A very well known example is that of the IBM Plaza, a interiors’ because they are appropriated by a specific group of users, a process which is refered to -covered pedestrian space that despite its dramatic dimensions is used as a quiet and peaceful as, ‘parochialisation’.5 They also keep users away from the traditional public spaces. The need for refuge from its busy surroundings (Figure 2). However, mainly with private ownership, respective an architectural discourse on contemporary public space that keeps pace with present-day urban design problems arise in the form of developer standards and lack of spatial quality, according to development and life is therefore self-evident. architect Kristiaan Borret.

The terminology surrounding the increasing interiority of everyday life is diverse. This paper The growing conjunction between the concepts of ‘public’ and ‘interior’ highlights the complex chooses to explain internal public spaces using the concept of the public interior.6 In the context relationship between urban and interior conditions. Phenomena related to the interior space of this paper, the word ‘public’ refers to two partially overlapping meanings: accessibility and can be seen to have a direct impact upon the urban environment. The reverse is also true: the ownership. Firstly, the term 'accessibility' denotes that these spaces are open to all. However, the urban scale clearly affects the design of the interior space.9 Evolution within the discipline of accessibility of a public interior can be limited in time for practical reasons. To clarify, accessibility interior architecture also underscores the concept of the public interior: a field that once focused should be understood as permeability, being able to enter a space without hesitation and effort. almost exclusively on the design of private spaces is now concerned with the relational conditions As is often the case with the public interior, the entrance is so ambiguous that the surrounding between the interior and the exterior.10 Despite the public interior representing the meeting point streets seem to flow into the interior space and vice versa. Secondly, public accessibility has of two disciplines – the urban and the interior – an interdisciplinary, research-oriented approach relations with ownership. As architect Marc Van Leent explains, we need to draw the distinction towards the subject is still lacking. between formal and mental ownership.7 Both private and public parties can own a public interior; for it to be perceived as public space the mental ownership must lie with the users. A good We can roughly discern three kinds of disciplines that contribute to the design of the public interior. 8 example of these kind of spaces are the POPS – privately owned, public spaces. Due to a New First, the public interior, as a contemporary type of public space, is an obvious research field within the disciplines of urban planning and design. Nevertheless, most research continues to focus upon the traditional public spaces such as streets, squares and parks.11 Existing research into the public interior is fragmented, while the source material pertaining to public interior spaces generally relates to specific categories, for example shopping malls12 or train stations.13 Second, very few questions seem to have been posed within the disciplines of interior architecture and design.14 Finally, the spatial turn15 in the social sciences and humanities has led to a recent proliferation of literature. Researchers working in the social sciences and humanities, for their part, have recently developed an interest in public spaces as a spatial framework for the study of human behaviour.16

In order to design qualitative public interiors, we propose that it is necessary to develop design principles that, on the one hand, draw upon the expertise of (interior) architects and urban planners (who focus upon the material and physical space) and, on the other, the skills of environmental psychologists, social geographers and anthropologists (who are more involved with the social aspects and the use of spaces). The former disciplines may contribute to an understanding of the spatial components and typological characteristics of public spaces, as well as their interdependence and proportions, while the latter disciplines can provide information about how those (public) spaces are perceived and experienced.

Before discussing the different conditions of these complex spaces, be they urban or interior or both, and for the sake of completeness, it is important to situate the public interior within a historical context. Opposite Figure 2: POPS, IBM Plaza, New York, 2015. Photograph: Tine Poot.

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THE HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT OF THE PUBLIC INTERIOR The rise of a capitalistic, secular urban culture during the Here he is referring to spaces that are not per se publicly owned, nineteenth century proved to be an important turning point but are experienced by most users as important public spaces The phenomenon of the public interior is not new and has its roots in the historical architectural in the perception of public space. The concept was expanded (see the aforementioned concept of mental ownership). discourse about public space. When looking at the now-famous ichnographic map of Rome drawn and public life was perceived as a ‘performance’; symbolic by the Italian architect and surveyor Giambattista Nolli in 1784, the eye is drawn to an irregularity language and references to masks underscored the theatrical The quality of a place, or its capacity to form an important part in the city plan. Nolli used distinctive symbolic notation for his mapping: public (white) and private metaphor.17 The arcades described by philosopher Walter of the public realm, is not determined by it being denoted public (shaded). In addition to the traditional squares and streets, the interiors of the important public Benjamin18 and architect Johan Geist19 can be considered or private. For example, the public library of the city of Genk buildings were also represented in white. This indicates that publicly accessible interiors were also as the material expression of nineteenth-century bourgeois has transcended its primary function as a library, since it also considered to fall within the public realm. Nolli’s interpretation of public life in eighteenth-century society: the glass-roofed shopping streets combining exterior serves as a popular meeting place for the immigrant population, Rome thus illustrates an ambiguous boundary between public and private spaces (Figure 3). and interior features – the public theatrical sphere and the as anthropologist Ruth Soenen has shown (Figure 4).26 Greater private sphere of bourgeois domestic space – into a single value should be accorded to the often-overlooked task of urban typology. designing public interiors, and interconnections sought between these semi-public, enclosed spaces. This would enable these The erosion of this theatrical urbanity in the twentieth century locations to play an integral role within the existing network of was advanced as an argument for the narrative of profound public spaces. loss that has dominated the architectural discourse for years.20 Architectural critic , architect Rem Koolhaas THE URBAN CONDITION and cultural philosopher Lieven De Cauter have all expressed dissatisfaction at the increasing privatisation of the public sphere Within the field of urban design and urban development, public through concepts such as ‘Disneyfication’,21 ‘Junkspace’22 and space and the urban condition are traditionally linked. The ‘capsularistion’.23 These critiques of the contemporary situation, following quote from Borret explores the public interior from amongst others, lament the privatisation and homogenisation of that theoretical background: public space. Privately owned public interior spaces are viewed primarily as venues for consumption, and as subject to developer The traditional dichotomy between the private and the standards.24 public is under review in the context of the city. All kinds of secondary forms of public space such as passages, Nevertheless, these contemporary public spaces play an accessible inner courtyards, collective outer spaces and important role in everyday urban life. The architect Manuel de public interior spaces blur the distinction with the primary Solà-Morales was probably one of the first protagonists in the public space of Antwerp, being the streets, squares and architectural debate to appreciate the social meaning and value parks. The primary public space is in need of validation of semi-public spaces, or ‘collective spaces’, as he called them. and consolidation without being diminished by the rise of He fine-tuned the phenomenon by means of the following the secondary public space.27 definition: Borret highlights the interrelationship between semi-public spaces, The civic, architectural, urban and morphological richness referred to as ‘secondary public space’, and the traditional public of a contemporary city resides in the collective spaces that spaces, indicated with the term ‘primary public space’. Yet a sense are not strictly public or private, but both simultaneously. of negativity prevails: the implication being that poor-quality These are public spaces that are used for private activities, primary public spaces contribute to the shift towards privately- or private spaces that allow for collective use, and they owned spaces, whilst the expansion of over-managed secondary include the whole spectrum in between.25 public spaces undermines the traditional public space. When Opposite Figure 3: Giambattista Nolli, Map of Rome, 1784. Image courtesy: creativecommons.org

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In order to grasp the complex relationships between private and seem to have been developed within the discipline. The public or being watched, for example. In arguing for an expanded public space, we need to complement the top-down approach with interior is the stage of many casual encounters. (Interior) consideration of the interior, the meeting between interior and a consistent bottom-up method i.e. a micro-spatial level. architecture and planning also meet each other there. But their exterior in the last layer is most provocative. Looking at the encounter is not casual; at least it should not be.37 (public) interior as a layered environment casts it in a completely Interestingly for the discipline of interior architecture, a certain new light and allows interior architecture to develop a shared branch within planning and architectural theory focuses on As highlighted in the introduction, the public interior as a discourse across many other disciplines. For example, the public the micro-spatial level and addresses the relationship between contemporary public space is an obvious research terrain and the private are rather abstract conceptual layers that can be private buildings and public spaces, such as the street. A micro- within the fields of urban planning and design. Located within a made tangible through social cues. Here sociology, anthropology spatial analysis might focus, for example, on how entrances to volume, which can range from a building block to a fully realised and , to cite just a few disciplines, come buildings constitute streets, on the gradual transition between construction, the public interior greatly determines interior to the foreground as practices in which the interior discourse private and public spaces, or upon visibility. architecture. Thus the contribution of interior architecture to the can be embedded. Nevertheless the set of layers is very much public interior should be self-evident. focused on the experience of the individual, and too lightly When addressing the macro-to-micro view, we should mention equipped to deal with the many issues attendant upon the and his Pattern Language.31 In the sequence Interior architecture is a young and nascent academic discipline. public interior. Emphasis should be on the interior not seen as an of patterns, the entrance transition and the intimacy gradient are As a consequence, the methods used for mapping interiority extension of the body but as an environment. relevant to the connectedness of different kinds of public or do not always follow traditional academic research methods. semi-public spaces. Entrances are crucial elements in shaping the Originally, the discipline mainly focused on the private home, In any case, dealing with the interior as a layered environment (gradual) transition between the outside world and (semi)-private namely the interior of the private sphere. The field was gradually benefits the design of public interiors. Academic Elena Giunta interior spaces. And even: ‘The experience of entering a building broadened to include the public space. In this respect, the focus goes one step further and appoints interior space as an influences the way you feel inside the building.’32 on the public interior was a logical next step. Nowadays, the environmental system with three actors: bodies (both individuals discipline has expanded to such an extent that it deals not only and communities), objects, and spaces or systems of containers.39 When the entrance of a public interior has no connection with with space and objects, but user behaviour and the events that To summarise, the contribution of the interior disciplines lies in an existing pedestrian route or when the entrance configuration take place within that space. the model of an intimate dialogue between different layers within is not visible enough, the interior looses its public feeling. Urbanist an interior environment or object/user/space relationships. 33 34 looked at more constructively, the interrelationship between the William H. Whyte and urban planner Matthijs De Boer stress Public interiors can vary in scale and accommodate a wide various types of urban public spaces should be investigated for its the importance of the design of the entrance because of its variety of activities. As a result, they tend to be regarded more COMPLEMENTARY PERSPECTIVES potential to function as a structuring element within cities. filtering effect. Openness is not only a question of providing as environments than interiors, yet they still constitute interior 35 access but also a question of inviting people. The pattern of spaces. Their interiority can be used as a perspective through It is obvious that each academic discipline approaches the design Planning public spaces using network logic makes it possible to the intimacy gradient draws the relationship between public and which different spatial layers can be dissected. Interior architect of public interiors from its own unique standpoint. Until recently, stimulate urban cohesion by augmenting the accessibility and private areas of a building by indicating entrances, public and and academic Lois Weinthal, in her well-praised anthology, in the social sciences and humanities, space was seen as a neutral permeability of both primary and secondary public spaces.28 collective parts and more intimate areas. This kind of gradient discerned eight layers ranging from the micro to macro scale: background for the investigation of human behaviour. Only in Network logic does not consider public interiors as isolated resembles the territorial depth explained by architect and Body and perception; Clothing and identity; Furniture and more recent years, since the ‘spatial turn’, have scholars in the entities, but places greater focus upon the links between different theorist John N. Habraken: ‘Territorial depth is measured by the objects; Surfaces and colour; Mapping the interior; Private humanities and social sciences also started to conduct research public space typologies. The study of the spatial context of public number of boundary crossings needed to move from the outer chambers; Public performance; Bridging interior and exterior.38 into spatial issues. Nevertheless, the more informal public spaces 36 interior spaces can reveal their contribution to the greater urban space to the innermost territory.’ were not perceived as playing a substantial role in urban public life. network.29 The latter two layers explore the realms of the private and Public interiors were generally seen as exclusive, undemocratic THE INTERIOR CONDITION public. The term ‘performance’ (the layer of Public performance) and more private spaces. As previously mentioned, sociologist Nevertheless, the design of interconnected public spaces within denotes the display of people and on a deeper level the display Lyn Lofland, in her book A World of Strangers,40 pays attention to a network tends to be based upon a top-down approach, while Despite the strategic importance of interior architecture to the of the human body with the interior seen as a stage set. The the opposite process, the privatisation of certain public spaces. spatial relationships are mainly investigated on a macro-spatial level.30 design of public interiors, far fewer theories and methodologies performance layer could be understood as the act of watching She describes how people keep strangers at a distance through Opposite Figure 4: City Library, Genk, 2015. Photograph: Tine Poot.

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the privatisation of the public realm. The neighbourhood spaces of the user, interactions, behaviour), while urban planning and of permeability and the gradual transition between formal and seeks to contribute to a synthesis of techniques and disciplines where they meet their equals are said to belong to the ‘parochial design considers urban developments at large (flows, mobility, informal spheres. and their media. Experts in the public interior should be able domain’. But Lofland does not consider privatisation where there landmarks). Documenting public interior spaces is not a one- to easily zoom to different scales and domains, and be skilled in seems to be a possibility of interaction with strangers. sided activity. An interdisciplinary approach can enrich the design A relational approach to interiority translating social and behavioural cues into spatial patterns. of theses spaces. As already noted, interiors play an important role in the Anthropologist Ruth Soenen41 systematically collected data meanings and uses of contemporary public spaces in the twenty- NOTES about semi-public (interior) spaces, ranging from commercial Designers must develop an interdisciplinary methodology that first century city. Consequently, the interior perspective should public locations such as different kinds of shops, to public interiors permits spatial analysis across different conditions, both urban encapsulate the substantial body of knowledge that exists on the 1. Manuel de Solà-Morales, “Openbare en collectieve ruimte. De such as the tramway or the library. Building upon the theory and interior. This complementary method should provide a range of scales found within interior spaces. The layer approach verstedelijking van het privédomein als nieuwe uitdaging,” Oase, no. 33 (1992): 3-8. and definition advanced by de Solà-Morales, Soenen’s empirical definition for all the relevant features that might be found, both of Weinthal provides a new lens through which to consider 2. Kristiaan Borret was City Architect for Antwerp from 2006-2014. Kristiaan Borret, Policy document City Architect of Antwerp 2006-2011 (Antwerp: research proved that an important part of our daily lives is played physical and social. It is no longer relevant to categorise the public interiors. Nevertheless, in the light of the public interior City of Antwerp, 2007), 39-41. out within such spaces. She shows how anthropological research public interior as falling with the realm of either an urban or an intimate study benefits from a more relational approach to 3. Maurice Harteveld and , “On Public Interior can contribute to the understanding of public interiors, which is interior space. Moreover, it can be argued that the public interior the interior, here posed by Giunta as an environmental system; Space,” AA Files, no. 56 (2007): 65. a first step towards an of those spaces. belongs more to the social space, defined by its public use. What where not only the interaction between the human body and 4. Margaret Crawford, “The World in a Shopping Mall,” in Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space, ed. Michael is relevant, however, is that interior architecture approaches the space, but also the interaction between the community, objects Sorkin (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992). Rem Koolhaas et al., The Harvard Design Urban and interior designers often lack the necessary skills to public interior from other social relationships: people/object, and space is studied intensively. School Guide to Shopping, Harvard Design School Project on the City (Cambridge, execute intensive ethnographic studies to understand spaces people/space, people/people. As this paper argues, the public MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). in depth, while social scientists often ignore the impact of the interior is endowed with both a public and intramural dimension. Behavioural mapping 5. The parochialisation of public space: the parochial realm is spatial dimension. The challenge is to translate these findings Just as importantly, it also possesses architectural, social, urban By accepting that usage and social meaning or mental ownership characterised by dominating familiar feelings between colleagues, neighbours…. Term used by the sociologist Lyn Lofland amongst others. Lyn Lofland, The into spatial principles. Systematic observational fieldwork, and anthropological aspects. determines the public nature of a space, rather than the formal Public Realm: Exploring the city’s quintessential (New York: Aldine De coupled with a classification system for both activities and target ownership, the human scale can be incorporated into a holistic Gruyten, 1998). groups, has the potential to make a vital contribution towards The following approaches are presented for consideration: approach. While in-depth ethnographic studies are rarely 6. The term public interior is used by several authors: Maarten Kloos the design of qualitative public interiors.42 Behavioural mapping, possible, the design task of the public interior benefits from being et al., Public Interiors. Architecture and Public Life Inside Amsterdam (Amsterdam: for example, involves direct observations at eye level, from the Designing public interiors using network logic Architectura & Natura Press, 1993); Matthijs De Boer, Binnen in de stad. Ontwerp informed by research conducted in adjacent disciplines such as en gebruik van publieke interieurs (Amsterdam: Trancity, 2012); and the forthcoming perspective of the pedestrian. Systematic observation research This approach underlines the potential of public interiors as anthropology and environmental psychology. The collaboration publication: Mark Pimlott, The Public Interior as Idea and Project (Netherlands: Jap is conducted to trace people’s behaviour in relation to features a node within the physical network of a city. The creation of between social scientists and designers is crucial in terms of Sam Books, 2016). of the physical environment. The merit of behavioural mapping physical and social connectivity in the nourishes understanding how individuals interact with their surroundings. 7. Marc Van Leent, Publiek vastgoed. Analyses, concepten, voorbeelden is gathering knowledge to improve the design of similar spaces spatial coherence within the city, which in turn leads to urban (Netherlands: Trancity*Valiz, 2012), 10-11. Urban Design as in the future. While one is in favour of the integration of design 8. Jonathan Barnett, (New York: McGraw- cohesion. The innovative character of this approach relies on This hybrid approach towards public interiors is not only Hill, 1974). and social sciences, the translation of such findings into spatial or the consistent consideration of the impact of the ‘second public reshaping the ways in which these spaces are designed, but 9. Lorraine Farrelly and Belinda Mitchell, “Interior room. Urban room,” atmospheric principles is of course harder to be certain of. space’ on the ‘first public space’ (and vice versa) in every step of also possesses the potential to create a specialist field within in Interior Tools Interior Tactics: Debates in interiors theory and practice, eds. Joyce the design process. design where interior architects and urbanists meet. We need to Fleming, Frazer Hay, Edward Hollis, Andy Milligan and Drew Plunkett (Farington: envision a collective future in order to design inclusive, qualitative Libri Publishing, 2011) 233-242. CONCLUSION 10. Suzie Attiwill, “Urban and Interior Techniques for an Urban Interiorist,” Micro-spatial analysis public interiors. It will be a challenge to bridge the study of social in Urban Interior: Informal Explorations, Interventions and Occupations, ed. Rochus The literature review conducted for this paper shows how the This method aims at defining the interrelationship between relations and connections, the connectedness of networks, and Urban Hinkel (Germany: Spurbuchverlag, 2011), 11-24. Inge Somers and Els De different perspectives relate to each other. The study of the private spaces (or semi-public spaces) and adjacent public the actual quality and suggestiveness of spatial and material and Vos, “With the Other, Beyond Confusion,” in The International Journal of Interior interior tends to focus on one-to-one relationships (person- segments. Interconnectivity is sought on a micro-spatial level, representational design. The various agents of the public interior Architecture and Spatial Design, vol. 1, no. 1 (2013): 22-32. 11. Research into traditional public spaces includes: Kevin Lynch, The space) and less on community or a multitude of people. which is supplementary to the macro-spatial network logic need a platform that offers the possibility of analysis of existing Image of the City (New York: MIT Press, 1960); Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of The literature from the social sciences is, on the contrary, approach. Micro-spatial analysis focuses, for example, on issues conditions and setting out of objectives for interaction with the Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961); , Life between preoccupied with that community (experience and needs such as the configuration and orientation of entrances, degrees public and necessary sympathies within design. This synthesis Buildings (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1987) (reprinted by Island Press,

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Washington D.C, 2011); Han Meyer et al., Het ontwerp van de openbare ruimte (Amsterdam: Sun, 2009); Matthew Carmona Journal, (2009): 52-61. et al., Public Places, Urban Spaces: The Dimensions of Urban Design (New York: Routledge, 2010). 40. Lofland, A World of Strangers. 12. Crawford, “The World in a Shopping Mall.” 41. Soenen, Het kleine ontmoeten. 13. Marc Augé, trans. John Howe, Non-places: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity (London: Verso, 42. Jan Gehl and Brigitte Savarre, How to Study Public Life (Washington D.C.: Island Press, 2013). 1995); Maarten Hajer and Arnold Reindorp, In Search of The New Public Domain (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2002). 14. Attiwill, “Urban and Interior Techniques,” 13. 15. The spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences brought attention to space and place as means to understand social and cultural processes. Barney Warf and Arias Santa, The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2009). 16. Lyn Lofland, A World of Strangers: Order and Action in Urban Public Space (New York: Basic Books Inc., 1985); Ruth Soenen, Het kleine ontmoeten. Over het sociale karakter van de stad (Appeldoorn: Garant, 2006). 17. Neeltje ten Westenend and Leeke Reinders, Common Grounds. Een visuele etnografie van publieke ruimte (Amsterdam: NEL, 2010). 18. Walter Benjamin, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, The (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). 19. Johann Friedrich Geist, Arcades: The History of a Building Type (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985). 20. Debate about the loss of public space, and the changing relationship between public and private in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992); Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chigaco: University of Chicago Press 1958); Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der öffentlichkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, [1962] 1990). 21. Michael Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park. The New American City and the End of Public Space (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992). 22. Rem Koolhaas, “Junkspace,” in Nobuyuhi Yoshid, ed., Rem Koolhaas, OMA@Work, Architecture and Urbanism, May 2000 Special Issue (Tokyo: A+U Publishing, 2000). 23. Lieven De Cauter, The Capsular Civilization. On the City in the Age of Fear (Rotterdam: NAI Publishers, 2004). 24. Carmona et al., Public Places, Urban Spaces, 126. 25. Manuel de Solà-Morales, “Openbare en collectieve ruimte,” 4. 26. Ruth Soenen, “De Bibliotheek naar een stedelijke thuishaven,” in Naar een duurzaam lokaal cultuurbeleid, ed. Maja Coltura, Hilde De Brandt, Miek De Kepper, Herlinde De Vos (Brussels: Locus vzw, 2010),110-116.. 27. Borret, Policy document, 39. 28. Ana Julia Pinto et al., Planning Public Space Networks Towards Urban Cohesion (paper presented at 46th ISOCARP Congress, Nairobi, 2010). 29. Harteveld and Brown, “On Public Interior Space”, 65. 30. Akkelies Van Nes and Manuel Lopez, Micro-scale spatial relationships in urban studies: the relationship between private and public space and its impact on street life, (paper presented at the 6th International Symposium, Istanbul, 2007). 31. Christopher Alexander et al., A Pattern Language: , Buildings, Constructions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). 32. Ibid., 549. 33. William H. Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (New York: Project for Public Space, 2001), 79. 34. De Boer, Binnen in de stad, 98. 35. Amos Rapoport, Human Aspects of Urban Form: Towards a Man-Environment Approach to Urban Form and Design (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1977), 295. 36. John N. Habraken, The Structure of the Ordinary (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 215. 37. Maarten Kloos et al., Public Interiors, 26. 38. Lois Weinthal, Towards a New Interior: An Anthology of Interior (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011). 39. Elena Enrica Giunta, “Urban Interiors, Artificial Territories: Designing ‘spatial script’ for relational field,” IDEA

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‘atmospheres affect us, change our moods, and influence our behaviours, and these effects may be produced without us consciously recognising them.’3 Thus, the instability of rapid change and transient experiences impairs our ability to, in consciousness, cultivate meaningful connections with The Transfigured Phenomena of Domesticity in the our surroundings and their embodied atmosphere. Urban Interior Furthermore, the impermanence of the situation creates a shift in the meaning and experience of inhabitation. Once, inhabiting related to a specific and perhaps even permanent location, often the Valerie Mace : University of London, United Kingdom home and its immediate community. Now, it encompasses a plurality of situations. We may inhabit the place where we work and another where we socialise. We may also, for a while each day, ABSTRACT inhabit the transition spaces we use to commute, since a great number of people reside outside the boundaries of the city. In each situation, we are only temporarily part of a community and because This paper reconsiders a refurbished London street, Bermondsey Street, as an interior where objects of memories the experience is short-lived, our sense of belonging may then become eroded. As the notion of are curated into a reconstructed atmosphere of domesticity. The study argues that as our experience of the city inhabiting becomes impermanent, the relationship between body and space, primarily determined becomes increasingly transient, the notion of inhabiting shifts to a wider and more fragmented context, and our by partial experiences, becomes less stable. This, urban planner and designer Ali Madanipour points ability to integrate with the urban environment becomes eroded. Bermondsey Street, however, presents a distinctive out, contravenes the necessity for us, as human beings for whom the relationship between private experience where the phenomena of intimacy and familiarity converge across space and time to provide a more 4 stable form of inhabitation. In order to understand how these phenomena occur and how the experience of the and public starts with the body and ‘the inner space of our consciousness’, to 'draw boundaries 5 urban interior manifests itself in our consciousness, the study follows the Husserlian phenomenological method as part of our need for wellbeing'. of intentionality whereby the urban interior of Bermondsey Street becomes the intentional object. It also places the reflective gaze of the phenomenologist in ‘epoché’, a phenomenological method of reduction that suspends Challenged by the transience of the situation, we constantly need to redraw boundaries. So, with normality. In doing so, the phenomenologist is able to access the points of reference that reveal the affective diminished opportunities for the body to connect to the familiar points of reference that enable qualities of the intentional object in our consciousness. While the discursive and theoretical content of the study is us to feel grounded in our self-identity, we are then less able to make a clear distinction between expressed in the body of text, the phenomenological narrative is bracketed and illustrated as a meditative journey; private and public, and our sense of continuity weakens. Therefore it becomes increasingly a recollection of memories of the homely, initiated by the encounter between consciousness and the way the interior important for the urban environment to foster the sense of place and belonging that underpins animates imagination. Thus, in ‘epoché’, the reflective gaze of the phenomenologist transcends normality to reveal the underlying structure of the phenomena and the intentionality of the subjective experience. our need for psychological and emotional stability. One way of doing this is to embrace the distinctiveness of local phenomena and, following Madanipour’s argument for locating the individual in social space, for the transient population to take some degree of ownership of its surroundings, TRANSIENT INHABITATION ‘enabling the individual to develop a sense of identity and engage in the rituals of communication and recognition.’6 The city is a dynamic living organism, constantly changing and evolving. ‘Growth is the continual condition of the city,’1 remarks historian Peter Ackroyd, and in contemporary London there are THE URBAN INTERIOR places where the old and the new coexist in complete contrast to each other, while in other parts of the city, building developments have erased all traces of past inhabitation, familiar points of London has, until now, resisted homogeneity and may still offer unique and distinctive experiences reference, and altered the urban landscape beyond recognition. In recent years the rising cost of to the transient inhabitant. Often considered and represented as a single entity, the city is, in living has also forced many people to move further away from the city centre and commute each reality, experienced as a network of constituent parts, nested against each other and infused with day. Such conditions create a situation where people’s experience of the city becomes transient a recognisable identity and idiosyncrasies whose meanings, familiarity and recognition generate and composed of short bursts of 'instantaneous experiences’, which, explains architectural historian a distinct sense of place. Soho, Brick Lane, Liverpool Street, Canary Wharf, London Bridge. Each Charles Rice, contribute to ‘the dynamic energy of the modern city’.2 However, the downside is name conjures up unique places and experiences in the minds of Londoners. A rich palette of that the flow of experiential energy that permeates the city also becomes fragmented, which not phenomena, experienced gradually as we move through the urban environment, brings forth only affects the way we relate to the material world but also to the perceived world, and the way a surprising variety of situations, which, woven into a cluster of spatial experiences, embody the urban atmosphere resonates with our senses. Christian Borch, political sociologist, explains that and project the values, beliefs and dreams of the city’s inhabitants. As phenomena permeate

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our consciousness, body and mind become immersed in the character and appearance. However, beyond the desire to save years of traffic pollution, it is almost featureless, yet unsettling. about the urban interior of Bermondsey Street. What’s more, singularity of each experience to initiate a feeling of 'insideness', some of London’s heritage from destruction, the conservation of The space envelops, sounds are contained, and time seems to in order to elucidate the nature of the intentional object, we a condition of interiority within the subjectivity of the inner self. Bermondsey Street is an intriguing example of an urban situation stand still. The sensation of enclosure is almost overwhelming. need to enquire back into consciousness through the method of So the sensation of being inside permeates our consciousness where the preservation of the past is united with contemporary The tunnel provides an immersive experience that forces the phenomenological reduction whereby the attention shifts from through the agency of the immersive and affective qualities of the lived experiences. mind to surrender from one scale of perception to another. On objective causality to the subjectivity of the experience, from city’s constituent parts. one side lies the exterior, the city with its fast-moving pace and the 'what' to the 'how'. To do this Husserl places the flow of Today, it is occupied by creative agencies, crafts showrooms, tall buildings, while on the other lies the interior of Bermondsey experience in 'epoché', a form of suspension or bracketing of As such, it animates imagination and impacts on our fundamental art galleries, restaurants and specialist boutiques all bearing Street, where the space around the body becomes narrower, the normality, of 'beliefs, judgments, opinions and theories’, which ability to perceive our location in the world in relation to other the qualities of the local environment. Architecturally, while its buildings lower, the traffic slower, the textures more noticeable ‘does not mean to doubt, but simply to set the judgment aside'.15 places outside the locus of perception of the body. So, Madanipour remaining nineteenth and twentieth century warehouses have and the colours warmer. So in the time it takes to walk through Husserl explains what occurs when, as a phenomenologist, he tells us, ‘the body mediates between the states of consciousness been carefully restored to safeguard its more recent heritage the tunnel, the effect of its immersive qualities disconnects the places himself in 'epoché': and the world.’7 This occurs quite naturally when we are inside and retain aspects of what Ackroyd judiciously describes as mind from the outside, which in turn, intensifies the experience the private interior of our home, where, following Madanipour’s its ‘indigenous or native spirit’,12 new additions favour a style of the encounter with the interior. When I perform the reduction, I no longer attend to the metaphor on the perceived layers of privacy, we ‘can be seen of contemporary design that embodies a desire towards a worldly objects of my experience, nor do I wonder about to be situated at the core of a multi-layered shell, surrounded symbiotic relationship between past and present. So the street The singularity and temporality of the threshold provide a the causal underpinnings of that experience; instead I focus by an onion-shaped structure of layers of protection.’8 We are was refurbished to preserve some of its original features while perceptual stage for the street to reveal itself in its most intimate my attention on the experience of those worldly objects. I not only conscious of the room we are in but also of other newer buildings complement existing ones. Two iconic buildings setting. Beyond the architectural notion of scale, Zumthor pay attention to the presentation of the world around me rooms around it, of the street nearby, the road beyond, the area stand out. The Museum of Fashion, whose bold exterior rendered explains that levels of intimacy become connected with (and myself), rather than to what is presented.16 where the house is located and the city around it. In imagination, in bright orange and pink brings an injection of energy into proximity and distance14 and so, the interior connects with the the interior transcends traditional walled boundaries and, as the street, and the White Cube Gallery, where contemporary body. The effect of spatial and perceptual relationships in the Hence, within the mode of objective thoughts, what Husserl the notion of interiority is transposed to the streets of the city, art meets the architectural narrative of . Although intimate interior of Bermondsey Street is almost immediate, and calls the natural attitude,17 the site of this study would simply urban interiors become connected to each other ‘not through noticeably different in style, they are nonetheless sensitive to the the inner space of the body harmonises seamlessly into this new be described as a street lined with buildings, shops, and spatial continuity or visual transparency but through meaningful, site’s heritage, more specifically its materiality and the intimacy environment while experiencing phenomena that bring forth restaurants. It would be noted that its cobbled stones, alleyways psychologically effective transitions’9 embodied by actual and of the setting. So the architecture contributes to Bermondsey an acute sense of place. Intuitively, we feel a sense of belonging, and brick warehouses are reminiscent of a recent historical perceived thresholds, or, for sociologist and philosopher Georg Street’s unique atmospheric character and identity. of familiarity and comfort. It is therefore by enquiring into the past while the warmth of the colours and the weathering of Simmel, objective and subjective boundaries.10 Accordingly, even essence of these phenomena that it becomes possible to grasp the materials bring forth a sensation of mellowness. This alone when the city appears to be whole, it is experienced as a series Bermondsey Street is also instilled with a distinct sense of the structure of experiences in the urban interior and articulate is sufficient to understand that the street feels comfortable and of nested interiors. interiority. Naturally, the way buildings frame the street meets the qualities that enable our most intimate space, the inner self, familiar but the objectivity of the natural attitude cannot reveal the the notion of enclosure we expect in an interior. However, its to integrate with this interior. underlying structure of the phenomena. It cannot elucidate how Thus, in the midst of London’s ancient interior, in the Borough of spatial layout also incorporates a highly unusual feature; the it is that it feels that way or reveal the way in which it manifests Southwark, lies Bermondsey Street. As one of the city’s original sense of interiority that permeates consciousness is further IN EPOCHÉ itself in the depth of consciousness. Outside phenomenological nested interiors, the location is significant. History recalls that the enhanced by a distinctive threshold. Architect Peter Zumthor reduction, the natural attitude can only provide clues towards area was home to the leather industries from the Middle Ages speaks of the threshold as a ‘transition between the inside In order to enquire into the essence of the phenomena the the causes of the phenomena. up until the nineteenth century, and streets with names such as and the outside, an incredible sense of place, an unbelievable study turns specifically to the phenomenological methods Tanner Street and Leathermarket Street still exist today. Then, its feeling of concentration when we suddenly become aware of intentionality and reduction developed by the German Philosopher Gaston Bachelard also takes a similar position when proximity to the River Thames made it an ideal location to store of being enclosed, of something enveloping us, keeping us philosopher Edmund Husserl at the start of the twentieth he says that: and process food arriving by ships in the docks nearby. People, together, holding us….’13 From the city centre, the street is century. Following the Husserlian tradition of phenomenological however, didn’t just work there; it was also for many a place of accessible via a tunnel underneath a railway bridge. It is deep enquiry, intentionality means that the experience is 'about' or [I]t is not a question of describing houses, or enumerating dwelling, a home. Bermondsey Street became designated as a and cavernous; it takes a few minutes to walk through it. Lined 'of' something and, here, the urban interior of Bermondsey their picturesque features and analyzing for which reasons conservation area in 197211 in order to preserve and enhance its with uniformed bricks weathered by age and blackened by Street becomes the intentional object. The experience is they are comfortable. On the contrary, we must go

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beyond the problems of description – whether this description be objective or subjective, that is whether it gives facts or impressions – in order to attain to the primary virtues, those that reveal an attachment that is native in some way to the primary function of inhabiting.18

Therefore, to access the depth of consciousness and the 'subjectivity that roots the whole structure of objectivity in our everyday experiences,'19 we need to liberate the mind from assumptions that occur as a result of objective knowledge. By placing the mind in 'epoché' during the phenomenological journey we endeavour to move away from objective knowledge and preconceptions to enquire into the essence of the experience, to transcend the causality of appearances and elucidate the subjective qualities of the intentional object. By enquiring into the 'how' rather than the 'what', the mind enters a dreamlike state and enables us to reach into consciousness. Thus, the inner self perceives suggestions embodied by objects in the interior to produce what philosopher Shaun Gallagher calls ‘primary impression’,20 understood here as an immediate connection between the flow of consciousness and memories. Husserl illustrates the sequence of primary impressions through the concepts of retention and protention. Retention ‘provides us with a consciousness of the just-elapsed phase of the enduring object’ while protention ‘anticipates something which is about to be experienced.’21 It is only within this meditative flow22 that we are able to suspend normality and conjure up images to, in this subjective realm, transcend assumptions, access intimate gestures and reveal the phenomenological narrative of the experienced interior.

And so the phenomenological journey begins …

The intentionality of the entrance into Bermondsey Street. [… emerging through the threshold, the contrast between the enclosure of the corridor and the bright interior of the entrance creates a sensation of space enhanced by a wall of on one side. The body seems to integrate with the environment as the reflections follow its movements. The composition of warm tones, tactile textures and smooth surfaces bring a light and welcoming feel to the interior. It is designed for the body. The pace slows down on the textured floor. The stillness of the atmosphere suggests repose. The interior provides shelter from the outside world ...]

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The intentionality of tactile qualities. The intentionality of a dining terrace. [… a line of sight towards a dining room leads to a large timber panel whose golden tones and tactile qualities revealed by the [… a translucent material filters the light coming into the dining room into a beautiful glow that highlights the mellow tones passage of time wrap the eyes with a sensation of comfort. Like a picture on a wall with a story to tell, it inspires a pause . . .] of the wall surfaces. As when a bright summer light penetrates into the sheltered interior through half-opened blinds, the atmosphere is warm and inviting. Although currently empty, a cheerful display of seats echoes the chatter of people enjoying a meal around the dinner table. The tone is convivial. The meal is eaten slowly, taking time to enjoy the many flavours of the food, each course accompanied by animated conversations and laughter …]

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The intentionality of weathered surfaces. The intentionality of daily rituals. [… materials bearing the patina of time reveal the textures of the repetition of daily gestures. They act as a reminder of the [… near a side door and into a small room, people are performing the rituals of daily activities. Cleaning, storing, making, moving, many lives of the interior. Lines and familiar scars inscribed across their surfaces become visible mementos of moments that fetching, resting, daydreaming, the domestic scenography of the interior …] have been lived but are not always remembered. Some endure, like the time when the corner of a table being precariously carried across the room made a deep cut into one of the doors. Others are habitual, like the encounter between the cat’s claws and an irresistible table leg as a prelude to each meal . . .]

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The intentionality of a tiled floor. The intentionality of furniture. [… two steps up onto the chequered kitchen floor. A mouth-watering smell of food emanates from the interior while, in the [… 8 am, coffee, toasts grilled in the oven, often forgotten and burnt. The sound of the burnt surface being scraped into the sink background, a radio plays a lively tune …] with a knife, the familiar acrid smell. 1pm, the sound of plates and cutlery indicates that lunch is about to be served. 4 pm, the children are back from school. Hot chocolate, bread, butter and a prized bar of dark chocolate nested inside the bread. 8 pm, dinner is served …]

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The intentionality of a display window. The intentionality of a fireplace. [… in a glass cabinet, an incongruous display of objects showcases a cherished collection: bottles of various sizes and colours, an [… the glimpse of a fireplace. The glow of the fire warming up skin and spirit in winter. Coming home from the cold, removing old radio, kitchen scales and a few enamelled teapots. Old-fashioned commodities frozen in time and sealed behind glass. There boots, coat, scarf and gloves in the cool vestibule, almost rushing in anticipation of the warmth of the living room. The crackling was a time when they were useful. Weighing flour to bake a birthday cake, singing in tune with the music playing on the radio, sound of the fire. Finding just the right place where the hands warm up without being too hot. Turning the body for the other pouring the cat’s milk into the small enamelled dish …] side to warm up too …]

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The intentionality of a window bracket. The intentionality of the small table outside a shop. [… a bookshelf. Words, images, stories, history, reflections. Portals into other worlds. A long pause. So many afternoons spent [… further back, a small conservatory overlooks the garden. With just enough space for a table, a couple of chairs and a few reading in this favourite cosy corner of the living room, sitting comfortably and untroubled in the snug armchair, its leather plants, this cosy corner of the house becomes a suntrap where, through semi-closed eyes, daydreams merge with reality. At dusk, cracked and distorted through successive years of use …] the layered reflections of objects and furniture are multiplied across glass surfaces, ghost-like figures, neither inside nor outside …]

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The intentionality of recessed doorways. The intentionality of a dark and narrow corridor. [… the bedroom door, slightly recessed from the landing. Going up the stairs, the feel of the latch of the door already in hand. [… feeling the textured walls in the darkness of the narrow corridor, climbing the familiar final steps while carefully placing It must be opened ever so slowly so as not to creak and wake everyone up. Inside all is quiet and peaceful, the glow of the the feet on the only spots that do not creak. The attic, with its pungent smell of dust, full of lost treasures hidden in nooks and bedside table lamp acts as a reassuring friend. The most private space, a place to dream …] crannies, invites imagination and exploration …]

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COLLECTION AND [RE]COLLECTIONS the collection embodies a desire towards a symbiotic relationship between past and present. The collected objects of memories on display do not therefore need to represent authentic memories The visible world reaches us through multi-sensory perceptions and so visual experiences of the present-day inhabitants. Instead, the collection intentionally appropriates and repositions contribute to what Bachelard refers to as 'the polyphony of the senses' whereby the 'eye selected memories to reinstate them into the present where they converge with contemporary collaborates with the body and other senses'23 for our perceptual memories to enable us to use values. The curated environment presents what sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel describes as a the eyes to touch, smell, hear and taste; to grasp notions of depth, kinaesthesia and time. So as ‘discursive production of a continuous biography [which] consists of playing up those elements the reflective gaze of the phenomenologist focuses its attention on the interior of Bermondsey of our past that are consistent with (or can somewhat be construed as prefiguring) our present Street, images of experiences begin to emerge within the inner space of consciousness. In identity while downplaying those who are incongruous with it.'29 So, to borrow a term used by 'epoché', the inner-self is able to perceive its surroundings with renewed wonder and reach into Bachelard, the collection is imbued with 'oneiric' qualities whose intentionality is evocative of the depth of consciousness for imagination to cross the threshold of perceptual memories. In a domestic environment where traces of memories from lived and imagined past inhabitation this instance, imagination doesn't relate to the fictional but becomes the channel through which merge with the present. memories are able to resurface. The phenomenological journey through the interior becomes a gradual recollection of moments of lived experiences made visible again within the inner space TRANSFIGURED DOMESTICITY of the self through the encounter between consciousness and the intentional object. So here we are not dealing with historical memory as such, that found in what historian Pierre Nora In contemporary urban interiors, our sense of belonging fluctuates when weakened points of refers to as spaces of memory (lieux de mémoire),24 but about how reflexive memories from reference, resulting from a fast pace of change, erode our ability to identify with our surroundings, the subjective world govern objectivity as they emerge through the intentionality of worldly assign meanings and establish a sense of place. In addition, transient and fragmented patterns of objects. Philosopher Paul Ricoeur explains that the difference between memory and memories inhabitation continually shift established boundaries, destabilising notions of continuity essential to is made more explicit in the French language by the use of two different words. 'In this sense a our wellbeing. The urban interior of Bermondsey Street, however, provides a unique experience, distinction must be made in language between memory (la mémoire) as intention and memories one that sustains meaningful public-private relationships to support transient inhabitation. In (les souvenirs) as the thing intended.'25 When, like Madanipour, we consider the body as the this instance, the interior embraces the distinctiveness of its local phenomena, which, explains 'inner space of subjectivity as well as the psychological-physical space which is body’s extension philosopher Gernot Böhme, brings the dimension of historical depth necessary for its inhabitants to its immediate surroundings,’26 the location of the self in the world is then embedded in the to feel sheltered and at home.30 The interior presents a delicate balance between a curated past, process of reduction, with the body being the locus of experiences and consciousness that referencing the private domain of domesticity, and contemporary experiences, referencing life of memories. So here, when placed in 'epoché', the mind brings forth objectively inaccessible in the public domain. Thus, even though the images that emerge from the consciousness of the images of everyday experiences that progressively reveal the phenomena as they appear in the phenomenologist remain subjective and dependent on personal recollections, the intentionality consciousness of the subjective self. of the collection is to display homely qualities that can be grasped by anyone. Rice links this phenomenon to the notion of involuntary memories (mémoires involontaires), which occur in our Accordingly, the collection of objects reveals the urban interior of Bermondsey Street for consciousness through sensory polyphonies: the imagination of the phenomenologist to conjure up images of domesticity, conforming to Bachelard’s view that 'imagination augments the values of reality'.27 Experiencing the interior in The interior then works not as the space ensuring the coherence of classification, but as ‘epoché’ as a sequence of phenomenological encounters, the phenomenologist is able to grasp the space for the registering of traces, providing the surface against which the qualities its intentionality and thus, elucidate how the interior resonates with familiarity and comfort. The of specific objects, which constantly have the potential to open the collection beyond collection of objects becomes a symbol of continuity and stability for the transient inhabitant, conscious orderliness, might be preserved. [...] What is interesting here in terms of the one that bears the essence of the homely, where the domain of the private initiates memories collection is the shift from object as the prime focus of thought, to the effect of objects for of lived experiences. Accordingly, as in a domestic interior where, academic Tiiu Poldma explains, the inhabitant as collector.31 we ‘develop meanings attached to objects and environments,’28 the coherence of the collection throughout the interior indicates that it is curated to reflect the values, beliefs and dreams of its Thus, the seemingly objective collection generates subjective recollections; collection and [re] inhabitants. So the curation signals that a selection process has taken place, perhaps in order to collection permeate the interior. This explains why the urban interior of Bermondsey Street feels present an idealised view of domesticity since, like the architecture of the refurbished interior, intuitively comfortable and familiar within the world of objectivity.

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The purpose of the phenomenological enquiry then serves to elucidate how this is governed by 20. Gallagher, Phenomenology, 103. the subjective world. Through the collection, the interior incorporates points of reference that 21. Ibid. 22. Cerbone, Understanding Phenomenology, 22. present engaging opportunities for phenomena experienced across space and time, as well as clear 23. Gaston Bachelard, cited in Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin. Architecture and the Senses (Chichester: John boundaries, and a continuity that enables the inner self to authenticate through interaction with the Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2005), 41. space. The phenomena belong to a domain Rice calls 'long experience', 'founded on an appeal and 24. Pierre Nora, “Between History and Memory: les Lieux de Memoire,” Representations 26, (Special Issue) Memory a connection to tradition, and the accumulation of wisdom over time [...] its refuge and its context and Counter-Memory (Spring 1989): 7-24. for amplification, is the domestic interior.'32 Therefore, as the environment is constructed through 25. Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006 ed.), 22. 26. Madanipour, Public and Private Spaces of the City, 6. distinctive phenomena of domesticity and time becomes ‘spatialised’, we experience continuity, 27. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 3. while a sense of permanence and stability permeates the urban interior. The resulting narrative 28. Tiiu Poldma, “Transforming Interior Spaces: Enriching Subjective Experiences Through Design Research,” Journal aspires towards what Rice refers to as 'an interior of unproductivity [...] needed to counter the of Research Practice 6, no. 2, Article M13 (2010): 2. rationalization of the ,'33 in this instance, where the experience of inhabiting becomes 29. Eviatar Zerubavel, Time Maps. Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past (Chicago: University of Chicago bound to the original notion of shelter as when Bachelard speaks of the home as a place for Press, 2003), 53. 34 30. Gernot Böhme, “Urban Atmospheres: Charting New Directions for Architecture and Urban Planning,” in Architectural dreaming. The urban interior becomes an intentional perceptual map ‘inscribed by domestic Atmospheres. On the Experience and Politics of Architecture, ed. Christian Borch (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2014), 86. 35 comfort’, which brings forth an innate sense of belonging. Familiarity and intimacy converge 31. Rice, The Emergence of the Interior. Architecture, Modernity, Domesticity, 15-17. across space and time for the reconstructed atmosphere of domesticity to empower its inhabitants 32. Ibid., 11. to feel grounded in their self-identity, and so to feel at home. 33. Ibid., 96. 34. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 5-6. 35. Rice, The Emergence of the Interior. Architecture, Modernity, Domesticity, 75. NOTES All images in this paper are by the author, 2015 1. Peter Ackroyd, London. The Biography (London: Vintage Books, 2001), 99. 2. Charles Rice, The Emergence of the Interior. Architecture, Modernity, Domesticity. (London: Routledge, 2007), 11. 3. Christian Borch, “The Politics of Atmospheres: Architecture, Power, and the Senses,” in Architectural Atmospheres. On the Experience and Politics of Architecture, ed. Christian Borch (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2014), 86. 4. Ali Madanipour, Public and Private Spaces of the City (London: Routledge, 2003), 7. 5. Ibid.,105. 6. Ibid., 34. 7. Ibid., 8. 8. Ibid., 25. 9. Karin Jaschke, “City is House and House is City. Aldo van Eyck, Piet Blom and the Architecture of Homecoming,” in Intimate Metropolis, ed. Vittoria di Palma, Diana Periton and Marina Lathouri (London: Routledge, 2009), 176. 10. David Frisby and Mike Featherstone, Simmel on Culture (London: Sage Publications, 2000 ed.), 141. 11. Roger Evans Associates “Bermondsey Street Conservation Area Appraisal for London Borough of Southwark” January 2003, 1.4., http://www.southwark.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/1080/bermondsey_street_part_one (accessed February 25, 2015). 12. Ackroyd, London. The Biography, 691. 13. Peter Zumthor, Atmospheres (Basel: Birkhauser, 2006), 47. 14. Ibid., 49. 15. Shaun Gallagher, Phenomenology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 43. 16. Edmund Husserl, cited in David R. Cerbone, Understanding Phenomenology (Durham: Acumen Publishing Limited, 2006), 23. 17. Cerbone, Understanding Phenomenology, 17. 18. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994 ed.), 4. 19. Simon Glendinning, In Our Time, Phenomenology BBC Radio 4 with Melvyn Bragg, January 22, 2015, http://www. bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04ykk4m (accessed April 15, 2015).

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could be found in the interaction between inside and outside, then the nature of the boundary between inside and outside becomes neither fixed nor limiting; rather inside and outside become entities that can be traversed.7 This traversing between the inside and the outside is the main issue Outside Interior: Traversed boundaries in a Jakarta addressed in this paper. urban neighbourhood The mechanism of how the inside and the outside could be traversed is determined by the nature of the boundaries between the inside and outside. By taking the human body as a metaphor of Paramita Atmodiwirjo, Yandi Andri Yatmo and Verarisa Anastasia Ujung : interior, interior entities could be considered as the organs contained within the body, while the Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia physical boundaries enclosing the interior perform as the skin of the body. The skin becomes the boundary ‘through which the potential to span outward from the interior may be realised.’8 The nature of the skin as the boundary of the body is open to various forms of leakage,9 allowing the ABSTRACT inside to be extended or expanded outside. The boundary also plays a further role beyond the This paper proposes an idea of the traversed boundaries of inside and outside, by examining various mechanisms physical means of separation. The porosity of the boundaries suggests the possibility of the inside of how the inside and the outside could traverse each other within the context of everyday life in an urban to be connected to the outside, while the boundaries play a role not merely as a physical means neighbourhood in Jakarta, Indonesia. It argues on the (in)significance of interior entities in defining the interiority of of separating but more as a means of control, to regulate the relationship between the inside and an urban context, especially in an urban setting where the cultural and climatic context encourages more outdoor the outside.10 events and activities. An inquiry into everyday life in an urban neighbourhood was performed in order to reveal various possibilities for mechanisms in which the inside and outside could be extended and exchanged. The making The possibility of traversing between the inside and the outside, as well as the porous characteristics of interior is not merely defined by the presence of interior entities contained within the physical boundaries. Various of the boundaries, challenges the nature of the interior, which is no longer defined by the physical mechanisms of traversing the inside and outside could further define the nature of the urban interior of everyday 11 life, where the interior could become independent from its physical boundaries. These mechanisms suggest the boundaries of architectural structure. Interior is no longer associated with containment or the possibility of alternative types of urban interior that might emerge due to the occupation of space (whether inside inside. The interior could be extended to the outside, and at the same time the outside space or outside) by the events that take place alongside the everyday habitual routines. The emergence of outside could have the characteristics of interior. The emergence of ‘outside interior’ could occur as a interior is made possible by the porosity of the boundaries, which allow for the exchange of atmospheric condition, result of such traversing of the interior entities. the exchange of programs and actions, and the movement of objects across the boundaries of inside and outside. The understanding of inside and outside as complementary entities, as well as the nature of the inside-outside boundary, becomes complicated within the context of the urban environment INSIDE AND OUTSIDE BECOME OUTSIDE INTERIOR where the scale of environment might vary from intimate urban enclosure to open public space. Various degrees of inside-ness and outside-ness appear in everyday urban spatial settings, occurring Inside and outside are difficult to either differentiate or separate. A dialectic between inside and in various degrees of porosity or permeability of the boundaries between spatialities and various outside illustrates how inside and outside cannot be perceived and experienced as separated forms of traversing the boundaries. entities; instead ‘outside and inside are both intimate – they are always ready to be reversed.’1 Inside and outside are two entities that are complementary to one another. Inside and outside This paper attempts to examine to what extent different forms of traversing of the boundaries may can also be considered merely as a matter of viewpoint, depending on the position from where define our understanding of interior and urban. Such examination of urban interior is conducted one experiences and perceives; one can be outside of something while at the same time be inside within the context of the urban environment in Jakarta, Indonesia, where the climate conditions something else,2 therefore being inside and being outside can be interchangeable. and cultural background of the society trigger the emergence of ‘outside interior’. In particular we would like to question: How does the traversing between the inside and the outside occur in Considering inside and outside as complementary to one another requires further understanding everyday living? If the inside and the outside could be easily shifted, then what is the significance of the nature of inside-outside interaction, as well as the nature of boundaries between inside and (or insignificance) of interior entities in relation to the physical boundary? Could interior become outside. Several characteristics have been suggested to illustrate the nature of such interaction: independent of its boundary? And what kind of alternative types of urban interior could emerge as interweaving relationship,3 contiguous,4 porous5 and interpenetrating.6 If such characteristics from the traversing of inside-outside?

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THE CONTEXT: ‘OUTSIDE INTERIOR’ ‘Outside interior’ also tends to emerge due to the collective culture that forms many urban communities, where the tendency for space sharing is evident. In such collective culture, certain ‘Outside interior’ refers to the phenomenon in which the traversing of the boundaries between individual spaces are shared by other people in the neighbourhood and transformed into public inside and outside results in the emergence of outside space which possesses the characteristics space. For example, during their spare time people often gather within the private territory of of interior. The emergence of ‘outside interior’ in the urban neighbourhood in Jakarta is triggered someone’s house. This can trigger the emergence of blurring boundaries between public and largely by two factors: the climate and the culture. Being in the tropical climate zone, Jakarta has private. Such blurring boundaries challenge the dichotomy of public-private and collective- plenty of sunlight throughout the year, allowing people to perform various activities outside as a individual in a modern city.13 Very often the spaces of a modern city are differentiated based on part of their everyday life. A distinctive characteristic of the tropical climate is humidity, which the degree of publicness and privateness, which is usually corresponding to the degree of spatial tends to define different atmospheric conditions of inside and outside from those experienced openness and enclosure; the more open, the more public. However, in urban kampung in Jakarta, in a cold climate. The outside condition of the tropical climate, with a humid, warm and airy it is not always the case that the inside is associated with the private or limited to a certain group atmosphere could become a reverse of the inside that tends to be air-conditioned, enclosed of people and the outside is associated with the public, or everybody. The public-private distinction and bounded. The humidity and warmth of the outside could present an alternative atmospheric becomes blurred due to the way people treat their individual space and collective space. condition that is more intimate and comfortable than the inside. Being outside could become an alternative to avoid the limitation created by the boundaries of the inside. Thus it is possible ‘to be Within this environmental and cultural context, the shifting of inside-outside is intensely embedded outside and experience interiority.’12 In the everyday life of urban neighbourhoods in Jakarta, the in everyday living, and this changes the way we consider our understanding of interior in this outside becomes a significant setting of activities at all times. particular urban context.

In many situations, the emergence of ‘outside interior’ is also enhanced by spatial necessity. In the THE INSIDE-OUTSIDE IN THE EVERYDAY LIFE OF AN URBAN context of urban neighbourhood living, many people are forced to live inside very limited dwelling NEIGHBOURHOOD space. As part of their strategy to comply with the necessities of their everyday activities, the limited dwelling space has to be extended. This creates a form of ‘leaking’ of the activities that are This study concerns the forms of traversing between the inside and outside as they occur in the normally performed inside to the outside. Hence the domestic boundaries of inside-outside are everyday life of an urban neighbourhood. The analysis was performed based on the observation of continually shifted due to various everyday necessities. The outside offers an alternative space to spatial practices performed by the inhabitants of the Cikini urban kampung neighbourhood, located the tightness, darkness and staleness of the interior space and thus provides space that is more in the central part of Jakarta. This neighbourhood is characterised by vibrant everyday life, with open, light and airy. These characteristics could represent the interiority of the outside space. a strong collective culture and social ties among the inhabitants. The sample narratives described Hence the emergence of ‘outside interior’ could be attributed to the liberating characteristics of in this study explore these spatial practices and the occurrence of permeability and contiguous the outside space in contrast to the limitation of the inside. relations between inside and outside spaces.

In understanding the urban interior of the Cikini urban kampung neighbourhood, particularly in examining the relationship between the inside and outside, we focus on events, exhibits or happenings14 that together construct the interior, rather than defining the interior by physical containment. In examining how interior architectural boundaries become porous or permeable, our inquiry focuses on the traversing of inside/outside through which the events are constructed, rather than just the porosity or the permeable characteristics of the physical boundaries. In this way, the nature of the interior as events rather than as physical materials is foregrounded.

Our findings in the Cikini urban kampung neighbourhood indicate that there are two primary mechanisms in which the shifting of inside-outside occurs. The first is through the leaking or the extending of events from inside to outside and/or from outside to inside by the actions performed by the inhabitants. The second brings the interior entities to the outside. These two mechanisms Opposite Figure 1: Outside as a setting for activities in an urban kampung neighbourhood. Photographs: authors.

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suggest the possibility of the traversing of inside-outside through insufficient to contain the activities. Meanwhile, the openness the re-emergence of events, spatial elements and spatial features of the outside space offered a more preferable alternative that were commonly restricted to the interior. These mechanisms as a more spacious setting for activities. Here the boundaries can particularly reveal the possibilities of what is likely to happen become porous or permeable. The traversing of the inside to between the inside and the outside, and how this could define the outside occurred through the shifting of events performed an urban interior. by the girls out of the necessity to find more sufficient space. This event suggests the extendibility of the inside events beyond THE LEAKING OR EXTENDING OF EVENTS: their boundaries. INSIDE-OUT OR OUTSIDE-IN The opposite direction of traversing, outside-inside, is illustrated The traversing of inside-outside occurs through the leaking or through an event that occurred at the weekend in one of the extending of events through physical boundaries of interior, houses in the neighbourhood. either in a one-way direction (inside-out or outside-in) or a two- way direction (inside-out and outside-in). The directionality of Every Saturday night Mr Sap’s living room was usually full of the inside-outside traversing is defined by the performance of neighbours, coming to his house for chatting and watching actions as well as the necessities that trigger such actions. together. After dusk the males and females from the nearby houses came there and stayed until 8 or 9 pm. Many children came in and out of the house, some of them The inside-out direction of traversing is illustrated through the space of the family. This event traverses not only the physical boundary of the interior but also came to look for the parents who were hanging out there, following narrative of a dance practice performed by a group of transforms the level of privacy of the living room as the interior space. It brings the public gathering or sometimes they just called their parents from outside the children as they prepare for the Independence Day celebration. that is normally performed outside into the intimacy of the inside of the private dwelling. house. A boy named Koko, a seventh grader, came into Mr Han and Ela walked to Fari’s house, which was located Sap’s house and after chatting for a while he went out to see The two cases above illustrate the examples of one-way traversing, from inside to outside or from nearby. There were four girls in Fari’s living room practising his friends. Then Fabi, a sixth grader, came inside and talked outside to inside, that might happen due to necessity as well as habit. The existence of inside space Bollywood dance. After about ten minutes, as more friends with Mr Sap, and soon he also left the house. After a while was redefined not as an independent entity but in relation to the outside space nearby. When arrived, there were too many people inside this living room, Mrs Elli went in looking for Mrs Sap, but since she was not the inside space has exhausted its capability to contain the events, the outside space provides so they decided to move to an empty lot nearby and brought in the living room, Mrs Elli went out again. Fabi then went the possibility for extension. On the other hand, the inside space can also provide the possibility a cellphone to play the music there. They practised about out of the house to catch up with his friends playing around. to contain communal events from the outside, and in this way change the intimate character of two sets of dance movements. They have memorised all Next came Teri, a two year old, brought by Noni, Mr Sap’s the movements, so they were practising to synchronise their daughter. Teri often came to this house and performed her the interior space. Both cases indicate the permeability of the boundary between the inside and movements as a group. They took a rest after fifteen minutes dance movements in front of the people there. (Field note, outside that could be easily traversed by the movement of people and events. and bought sweet cakes from a nearby stall. (Field note, Cikini neighbourhood, 2013) Cikini neighbourhood, 2014) THE LEAKING OR EXTENDING OF EVENTS: INSIDE-OUT AND OUTSIDE-IN This event illustrates the transformation of a living room owned The narrative suggests the characteristic of inside space that by a family as their private space into a space for communal Another narrative, also occurring in the same house, illustrates the two-way direction of traversing became too crowded after the children were there for some use by the neighbours. The transformation occurred with a of inside-outside. This event occurred when the owner of the house performed his duty of giving time, thus triggering them to find the outside space as a more mix of people coming in and out of the space and performing private extra lessons for the children around the neighbourhood as a weekly routine activity in accommodating alternative for their activities. This form of activities simultaneously. This event was a form of traversing the evening. traversing suggests the girls’ intention to escape from the limits from outside to inside that was triggered by the habitual routine imposed by the interior boundaries or containment. Especially of togetherness. The owner of the house opens up his living While waiting for the lesson to begin, the kids interact, chat and play with others around Mr when the number of children increased, the interior space became room and invites the neighbours to become a part of the inside Sap’s house. Some of them gathered around Jay’s stall to buy dinner. At 7 pm, when the lessons Above Figure 2: The leaking of an event from outside to inside. Diagram: authors.

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began, the children came into Mr Sap’s living room to study there. Mr Sap set up his living room of traversing became a form of negotiation between the inside and the outside. The negotiation to have enough for study and also provided a whiteboard. The children were divided in occurred between the groups of people – those moving inside and those moving outside – in two groups according to their school levels. While Mr Sap taught the kids inside the house, Mrs order to achieve different purposes. Sap decided to get out of the house and hang out around Jay’s stall with neighbours. This was what she usually did every time there was a lesson. Nova, her daughter, also joined her sitting A slightly different event is illustrated by a narrative that occurred in an outdoor area in front of a outside. After a while, Mrs Sap’s sister, who just came for a visit, joined them sitting there too. stall, where the mothers in the neighbourhood regularly come to hang out together. Then when her eldest daughter came back home from work, she also joined them. The younger children finished the lesson earlier, while the older children worked until around 8.20 pm. (Field Mrs Sap felt the day was very hot and decided to relax in the outdoor area in front of Mrs note, Cikini neighbourhood, 2013) Nana’s stall near her house. There was a long bench with a backrest there. When Mrs Sap arrived, there were already another mother and three kids sitting there. After a while, Mrs Nana, This narrative illustrates how the exchange of inside and outside occurred. When the living room the owner of the stall, arrived. In the middle of their chat, Mrs Sap decided to get back to her as the inside space was occupied by the children taking the extra lessons taught by the husband, house to bring some food for snacking together. Then several other mothers and children joined the wife and the daughter decided to move to the outside space of the terrace. During the lessons, them, snacking together and chatting about everyday topics. Mrs Sap went back to her house the living room performed as a social space that accommodated other people, yet forcing the again to get some raw dumplings, which were then fried in the stall and eaten together by other occupants of the house to move outside to gain more space for sitting and chatting. everybody there. Suddenly, Mrs Nana’s little daughter decided to take the cooking toy from inside the house and bring it outside to play with the other little children. After a while they got bored and climbed on the long bench. One of the children asked for the music to be played from the mobile phone and they danced together on the bench. The mothers watched them dancing, while laughing and singing together following the music. After dancing the children lay down on the bench, while still listening to the music. Some of the mothers bought drinks from the nearby stall. (Field note, Cikini neighbourhood, 2013)

For the wife and the daughter, the outside space suggested the quality of warmth and enclosure of the interior space15 that substituted for the living room that was now occupied by the children from the neighbourhood. This form of traversing happened through the exchange of movements: outside-in (the children entering the living room) and inside-out (the wife and the daughter moving out of the living room). They happened as two simultaneous events affecting each other. The form Opposite Figure 3: The exchange of inside and outside. Diagram: authors.

Above Figure 4: Extended space where the domestic and the communal merge. Diagram: authors.

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In this event, the space outside the house becomes an extension an outside interior. Different from the first mechanism of leaking To celebrate Independence Day, the people held the to the stage. Family members gathered around the stage, of indoor space, which was used as a hangout area for the mothers or extending of events inside-out, this mechanism is mainly syukuran (thanksgiving) after Isya prayer, at 8 pm. Syukuran and other guests sat a bit further back. Males sat on one and the children living nearby. The gathering was triggered by the characterised not by the necessity to escape from limitations but was held on a street which connected the flower market side, while females and children sat on the other side. There necessity to get fresh air during a hot day. One of the mothers by the purposeful setting up of interior entities. Very often objects and the motorcycle area. They blocked the street were fewer guests sitting in front of the teenagers’ centre, decided to bring the food from inside her house and initiated in our space are understood as belonging to a certain place and temporarily by putting a long bench on the street so they since this space was not sheltered by the tent. After the cooking and eating activities shared with the other mothers, not another. There is ‘the sense of the proper’16 that decides that could use it for the event. They provided some mats on the formal ceremony, the guests moved to the food table to extending further into other events. This space was where the certain objects should normally be in inside or outside space. ground for the people to sit. The event began with praying have dinner. The wedding party continued until later in the inside and outside met. The domestic food-preparation activity In the following cases, the interior entities that normally reside together. After the prayers finished, some women and men afternoon, accompanied by dangdut music. merged with the occupation of space by the neighbours and inside, including objects and furniture, are positioned outside as distributed cups of mineral water for all the people who together these activities enhanced the performativity of the the events are generated. attended. And there was also a lot of food served, like fried The emergence of a new interior was marked by the setting event enjoyed by everybody. Compared to the previous event rice, fried noodles, yellow rice, bread, cakes, and even buckets up of the portable tent as an enclosure to the space. The tent where the traversing took place as the exchange of inside and The first narrative to illustrate this mechanism is taken from of snacks for the little kids. The people sat in several small as the new enclosure injects a new quality of space – from an outside, in this event traversing occurred when the inside and the regular activity of gotong royong (a cultural term meaning circles and ate together. This became an occasion for them outside, exposed street space into an enclosed, shaded space the outside met and merged. The characteristics of the inside togetherness) in cleaning up the neighbourhood river environment. to have a chat and to get to know their neighbours. (Field for the reception.17 The street again performed as a potential domestic activity were both enhancing and enhanced by the note, Cikini neighbourhood, 2014) outside space that could be transformed into the interior by the communal gathering of the neighbours. On Sunday the young males and females gathered around presence of interior entities. The presence of various objects the river to perform gotong royong. During the occasion The emergence of ‘outside interior’ was created by the temporal marked the space as a setting for the wedding reception. It was In both narratives as illustrated in Figures 3 and 4, the inside spaces of gotong royong performed mainly by young males, the occupation of the street with interior entities: mat for sitting, no longer a street, but also a reception hall, thus the traversing of the house lost their characteristics as physical containment, due young females usually set up the tables with food and drink food and drink. The event became the occasion for gathering of interior entities transformed the identity of the interior space. to the exchange and merging of events from the inside-out and for refreshments after working, while the children gathered and eating together outside. The setting up of the long benches from the outside-in. The traversing of inside and outside becomes around to watch and play. The food and drink were prepared to block the street became the act of marking the new boundary The three narratives above illustrate the emergence of interior manifested through the movement of events away from where on a table located on the terrace of one of the houses near of interior territory, within which the other entities were set up. beyond ‘the traditional notion of interiors as enclosed and separate they were usually contained. The physical boundaries of the spaces the river. After the cleaning was done, the males washed The street became the potential outside space for occupation from outside’ which produces the understanding of interior as 18 were traversed for comfort, activity and interaction purposes. their hands and feet and began enjoying the food and drink. by interior entities. something hidden and private. The interior emerges in the They had a rest and ate while talking and standing. (Field outside domain which is open and public, through the mechanism In both cases, the movement of events also seemed to be note in Cikini neighbourhood, 2013) The final narrative to illustrate the emergence of outside of traversing interior entities. This mechanism indicates the potential 19 influenced by the position of the inside space in relation to the interior is the special occasion of a wedding reception, which of interior entities for ‘relocation or displacement’. The interior outside space. Both the living room in Figure 3 and the terrace in The setting up of an interior in the form of a table with food (again) occupied certain parts of the street. Similar to the entities might traverse the physical boundaries that normally divide Figure 4 became the space of exchange, where the events from and drinks on the outside terrace was considered in terms previous narrative, the interior was created by the setting up the outside space and the inside space; and their presence outside the space inside the house and the events from outside the house of the proximity to the cleaning work area. The traversing of of a portable tent, chairs, tables, stage, sound system, food and creates a new interior. By setting up the entities in such a way as to triggered or influenced one another. Again, just like the first two interior entities was triggered by the immediacy between the drink; everything was complete to transform the street into a conform to the emergence of events, it is possible to generate the cases, the existence of the inside space could not be separated cleaning work, that tended to be collective and public, and the kind of reception hall. quality of interior without a sense of containment. from the outside space that surrounds it (highlighted in grey in the food preparation that was mainly domestic. The emergence of figures). In the examples in Figures 3 and 4, the events of the inside outside interior was generated not due to the force from the The tent was erected along the street, from the front of the THE POSSIBILITY OF ALTERNATIVE TYPES OF and the events of the outside were interacting and exchanging. inside but from another outside, proximate event. coffee stall to the teenagers’ centre building. A stage was URBAN INTERIOR built at one end of the tent, and chairs were arranged on TRAVERSING OF INTERIOR ENTITIES Another example illustrating the emergence of outside interior is both sides of the area. The teenagers’ centre building was The above mechanisms suggest the emergence of urban interior the event of syukuran (a kind of Thanksgiving Day) to celebrate transformed into the changing room for the bride. Food and through the traversing of the interior events and entities. The The second mechanism occurs through the setting up of the Independence Day. This is an annual event involving everybody drink was prepared on a long table. The wedding ceremony presence of interior entities could be independent from the interior entities in outside space, resulting in the emergence of in the neighbourhood. began at 11 am, when the bride and groom arrived and walked boundaries; however, their emergence beyond the physical

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the space where the exchange of interior events and entities NOTES occurs. In this way, the urban interior emerges as the exchange of inside and outside where the movement of events and entities 1. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press), 217-218. occurs. 2. Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), xv. 3. Jill Franz, “At the In-Side of the Limit: Redefining the Architecture Third, the urban interior emerges due to the occupation of space and Interior Design Relationship,” in LIMITS: Proceedings from the 21st Annual (whether inside or outside) by the events that take place alongside Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia & New Zealand, eds. the everyday habitual routines. Some of the triggers might be due Harriet Edquist and Hélène Frichot (Melbourne, 2004), 166-171. to everyday necessity, such as the need to find certain quality of 4. Jill Stoner, Toward A Minor Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). space: more sufficient, more appropriate or more comfortable. 5. Malte Wagenfeld, “The Porous-City: The Atmospheric Conversation Other triggers might be more social; the needs of the people of the Urban | Interior,” in Urban Interior: Informal Explorations, Interventions and to have more interaction or social exchange with others, which Occupations, ed. Rochus Urban Hinkel (Baunach: Spurbuchverlag, 2011), 147-160. in turn results in the exchange of space, including the exchange 6. Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis, “,” in One-Way Street and Other of inside and outside space. This characteristic is particularly Writings, ed. Walter Benjamin (London, NLB), 167-176. Architecture from the Outside kampung 7. Grosz, , 65. relevant to the context of this study in an urban 8. Tarryn Handcock, “Transgressing Boundaries: Skin in the Construction neighbourhood in Jakarta, where the urban interior is defined by of Bodily Interior,” IDEA Symposium Proceeding, Interior: A State of Becoming (2012). the context of the social culture and way of living as well as the 9. Robyn Longhurst, Bodies: Exploring Fluid Boundaries (London: Routledge, climatic conditions of the tropical environment. The outside offers 2001). alternatives to some limitations of the inside, while the inside also 10. Wagenfeld, “The Porous-City,” 148. 11. Cathy Smith, “Inside-Out: Speculating on the Interior,” IDEA Journal offers more intimate exchange than the outside. The liberation (2004), 93-102. of interior entities from their physical boundaries is essentially 12. Christine McCarthy, “Before the Rain: Humid Architecture,” Space the search for better quality of space – in terms of social, cultural and Culture 6 (2003), 337. and physiological. The narratives in this study have illustrated that 13. Vittoria Di Palma, Diana Periton and Marina Lathouri, Intimate Metropolis: Urban Subjects in the Modern City (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009). the emergence of urban interior cannot be separated from the 14. Elena Erica Giunta, “Urban Interiors, Artificial Territories: Designing boundary could still define the interior. The narratives of outside depicted from these narratives. First, the urban interior could be social-cultural context of its occupation, as represented by the ‘Spatial Script’ for Relational Field,” IDEA Journal (2009), 52-61. interior in an urban kampung neighbourhood illustrate that the defined by the traversing of interior events and entities between everyday habitual living of people continuously shifting between 15. McCarthy, “Before the Rain,” 337. the inside and the outside. 16. Tim Cresswell, In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Trans- porosity of the boundaries between the inside and outside the inside and outside. The traversing occurs both ways – inside- gression (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 3. allows for several forms of traversing. It allows the exchange of out and outside-in. The possibilities of the traversing result in the 17. McCarthy, “Before the Rain,” 336. atmospheric condition of inside and outside, both physically (such urban interior where the inside and the outside are continually ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 18. Christine McCarthy, “Toward a Definition of Interiority,” Space and as temperature, humidity, sound and smell) and psychologically shifted, affecting and defining one another. Culture 8 (2005), 121. (such as the feeling of crowdedness and intimacy). It also allows This research was funded by a PUPT research grant from the 19. David Leatherbarrow, Architecture Oriented Otherwise (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), 167-169. the exchange or the shift of programs and actions. Finally, it Second, in the process of shifting inside-outside, it should also Directorate General of Higher Education, Ministry of Education allows for the movement of objects from where they normally be understood that the shifting occurs due to the existing or and Culture, Indonesia 2013-2014. belong. Such characteristic of porosity of the boundaries is what emerging relationship between the inside and the outside. The makes the outside interior possible. existence of the inside space could not be separated from the outside space that surrounds it and vice versa. The traversing The mechanisms of traversing between inside and outside as of inside and outside may result in the urban interior that illustrated in the narratives and diagrams in this study indicate that incorporates different degrees of insidedness and outsidedness some alternative types of urban interior could emerge. Several of space. In fact, the position of certain space inside or outside alternative types and characteristics of urban interior could be the physical boundaries becomes less important than its role as Opposite Figure 5: The emergence of interior by the setting up of interior entities outside. Image: authors.

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the participating subject. This crossing might offer a change of behaviour, conduct, or experience. By following these two objects outside, we witness how their material trace reimagines what can happen or be felt in public spaces in San Francisco or Berlin. What ties my two examples together Inside Out: When objects inhabit the streets is the way in which often-obsolescent interior object(s) infiltrate the urban environment for a specific duration, and allow people to interact differently with these once-familiar objects that have Gretchen Coombs : Queensland University of Technology, Australia been displaced into the urban landscape. These objects become a focal point around which social and political awareness and proximity increase, and as a consequence reposition individuals and ABSTRACT newly formed publics.

This essay will explore the contemporary intersection of art and interior design on the level of social practice, The art discourse that includes ‘social practice’ and socially engaged artworks has gained visibility two projects that deal with pubic participation from a critical art perspective and Jacques Rancière's in public and institutional spaces. Over the past decade such urban interventions have proliferated, 'art as dissensus'. These 'design activations' offer urban inhabitants a phenomenological exchange that occurs and many of them are outlined in the context of the city and globalisation in Re-imagining the City: with shifts between art and design, interior and exterior, and the subjective and intersubjective awareness of the Art, globalisation and urban spaces (2013) where the editors highlight diverse practices ranging from city. A manual sewing machine and manual typewriter offer a different representation and experience of the to the built environment.2 Many public projects have now been absorbed into larger arts Tenderloin District in San Francisco, the Berlin Wall and San Francisco parks. structures, most notably Spontaneous Interventions, first presented for the U.S. pavilion at the 13th (2012) Venice Architecture Biennale. It catalogues an ongoing phenomenon: the interventionist INTRODUCTION urbanism of architects, designers, artists and citizens responding to signifiicant events like the Global Financial Crisis. Examples of scale and ambition range, and include Fritz Haeg's Edible Estates Developing the First World Walking in the city often brings surprises that undermine the regulatory structures of urban (2005-2013) and Ghana Think Tank’s (ongoing). The expanded environments (work, transport, consumption and entertainment). On any given day we might field of public art has also been used in the urban development and marketing of cities for political- participate in a public art project by rearranging Ikea furniture; sit down in a parking space economic benefit, which counters its social and aesthetic values. repurposed into a ‘park’ with tables, chairs and a cup of tea; watch a man mend clothes for the homeless; play a piano that has been placed for public use; or dictate a letter, to a typist An interior design perspective acts as a confluence with other fields of enquiry and practice – using a manual typewriter. These kinds of spontaneous events are part of an increasing trend in sociology, urbanism and anthropology – and in this context, public art practice. This intersection urban cultures where cities are turned into laboratories for creative experimentation and civic of ideas cultivates social exchange and highlights the ways in which art, design and urbanism can 3 action. Through subtle interventions, interactive performances and participatory artworks, many contribute to ‘increasing societal awareness, and motivating and enabling political action’. The socio- artists are reordering the use of urban public space, inviting the public to experience their urban cultural relationships engendered pivot around traditional design objects. Further, for design academic habitat differently, and for philosopher Michel de Certeau, contribute to the stories, myths, dreams, Mick Douglas, ‘how a public art practice might animate and amplify these processes – and perhaps experiences, and histories that connect people to a particular place.1 These encounters create provoke a critical awareness of the role of the arts in the rhythms of uneven urban development.’ 4 relationships and provide a connection to a city that is embodied through urban experiences, In this context I describe the design activation as a potentially transformative aesthetic experience, a revitalised collective imagining of urban life, inspiring a sense of awkwardness, unfamiliarity, which I will argue offers an alternative to the purely instrumental functions of art. conviviality, and even perhaps a sense of agency. I will describe each briefly in the context of its significance to public participatory art and interior Inside Out considers how a participatory art project transforms into an urban activation – an design. It is the ‘inside out’ element of these projects that I find compelling and that speaks to object and experience that stimulates a site, socially, politically, or economically. I consider the the provocation of this journal issue on 'urban + interior'. I will first outline the frameworks in agency imbued in these two objects – a manual sewing machine and a manual typewriter – as they which I place these objects: curator and academic Suzie Attiwill’s framework for urban interiors, pass from their domestic or work environments to unexpected sites in the urban environment. and the theorists who have outlined how we conceive of our cities and subsequently resist the They cross the threshold between interior/exterior, entry/exit, and as such take on different spatial constructions offered to us.5 To consider the possible effects of these urban encounters, I significance. Their meaning as designed objects transforms in the urban landscape and becomes use French philosopher Jacques Rancière’s ‘art as dissensus’ and ‘distribution of the sensible’ as a a mode of experiencing the city itself, a phenomenological encounter, and engenders agency in framework for analysis.6

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THE CITY AND URBAN INTERIORS Harvey, the contributors to Cities for People, Not Profit investigate and techniques of interior design to the urban environment.’13 In Lefebvre’s critical urban theory in the context of struggles for this context then, these design activations operate by introducing Philosopher Henri Lefebvre, de Certeau and The Situationist social justice.11 The cry and demand that Harvey and others heterogeneous material objects and artefacts into the urban International are instrumental in considering the backdrop of describe primarily comes from urban social movements and field of perception in order to draw attention to specific issues cities to inform the transformative possibilities of interventionist reflects a more overt activist approach to achieving this right. such as participatory democracy, and provide a neighborhood activations. For example, the Situationists developed work that I would argue that the projects I describe function more subtly meeting place, ultimately to occupy space differently. Attiwill appealed to a collective and community model of creative practice, and much of that imagining remains the same: to respond to describes how ‘temporal occupations’ can be offered as ‘a way and which dissented from the dominant modes offered by the impoverished condition of everyday life and to create of inviting different modes of occupying space than through built consumer capitalism and the institutionalisation of art. ‘Techniques an alternative urban life that has meaning and is playful. But, form; temporal occupations produce and work the urban fabric such as the dérive and détournement were used to identify and as Harvey describes, ‘as always with Lefebvre, conflictual and in different ways.’14 construct situations from existing forms to produce momentary dialectical, open to becoming, to encounters (both fearful ambiances that were provisional and lived.’ 7 This led artists to and pleasurable), and to the perpetual pursuit of unknowable For designers considering their role and relationship to public or make work that existed beyond traditional artistic contexts so as novelty.’12 social practices, interior elements can be displaced to the street to facilitate the infiltration into other aspects of life. in order to revitalise the public’s relationship to them, whether While prescient in 1968 and 1974, Lefebvre could not have through nostalgia, necessity, or to produce a convivial space. I hope Lefebvre's influential works on cities offers another lens to imagined the highly regulated, contained and surveilled cities by contextualising these as interior design activations in urban consider the role of participatory art practices. In The Production of today; however, his call for the ability to imagine something spaces – the street, a square, an alley, a park and so on – to raise of Space (1974) Lefebvre focuses on the processes of spatial different has been answered by many artists and designers. awareness and reimagine these as a part of ‘distributing of urban and secretarial duties often reminded younger generations production; the multiplicity of spaces that are socially produced Theorists such Alana Jelenik, Claire Bishop and Maria Lind space and time and constructing alternative ways for individuals of their mothers or other female relatives. And, after some and made productive through social practices.8 He sees space contend that such interventions never actually dismantle to participate and take part in a “common” public environment.’15 coaxing from adults, many of the child-participants approached 16 as a complex social construction based on the social production institutionalised state power, and consequently, the conviviality of us because they had never seen a typewriter before.’ Many of meanings, which affects how we live in and perceive the city. social art practices, how they merge with life, are embedded in SIT, TAP, SEW: ACTIVATING THE OBJECT people took up her offer and dictated their wishes to her, Lefebvre claims that the organisation of the urban time and the neoliberal structures that make them possible. While these and these letters were then displayed in gallery and museum space to fit the lived experience of its citizens and residents critiques are well noted, it is my belief that the intersubjective In 2004, in a project called I Wish to Say, then-resident of the contexts: a catalogue of words and voices; a historical archive of could become the focus for a renewal of direct democratic encounters at the heart of these projects offer possibilities that San Francisco Bay Area artist Sheryl Oring decided to bring American public opinion. relationships in modern society. Lefebvre also described the ‘right are not quantifiable, their effects ultimately unknown, and that an ‘office’ outside to the streets. On a simple desk she placed to the city’ as an assertion of assembly, access and movement, subtle activations are worthy of consideration. a manual typewriter, clips and rubber stamps to mark cards as Oring reworked this project for the city of Berlin, Germany. With but also as right to imagine the city as something different than ‘urgent’ or ‘incomplete’. Dressed as a 1950s-era secretary and Maueramt (2014) she set up a desk, chair and typewriter along a place sanctioned or controlled by the State, and the highly The examples I have chosen link art, interior design (forms and armed with clerical skills, Oring sat in public spaces around San the former East-West border. Mauer translates as 'wall,' amt designed and managed environment. He states, ‘Among these materials) and urban spaces in ways not common to a traditional Francisco – a park and a flea market, for example – where she’d refers to 'office', 'agency', 'bureau' and 'department'. She sat in rights in the making features the right to the city, not to the understanding of interior design. Many ‘typical’ interiors have be able to draw the attention of people walking around. When locations along the former Wall. Behind her foldout desk was a ancient city, but to urban life, to renewed centrality, to places of moved outside, taking over space, and influencing the way we they approached, perhaps curious about her and the typewriter, mid-century roll-top cabinet. In it she stored signs, paper and encounter and exchange, to life rhythms and time uses, enabling think about domestication, work and leisure. Practices and she offered to type a letter to the President of the United other office supplies, which gave the street installation a direct the full and complete usage of these moments and places, etc.’ 9 materials that are normally interiorised, when brought outside, States, as a way of allowing the public to have a say about the simulation of an office environment. Oring’s persona as a 1950s create a sense of enclosure and proximity; people move closer state of the nation. Corey Dzenko, who performed as secretary secretary doubled this effect. She asked questions such as: ‘What Geographer David Harvey describes how Lefebvre’s ‘right’ has to each other and these interiors or the materials displaced from alongside Oring for one of her I Wish to Say iterations, describes do you think about when you think about the Berlin Wall?’ or seen a revival, which ‘has everything to do with many people interiors influence relationships and the spaces between people. why the public interacted: ‘There is a comfort in familiarity. Our ‘What would you like the world to remember about the Berlin seeking some kind of response to a brutally neoliberalizing Following Attiwill’s provocation, the repurposed interior object beehives and flipped hairdos and outdated typewriters enticed Wall?’. Similar to I Wish to Say, she typed the answers on a manual international capitalism that has been intensifying its assault on ‘invites other possibilities for thinking and designing interiors – older participants who remembered when they used this type typewriter. These were then recontextualised into an art exhibit the qualities of daily life since the early 1990s.’10 Along with and the practice of interior design – and brings the sensibility of machine or wore garments similar to ours. Our appearances at the Museum of the Kennedys. Above Figure1: Sheryl Oring, I Wish to Say, 2004-ongoing. Photograph: courtesy Sheryl Oring and Dhanraj Emanuel.

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Maueramt offered a context for Berliners to have their say about the Wall. The typing became a conditions for urban experiences. Oring’s typewriter in the context of public spaces also initiates direct channel to history and contemporary issues on the streets of Berlin. What is interesting is what architect and activist Leslie Weisman sees as reclaiming a feminist domestic sphere in public that it not only taps into the historical memory of Berliners, and the difficulty of navigating such space.18 Oring’s performance presence, as a female office worker spilled into the street, helps to painful terrain, but also how such a project can subvert the of the Berlin Wall. In reclaim this visibility of office and domestic labour, and to highlight how much office work remains his chapter Art and Culture: the Global Turn, cultural theorist Malcolm Miles describes how pieces of gendered. The performance, interaction and then installation shows Oring’s ability to exploit the the Wall are now objects of consumer culture that have been sold at auction and placed adjacent stereotypes of office workers through the use of costume and props, specifically the typewriter, to institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art.17 and to conflate a time period’s iconography with contemporary social issues.

Using tools of journalism, in this context the focal point of the typewriter, Oring’s work examines I Wish to Say and Maueramt present a ’trace’ of a tenuous issue for its target public.19 The artefacts critical social issues through projects that incorporate old and new media. She tells stories, presented, perhaps more so than the typewriter itself, represent a design trace in this context. By examines public opinion and fosters open exchange with those that encounter her work. The exchanging stories and then dictating them to a woman dressed as a 1950s office worker, there is typewriter, aside from being functional, acts as a visual reminder of a time passed, a once-ubiquitous inherent power, much like the traditional relationship between the boss/secretary that curator and office object, now all but vanished from our sites. As we know, technology has displaced the educator Ellen Lupton outlines: the advent of typewriters and their associated histories of typing humble typewriter, but not all it signifies, or symbolised in Oring’s work. The typewriter became pools in office environments signifying uneven gender relations and the feminisation of industrial an ‘urban’ icebreaker; people were curious about her intentions. It invited conversation, let them objects.20 The trace of the Wall is formed through the stories and the letters, and then repositioned open up and voice issues of concern. The act could arguably be nostalgic, and remind people of in an art context. Oring’s positioning is twofold. On one hand, she reinforces the power dynamic a time when democracy worked (if it ever did), when there were more perceived ‘safe’ spaces in of boss/secretary in these contexts. When people are dictating to her, she is dutiful, she doesn't which to express opinions. During her exchange she focused her attention, did not multitask, but interpret, but transcribes, reproducing this power dynamic as a performance. However, seen in an art simply listened and typed. For those who engaged in Maueramt, it encouraged Berliners to be self- context, I believe this becomes an ironic subversion since the outcomes indicate her power through determined in their memory of the Wall. her visibility on the street, her use of the typewriter, and ultimately of representing the dictated letters. This proposes new subjects and publics; pivoting around an experience and exchange with a Oring’s work functions in many ways: it invites a space for exchange for the passerby, it gives voice, typewriter, allowing new forms of perception for those willing to participate. This method of tracing it reveals a past, and imagines a slower world not lost to the dictates of fast-paced urban life. It may helps to reveal and expose some of the underlying structures of gendered labor, post-Berlin Wall, alter a sense that one has no voice by turning that feeling into one of agency, engendering new and the erosion of democracy, by addressing memory and capital at one and the same time. Opposite Figure 2: Maueramt, 2014. Photograph: courtesy Sheryl Oring and Dhanraj Emanuel.

Above Figure 3: Michael Swaine, The Free Mending Library, 2004-ongoing. Photograph: Daniel Gorrell.

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It is not very often that people sew in public – perhaps on the the city had ‘transformed’ the Western Addition and South of [an] art patron or banker [who have often heard of Swaine’s project] to actually sit next streets of Delhi or Shanghai, but rarely are tailors exposed in Market areas). to someone who is down and out. Both are waiting for a service; two lines of people that public view in developed countries. Clothes are made in factories don’t meet. The service and the practicality of sewing add a point of cultural interest.24 elsewhere, holes are mended in tailor shops or dry cleaners, and Close to popular Union Square, though dirty and unappealing to sewing rooms are fast disappearing from domestic interiors. tourists, the Tenderloin district remains vulnerable to city policy The sidewalk where Swaine keeps his machine cultivates a social ritual for the residents of the Artist Michael Swaine’s public art project started out as Reap shifts and funding cuts. It has been ignored and neglected: ‘It’s a Tenderloin which revolves around the machine and influences the tenor of the streets, offering What you Sew (2004), although it now goes by The Free Mending neighborhood without the institutions and sense of cohesion that a challenge to the media representation of this district. The coming together becomes a physical Library. Swaine repurposed an ice cream cart, mounted it with allow a community to define itself.’21 All possible lived experiences and psychological act performed at the same time and place each month, giving way to a sense of a treadle-operated sewing machine and placed it near Cohen are flattened out in the service of a singular representation that ownership and belonging of the space he creates and the provisional public that forms. Alley in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco on the 15th of continues to re-inscribe power over residents. Writers Rob each month from 12-6pm. Swaine mends holes, darns socks Waters and Wade Hudson explain how this neighbourhood, and shares stories with those who come to visit him. He had with the help of residents as well as ‘external’ activists, now has pushed this cart around other areas of the city as part of a ‘social a stronger sense of community. Swaine’s ongoing project is just ’ – a way of fabricating experiences instead of objects – one way this continues. For sociologist Fran Tonkiss, this type of but found that the folks in the Tenderloin district engaged more, engagement in urban space ‘provides sites for political action so he stayed there. and are themselves politicized in contests over access, control and representation.’22 Swaine draws attention to difference and In a world where everything is thrown away, many people intervenes with these prescribed visual codes by giving a very want to keep things and mend or fix them instead. Swaine and misrepresented or underserved community visibility through an many residents of this neighborhood resist being a part of the artist’s project – a voice made audible through his social practice throwaway culture, and instead give things a second life. Over of sewing on the sidewalks. the years he has changed his work to be more of a mending library by setting up several sewing machines so neighborhood Swaine wanted to meet people and exchange life stories. Over residents could learn to sew and mend their own clothes. the years this is what has happened, with a community growing Swaine’s aesthetic and public practice not only challenges the around his event. Swaine considers the project a ‘collaboration conditions of urban experience, but pivots around an outdated between himself and those whose clothes he patches, mends, and displaced sewing machine. And for him, in an underserved hems and darns – an opportunity to create social interaction community in San Francisco this enables a means of expression, where there would otherwise be none.’23 He found that despite conviviality and service to an overlooked social group. the sewing machine’s unlikely presence on the street, it was familiar to most people, and the chairs he put out also encouraged This poorest of San Francisco’s neighbourhoods rests uneasily them to stop and stay for a chat, have a cup of chai from a nearby between the wealth of Nob Hill and the commercial zone of Indian restaurant or a sandwich prepared by one of the local Union Square; stigmatised as a ghetto, it is underserved in the residents. The extended duration of the project has allowed areas most needed – social services – with its funding cut during people to engage at their own pace, and as a consequence he Reagan’s tenure as Governor of California. The Tenderloin hosts has built up trust with the local community. In his words: the largest percentage of immigrant families in the city, many of whom fled the violence of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the There have been amazing moments because of the 1970s, and many of whom remain marginalised because of race, chairs and the sewing machine, which stops people, and sexuality and gender. This neighbourhood fought off developers the chairs invite them to stay. People with different life who targeted the area for redevelopment in the 1980s (after experiences sit down next to each other. It is rare for Above Figure 4: Michael Swaine, The Free Mending Library, 2004-ongoing. Photograph: Daniel Gorrell.

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Both Oring and Swaine take familiar but obsolescent items from the domestic and work spheres These temporary occupations of space, conscious of objects and people and the relations they into different contexts with similar effects. These two projects contribute to an urban fabric engender, ‘situates us in an enunciative and performative relationship to the world (and to art), that offers texture to the built environment and reorders the spatial exchange for participants. where meanings take place, in what the theorist and curator Irit Rogoff calls “the where of now”, by The artists wished to provide an opportunity for some kind of creative activity with the aim of making a form of location through inhabiting temporal duration.’26 The interactions with the artists promoting critical questions about urban life, but found instead people’s willingness to form instant and their objects can help shape our perceptions and encourage psychological self-determination communities to work together on a shared goal and an interesting option for the expression of at a time when many people feel powerless in the face of the growing political injustice enacted self-empowered human agency. upon individuals and communities globally.

These projects I describe facilitate improvised and spontaneous public participation and provide Invoking philosopher Jacques Rancière helps to broaden the scope to reception; an approach a means by which people might interact with urban structures and other people in new and that might provide a productive reordering of how we engage in these types of activations interesting ways. They also engender a localised spectacle and enlist an actively participating local and their reception in urban contexts. Rancière outlines the ‘distribution of the sensible’ as how public that ‘makes’ the art rather than serving as a passive consumer of product offered by the we perceive, and that which regulates that perception of our social roles and the subsequent corporate entertainment industries. The artists reconfigure the social encounters in the city as affective response. Rancière expands upon philosopher Immanuel Kant’s , taking up the Lefebvre might have imagined. I am not suggesting that a sewing machine or a typewriter can usher irresolvable relationship between the mind and the senses. The aesthetic requires a suspension of in democracy in communities with such uneven social and economic relations as the Tenderloin the rules that govern the ways people move through the world, ‘a redistribution of the relations district in San Francisco, but it holds possibilities of social cohesion and the rituals of sidewalk between the forms of sensory experience.’27 The social in art cannot be separated from aesthetics, culture. Much of the evidence of these projects’ efficacy remains anecdotal, but looking at video or from subjective experience. These categories bleed into one another every time any artwork documentation of each shows a willing and often emotional public, the quality of exchange, and reaches a public. This is further exacerbated by the displaced interior object, adding a layer of an interest in the objects. As such, these operate in a manner that Douglas describes: ‘There dissonance, another opportunity for a new intersubjective experience with an artist and their is an aesthetic practice in operation here, activating modes of enlivened inhabitation that de- object in an urban context, producing a ‘disruptive aesthetic’. Contextualised as a design activation territorialise the tendencies of accumulating essentialist local identity and authority of place.’25 through displaced interior artefacts, ‘art as dissensus’ then breaches ‘the boundaries between what is supposed to be normal and what is supposed to be subversive, between what is supposed to Oring’s and Swaine’s work resists typical definitions of public art and subsequently typical notions be active, and therefore political, and what is supposed to be passive or distant, and therefore of social and political engagement. These practices are collective in nature; that is, the context and apolitical.’28 The dissonance or uncertainty acts on people’s senses, perception, and subsequently outcomes are produced together with audiences or publics. The threshold between the interior and their emotions and interpretations of their urban experience. They disrupt existing paradigms of exterior world works through a phenomenological exchange: the experience does not transport shared meaning (the distribution of the sensible) and values, and then propose new ones. It is this the public away from the world but reworks the stuff of the world – artefacts from interiors – aesthetic dimension, the intended effect of the designed artifacts, and their insertion into cultural albeit with different items. These objects then produce new combinations, new ways of bringing processes that can contribute to a reimagining of urban life. a memory of an older world ‘into’ the self, a new kind of subjectivity in relation to contemporary issues. These frameworks help elucidate how public space, democracy and participation interface Such work may provide a sense of community between artists and an opportunity for collective with objects to advance an understanding of their potential as design interventions. meaning-making, yet these ‘experiences’ have potential to become another commodity or form of entertainment in the spectacular . We can critique the artists or sanctioning institutions ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSION when such engagements become superficial, unethical, or do not ameliorate the deeper alienation and disengagement from the social and political aspects of the urban and public sphere.29 This is a Displaced interior objects and structures attract and foster the creative instincts of urban complex and contradictory issue, and I do not believe that the design activations discussed in this populations by offering them an extraordinary/out of the ordinary experience. These urban essay operate superficially nor do they make claims for deeper structural changes. activations bring to life interactive and creative modes of civic engagement, an encounter with objects (facilitated through performing subjects) set against the backdrop of the workings of city Indeed their potential may rest in the symbolic realm, and can still have an affective response. life. These projects use conceptual frameworks that take interior elements to the streets, creating The political potential of urban activation projects such as these remains in their capacity to performative displays that support and help expand the cultures of local communities in urban life. engage the general public and to generate broader political and social transformations. Here, the

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activations create disruptive aesthetics and opportunities that elude the regimentation of life and 9. Henri Lefebvre, “The right to the city,” in Henri Lefebvre, Writings on Cities, trans. and eds., Eleonore Kofman and work promulgated by surveillance, containment, corporate capital and its instrumentalisation of Elizabeth Lebas (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996), 178. 10. David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (London: Verso Press, 2012), xii. human creativity. The works discussed demonstrate that urban space can have a multitude of 11. Neil Brenner, Peter Marcuse, and Margit Mayer, eds., Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the functions and is indeed far more flexible and fluid than often conceived; and more, that it is a living Right to the City (London: Routledge, 2012). and creative space that expands the possibilities of experience through the participatory practices 12. Harvey, Rebel Cities, x. of provisional publics.30 Rancière describes this as ‘establishing an element of interdeterminacy in 13. Attiwill, “Urban and Interior: techniques for an urban interiorist,” 13. the relationship between artistic production and political subjectivity.’ 31 14. Ibid., 21. 15. Thomas Markussen, “The Disruptive Aesthetics of Design Activism: Enacting Design Between Art and Politics,” 2011 Nordic Design Research Conference, Helsinki. http://www.nordes.org/opj/index.php/n13/article/viewFile/102/86 (accessed This understanding of urban activations is represented by connections that are established with 16 February 2015). audiences and communities to promote a greater self-awareness about the role individuals can 16. Corey Dzenko, “Introduction: Taking a Moment to Have a Say,” in Sheryl Oring, I Wish to Say: Activating play in urban life. In this context the opportunity to explore new perceptions and conceptions Democracy One Voice at a Time (London: Intellect, 2016). Re-Imagining the City: Art, Globalisation and Urban Spaces can empower people in the belief that the city offers experiences that reach far beyond utilitarian 17. Miles, Malcolm, “Art and Culture: the global turn,” in , eds. Elizabeth Grierson and Kristen Sharp (London: Intellect, 2013), 21-38. dictates, and that there is the possibility of multiple creative modes of engagement in an urban 18. Leslie Kanes Weisman, Discrimination by Design: a feminist critique of the man-made environment (Chicago: sphere. In addition, these ‘interventions’ and ‘disruptive aesthetics’ in daily life might reflect a challenge University of Illinois Press, 1993). to the ‘distribution of the sensible’ because the encounters with interior objects are unfamiliar, 19. Carl DiSalvo, Design Issues 25 (2009): 48-63. disorienting and unregulated. Ultimately, they aim to disrupt our sense of the contemporary world, 20. Ellen Lupton, Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office (Cooper-Hewitt Museum, 1993). Reclaiming San Francisco: our understanding of what can happen in public space, who and what can be highlighted in that 21. Rob Waters and Wade Hudson, “The Tenderloin: What Makes a Neighborhood,” in History, Politics, Culture, eds. James Brook, Chris Carlsson, and Nancy J. Peters (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1998), 302. space, and what can be said in that space. These types of activations – participatory and urban 22. Fran Tonkiss, Space, the City and Social Theory: Social Relations and Urban Forms (Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press, – forge the way towards these new cultural forms in a world that needs innovative ways to 2005), 59. encourage people and communities to challenge the inequities presented to them, and experience 23. Spark KQED Productions, http://kqed.org/arts/programs/spark/profile.jsp?essid=5030 (accessed February 18, something different. 2015). 24. Personal correspondence with the author, August 28, 2015. 25. Douglas, “Situating social contingency: mobility and socially engaged pubic art,” 59. What I hope emerges are urban activations, interior objects or otherwise, which contribute to a 26. Ibid., 57. larger discourse of what the materials of interior design can do in public space. It may be difficult 27. Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discontents (Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press, 2009), 11. to measure the ‘success’ of these projects, or the social outcomes, if any, that they offer – it may 28. Rancière, “Art of the Possible,” Artforum 45 (2007), 264. be better to think in terms of the questions they raise regarding the ability to challenge the 29. Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992 reprint). ‘distribution of the sensible’ and subsequently reimagine an urban life based on these encounters. 30. Gretchen Coombs and Justin O’Connor, “Come together: Forging publics in Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art,” Art & The Public Sphere, Vol 1.2 (2011): 139-157. NOTES 31. Rancière, “Art of the Possible,” Artforum 45 (2007), 264.

1. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 2. Elizabeth Grierson and Kristen Sharp, eds., Re-Imagining the City: Art, globalisation and urban spaces (London: Intellect, 2013). 3. Carl DiSalvo, “Design and the Construction of Publics,” Design Issues 25 (2009): 48. 4. Mick Douglas, “Situating social contingency: mobility and socially engaged pubic art,” in Urban Interior: informational explorations, interventions and occupations, ed. Rochus Urban Hinkel (Germany: Spurbuchverlag, 2011), 48. 5. Suzie Attiwill, “Urban and Interior: techniques for an urban interiorist,” in Urban Interior: Informal explorations, interventions and occupations, ed. Rochus Urban Hinkel (Germany: Spurbuchverlag 2011), 27-44. 6. Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible (London: Continuum, 2006); Jacques Rancière, “Art of the Possible,” Artforum 45 (2007), 256-268. 7. Attiwill, “Urban and Interior: techniques for an urban interiorist,” 17. 8. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Malden: Blackwell, 1991).

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Agency In Appropriation: The informal territory of foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong Evelyn Kwok : University of Technology Sydney, Australia

ABSTRACT

Every Sunday, groups of Foreign Domestic Helpers (FDHs) collectively create informal territories within the urban fabric of Hong Kong’s Central Business District (CBD). FDHs are migrant workers living in Hong Kong who are legally bound to live in their employers’ homes. They work six days a week, and their duties and lifestyles are dictated by their employers, making them one of the most marginalised occupational groups in the city. Every Sunday – their day off – FDHs gather in public en masse to exercise freedom outside of their contractual confinement. In Hong Kong’s CBD these weekly assemblies of Filipino workers disrupt the city’s hegemonic spaces of financial capital. Various urban interior and exterior spaces – shop fronts, footpaths, elevated walkways and atriums – are appropriated and transformed with makeshift cardboard constructions. Hong Kong’s public-private zones are augmented into temporary domesticised places where the migrant workers socialise, rest, eat, groom, send packages, protest, dance and preach. At first glance, the FHDs’ occupation of public space may appear chaotically disordered, or an ‘ethnic spectacle’. Closer analysis reveals that this ritualised inhabitation has a unique ecology; it is a temporary but repeated socio-spatial system that produces a collective culture of solidarity, resistance and resourcefulness. Drawing upon ethnographic observations, interviews, photographs and spatial analysis, this paper explores the socio-political and cultural implications of this informal occupation. It demonstrates how FDHs are much more than docile subjects of domestic labour, rather, they are actors with agency, operating in an intermediate and mutable spatial zone, somewhere between the private and public sphere.

The first time I documented Foreign Domestic Helpers (FDHs) As I wandered into the former Central Market Arcade, most of in Hong Kong was in 2012. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was the shops were closed, with shutters down. The arcade – with a walking along the Central Elevated Walkway (CEW), a system closed row of shops on the right and a vacant gallery space on of elevated walkways that connects over twenty-four buildings the left – served as a pedestrian corridor, and a steady stream in the Central Business District (CBD). The CEW affords an of tourists and locals flowed through. My focus shifted from the alternative circulation to the urban density on the ground, as closed spaces to the people sitting in front of them, on the elevated conduits weave in, out and between buildings on a the floor. Groups of women were sitting on flattened cardboard suspended horizontal plane. The major destinations of the district boxes; eating, chatting and sleeping. They had small suitcases and can be conveniently experienced without setting foot on the bags placed within delineated spaces. Some groups had set up ground. their cardboard boxes upright, or used opened umbrellas to form Above Figure 1: Network of buildings connected by the Central Elevated Walkway. Original digital image: Evelyn Kwok and Blake Jurmann, 2015.

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barriers between themselves and the passing pedestrians. The open spaces for choreographed dancing and political rallies, and studies into the political implications of the formation of an economy progressed, domestic labour continued to be imported, women’s shoes were placed on the periphery of the cardboard Connaught Road Central transforms into a packing and loading informal territory from the perspective of spatial design and thus FDHs indirectly supported the local economy. Despite the mats, resembling the common Asian practice of removing shoes zone for ‘care packages’, typically postmarked for the Philippines. spatial analysis.5 Furthermore, the activation and exercise of sustained importance of their role, FDHs remain one of the most when entering a home. citizenship through the FDHs’ self-organised inhabitation of marginalised occupational groups in Hong Kong. Their identity, Very early on Sunday mornings, Little Manila emerges. Flattened public space is also yet to be theorised. status and occupancy in the domestic and public realm are Taking in the scene in front of me, it became evident that I was cardboard boxes are placed by FDHs in different parts of Central, continuously contested. standing within an informal FDH territory. As a Hong Kong-born symbolising their informal ownership. The cardboard boxes This paper is organised into three sections. The first provides Chinese-Australian living in Sydney, I had regular interactions are used by the FDHs to construct makeshift home bases for the context in which the FDHs operate, discussing the problems For example, their government-stipulated employment contract with FDHs during my childhood in Hong Kong. However, on this temporary inhabitation. Each group returns to the same space that are created by their employment contracts. From the necessitates that FDHs live in their employer’s home, yet it does particular Sunday, I was overwhelmed by the intensity of their every Sunday, and the gathering areas are informally grouped outset, FDHs are marginalised and controlled within contractual not require them to be provided a private bedroom. The contract collective occupation of public space. according to Filipino provinces and regions.2 Every Sunday, confinements. The denial of citizenship and spatial ownership reflects empathy towards the employer (appreciating the spatial Central is transformed by the construction and infiltration of positions them within what political philosopher Giorgio limitations of Hong Kong housing). The contract merely states A few moments later I reached the end of the arcade and Little Manila, producing a temporary but repeated socio-spatial Agamben calls a ‘state of exception’, where they are neither that the FDH be provided with ‘suitable accommodation with witnessed more FDHs occupying the next section of the CEW system of layered, overlapping spaces; an ethnic enclave, a site legitimate members of the community, nor transient foreigners.6 reasonable privacy’.8 It does not express concern for any lack that connects to the Hang Seng Bank . Here the of contention and a domestic territory. I argue that such fundamental inequalities produce a collective of privacy for the FDH that may result from these terms. The FDHs were also sitting on cardboard boxes, although they had motivation for the FDHs to assert their desire for freedom on allowance of spatial privacy as a negotiable term gives flexibility not constructed vertical dividers between their space and the During field trips between 2012 and 2015, I spent numerous their day off by appropriating and transforming public spaces in to the employer, and the FDH’s privacy becomes a slippery and pedestrians. The width of the walkway was narrower than the Sundays in Central observing the spatial operations and Central. vague concept. As a result, the FDHs become passive subjects arcade and I followed the pedestrians in front of me in single experiencing the social world of Little Manila. I first spoke with of labour within the spatial and power hierarchy of the domestic file, moving awkwardly through and between groups of seated a FDH who works for a relative. In turn, she introduced me to Using ethnographic data, the second section of this paper explores interior. women, who seemed to be intensely focused on each other, her group of friends, and from there, the network of interviewees the FDHs’ ritualised weekly inhabitation of space in Central. conversing in Tagalog. It was an uncomfortable experience expanded.3 FDHs are often wrongly perceived from the outside Drawing upon this, the final section of the paper analyses the In many cases, the FDH’s sleeping arrangement takes the form because it felt as though I was trespassing through the private as helpless migrant women. In interviews, many of these women socio-political and cultural implications of these practices. Such of a mattress on the floor, in the child’s bedroom.9 The FDH’s spaces of an exclusive FDH community. acknowledged the hardship of living and working in a foreign spatial occupations demonstrate the FDHs’ agency and agility, separation from ‘work’ is limited to time spent in the bathroom country, but they did not want to be cast as ‘victims’. They shifting them beyond the stereotype of domestic labourers and spatially bound to the mattress they sleep upon. Their Later on I spoke in Cantonese to Hong Kong locals about this emphasised their solidarity as a community, and they do not shy as ‘docile migrants’. Their actions in public are, to some extent, belongings are in suitcases that remain hidden from sight for Sunday phenomenon. The locals mostly expressed their frustration away from objecting to exploitative situations. empowering, and their community thrives within this mutable the majority of their stay. For six days each week, FDHs are at how congested, dirty or noisy Central becomes due to the spatial zone, somewhere between the private and public sphere. ‘spaceless’ subjects that only exist within the domestic tasks they overwhelming number of FDHs. By contrast, when I spoke to As a spatial design analyst, my main concerns are with the complete and ongoing duties. Their occupancy in the domestic Filipino FDHs, they affectionately dubbed their gatherings in methods by which FDHs appropriate public space, augmenting A MATTER OF CITIZENSHIP, SPACE AND interior is constant yet transitory. Consequently, on Sunday they Central as ‘Little Manila’. In other words, it was home. space into domesticised places, thus producing a collective culture. LABOUR are motivated to emerge from the interior to enact a particular Specifically, I am interested in understanding how their agency as kind of domestic freedom. This form of freedom is exercised Of the approximately 300,000 FDHs that live in Hong Kong, a marginalised contingent is exercised within systematic spatial The majority of FDHs in Hong Kong are Southeast Asian women collectively outside their contractual confinement, and it resists the majority come from the Philippines and Indonesia.1 On operations. While there are many insightful studies of migrant who are employed by Hong Kong families of average to high accepted norms of social behaviour in public space. Sunday, Central is dominated by Filipino FDHs, while Indonesian domestic labour and informal occupation of urban spaces, the incomes. Such women enter the city under two-year FDH Visas, FDHs gather in Causeway Bay. In Central, a variety of urban socio-spatial complexities of the FDHs’ ritualised inhabitations in which stipulate a live-in requirement, a minimum allowable In March 2013 the Hong Kong High Court delivered a final ruling interior and exterior spaces offer a range of goods and services Central is presently under-researched.4 While some discussion wage and one rest day each week.7 FDHs are responsible for that denied a Filipino FDH eligibility to apply for Hong Kong to the Filipino community. The store World Wide House has occurred about the FDHs’ public activities, most studies all domestic duties, including care for children and the elderly. citizenship, despite having lived in the region for seventeen years. provides Filipino food and magazines, while World Wide Lane focus on cultural geography, the politics of representation and This labour pattern began in the 1970s, with a steady stream This was a landmark case: according to Hong Kong immigration sells international phone cards. Central’s Chater Road provides paradigms of power. There is a lack, however, of developed of temporary migrants from the Philippines. As Hong Kong’s laws, any foreign person who has lived in Hong Kong continuously

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for over seven years is eligible to apply for permanent residency.10 This denial of eligibility has direct impact on the FDHs; it contradicts the permanency of their role and their deeply entrenched presence in Hong Kong society.

The majority of FDHs I interviewed had been living in Hong Kong for over six years, and were on their third or fourth visa. The 2013 court ruling was not only a rejection of the FDHs’ possibility of permanent residency, it was also a symbolic refusal of their personhood, delegitimising their integration into the socio-political and cultural fabric of Hong Kong. It renders them permanently ‘spaceless’, indeterminate residents trapped within other people’s domestic interiors. It also places them within a state of exception, separating them from other foreigners living in Hong Kong, reflecting a degree of socio-economic prejudice and xenophobia.

In The State of Exception, Agamben describes the concept of indeterminacy as being neither external nor internal to the legal order. He notes that it concerns a threshold or a ‘zone of indifference’ where the internal and external do not exclude each other but rather blur together.11 The FDHs reside within this abstract ‘zone of indifference’ where they are not isolated from society but are an exception to the norm. They are admitted into the intimate, domestic, private sphere of Augé describes as ‘non-space’, as they produce nothing, merely and fears about tarnishing the prestigious reputation of the Hong Kong (communicating only in English or Cantonese) but will never be accepted as legitimate acting as spaces of passage and consumption.15 No other group financial district. These comments reflect a degree of prejudice community members. They do not receive welfare benefits from the Hong Kong government, nor in Hong Kong inhabits these spaces in such a dedicated and and point to the socio-cultural tensions that underlie the do they contribute in taxes.12 These conditions place them in a precarious position. collective fashion. Every Sunday, the FDHs peacefully resist the weekly event, marking Central as a site of contention. Through laws and norms of public behaviour to cultivate a unique ecology conversations with FDHs, however, I have come to discover Significantly, the FDHs’ weekly assemblies in public space are tolerated by Hong Kong’slaw- within a society that excludes them. that Central is more than a contested site. It has become a and-order authorities. In other words, the police turn a blind eye on Sundays. According to the temporary domesticated ‘home’ that produces its own culture Hong Kong Public Order Ordinance, any groups that consist of fifty or more members must gain CONTENTION AND NEGOTIATION: LITTLE for Filipino FDHs. permission from the local police station to assemble in public space.13 From my observations and interviews conducted with various FDHs, policemen and security guards in Central, no assembly MANILA The conception of home constantly evolves across new social permit had been sought nor granted, and figures of authority remain present but passive. On and cultural settings, particularly for migrants.16 Home can be Sundays, therefore, the state of exception in which FDHs operate extends from the domestic Fieldwork conducted in Hong Kong between 2012 and 2015 an expression of identity, of personalities, and the bedrock of interior into the public exterior. As they collectively occupy public spaces on Sunday, FDHs resulted in a collection of photographs, interview transcripts, cultural integrity and citizenship.17 For six days each week, clearly appropriate and boldly augment the spaces – without official permission – into exclusive, sketches and spatial analysis. Together, these sources demonstrate home becomes an abstract concept that is rarely realised for albeit provisional, territories. Unlike buskers and other transitory urban occupants, FDHs exert how these acts of informal occupation are not simply of a repeated FDHs. Every Sunday, these compressed freedoms, personalities temporary ownership over these public spaces. ‘ethnic spectacle’, rather, they are acts that express freedom and and needs are released, expanded and performed outside the assert a sense of citizenship in a site of contention and flux. domestic interior in full vigour. The typologies of public space occupied by FDHs can also be paralleled with Agamben’s state of exception, as they are intermediate, suspended zones between the interior and exterior: ‘[T]he state At first glance, Central (or Little Manila), might appear a I will now move to describe and analyse the makeup of this of exception represents the inclusion and capture of a space that is neither outside nor inside (the predictable site of resistance, where each week migrant Sunday ‘home’, by focusing on the different programs that are space that corresponds to the annulled and suspended form).’14 Underpasses, elevated walkways, labourers express themselves outside of their helper status and facilitated by specific urban interior and exterior spaces in pedestrian tunnels and disused arcades are neither open streets nor regularly inhabitable interiors; disrupt the established spatial order. My interviews indicate Central. The spatial network reveals the complexity of a public rather, they are conduits or pit-stops that are activated only by frequent, yet transient flows from that Hong Kong citizens tend to perceive the weekly gatherings domestic realm, and beyond that, an informal territory of an one place to another. They are also examples of liminal urban spaces, or what anthropologist Marc as disruptive. Some voiced concerns about a lack of cleanliness, otherwise precarious labour force. Above Figure 2: Map of key sites of Little Manila. Original digital image: Evelyn Kwok and Blake Jurmann, 2015.

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SITE ONE: WORLD WIDE HOUSE On the corner of World Wide Lane and Des Voeux Road SITE THREE: CONNAUGHT ROAD CENTRAL Central, a Filipino telecommunication shop holds karaoke World Wide Plaza is a corporate building located on Connaught competitions at its shop front. The event is hosted by a Every Sunday, approximately thirty metres of Connaught Road Central is cut off from traffic, Road Central. Situated within the first three levels of the charming Filipino man who addresses the crowd in Tagalog and becoming a loading zone for ‘care packages’, bound for the Philippines. For most of the day, the building is the World Wide House, which has an entrance on English, attracting a sizeable audience of Filipino women (and surrounding pedestrian footpath is occupied by groups of Filipino FDHs, organising large parcels. the second level connected to the CEW. The retailers within tourists). The audience gathers in front of the store, extending These are filled with toothpaste, shampoo, washing powder and sometimes clothing. Jeanette, the mall are mostly Filipino vendors, selling Filipino food and onto the footpath and into the of World Wide House. a Filipino FDH in her late thirties, explained that many FDHs send personal care products back magazines, and providing banking and telecommunication This space is shared with an underground entrance to the home to ease their families’ expenses.19 Each month Jeanette uses the remainder of her wage services. Every Sunday, Filipino FDHs saturate the ground level, Central MTR station. after remittance to purchase items for her family. She stores them in her room until she has above-ground entrances and staircases in and around the enough items to fill a large parcel. Jeanette said that she feels fortunate about her work situation, building. Consequently, these interstitial spaces become a series On a Sunday in January 2015, security guards from the station as she has her own room in her employer’s house. Other FDHs, who do not have the space for of temporary waiting areas and meeting grounds. instructed the crowd to disperse and not inconvenience the MTR storage, will save their money until they can afford to buy the items in bulk, packing and sending passengers. Despite the repeated instructions over megaphones, the parcel on the same day. This sequence of events – purchasing, packing, sealing, writing address SITE TWO: WORLD WIDE LANE the crowd ignored the requests and continued to cheer at the labels and loading – can take an entire day, starting early in the morning. Pedestrians accessing the karaoke performances. One FDH said that if the security guards Central MTR station, the CEW and surrounding shopping complexes negotiate their way through Next to World Wide House is World Wide Lane, a narrow wished to evacuate them from the area, they would have to shut this small section of Connaught Road Central, which becomes a seemingly chaotic Filipino postal pedestrian laneway. Every Sunday this lane acts as an extension the shop or get the police involved. She added that they would exchange every Sunday. to the meeting and waiting grounds of World Wide House. It merely continue their actions elsewhere. Amid the applause, she houses a Filipino fast food store and a convenience store with said, ‘This is karaoke. It is loud and fun. Today is Sunday. This is long queues stretching out onto the footpath. also our space today.’ 18

Opposite Figure 3: Filipino FDHs transform the pedestrian underpass on Connaught Road Central into their exclusive postal exchange on a Sunday. Photograph: Evelyn Kwok, 2015.

Above Figure 4: The surrounding pedestrian footpath of Connaught Road Central becomes a temporary storage area for the informal postal exchange on a Sunday. Photograph: Evelyn Kwok, 2015. 110 111

SITE FOUR: CENTRAL ELEVATED WALKWAYS (CEW) Every Sunday, hundreds of temporary cardboard units appear on the CEW, resembling a village of odd public-private spaces. In some cases, these units occupy both sides of the walkway, shifting The first conduit of the CEW was built between the Mandarin Oriental and the second pedestrian thoroughfare to the middle. Within these makeshift units, FDHs gather to eat, chat, level of a shopping complex within the Prince’s Building in 1965. It was designed as a pedestrian sleep, groom and engage in regular domestic activities as they otherwise would have within the connection between the two buildings but consequently affected the rent value of the retail spaces comfort of their own private homes, if their homes were independent from their employers’. within. In direct contrast to the usual conventions of retail rental, suddenly the value of the mall’s second level units was more than those on the ground level. This opened a new logic of real estate value, but more significantly, it sparked a phenomenon that shifted the way people moved around the city. Over the last four decades many commercial buildings in Central (and beyond) were designed to include an air-space connection. Entrances and exits of buildings began to proliferate above the ground floor, hence creating a labyrinthine network of elevated walkways between buildings, which allowed pedestrian flow via many apertures simultaneously.

Cardboard boxes are the main materials used for the construction of the units. The majority of them are erected on sections of the CEW in front of and surrounding Exchange Square, IFC Mall, Hang Seng Bank headquarters, Harbour Building and Central Pier. Some of the units are elaborately constructed, with entrances, floors, walls and even roofs, protecting the occupants from external weather and pedestrian traffic. The cardboard floors and walls are reinforced with packing tape and cable ties, while string or rope is used to reinforce vertical rigidity of the walls by connecting the edges of the cardboard to balustrades on the elevated walkways. Plastic sheets are draped over and hover above the interior of some of the units, and umbrellas reinforce the roofs on rainy days. These temporary domestic spaces vary in scale; some accommodate groups of four to five, while others can be occupied by up to twenty people.

The construction of temporary cardboard units is not exclusive to the CEW. They proliferate in surrounding public spaces in Central, such as the pedestrian footpaths near the General Post Office, the pedestrian tunnel connected to Chater Road and the ground floor atrium of the HSBC building. In order to obtain disused cardboard, FDHs in Central participate in an that has emerged as a result of their informal occupation. They purchase cardboard Opposite Figure 5: The village of temporary cardboard units that appears on the CEW at Exchange Square on a Sunday. Photograph: Evelyn Kwok, 2013.

Above Figures 6 and 7: Cardboard units located on the CEW varying in sizes and construction techniques. Photograph: Evelyn Kwok, 2013. IDEA JOURNAL 2015 URBAN + INTERIOR 112 113

the lowest socio-economic sectors of Hong Kong. This weekly informal economy embodies a striking reversal of supply and demand between Hong Kong and the FDHs.

Although the temporary domestic territory is situated within the urban chaos of Central, it provides a sense of comfort and refuge from the FDHs’ weekly labour routine. In these public-private zones, they have the freedom to speak their own language, to share experiences and enjoy food reminiscent of home. Above all, the FDHs can regain a sense of privacy, control and autonomy over their bodies and domestic space, albeit for one day each week. Lisa Law, a geographer whose pieces from a couple of enterprising Hong Kong locals, who deliver cardboard boxes to designated research draws on postcolonial and feminist theory, suggests ‘Little Manila is where domestic areas every Sunday. These illegal distributors have knowledge of each group’s regular spaces and workers recover from more subtle forms of sensory reculturation that occur in Chinese homes, how many cardboard pieces are required. Each piece of cardboard is charged at HKD$2. The and in the process they create new ways of engaging with city life. It is also a place where Filipino cardboard is delivered early in the morning, when payment is exchanged. The distributors return women express a creative subjective capacity with the potential to displace hegemonic images that in the evening to pick up the cardboard pieces again. The cardboard boxes once transported describe their lives and work – if only for a week.’20 Every Sunday, the urban interior and exterior commercial goods to the retailers in Central. Discarded from the formal economy, such boxes spaces of Central are augmented into temporary domesticised places where the FDHs can obtain are reincarnated as commodity to be consumed. In turn, the boxes engender privacy for one of a sense of belonging. Opposite Figure 8: Cardboard collectors retrieving cardboard on Chater Road as FDHs disperse on a Sunday evening. Photograph: Evelyn Kwok, 2015.

Above Figure 9: Umbrellas used as dividers between the FDHs and the pedestrians in the former Central Market Arcade (part of the CEW) on a Sunday. IDEA JOURNAL 2015 URBAN + INTERIOR Photograph: Evelyn Kwok, 2015 114 115

AGENCY IN APPROPRIATED SPACES In effect, the FDHs in Hong Kong are endlessly pursuing their right to the city. They are struggling for their right on two fronts: a right to the city through spatial residency, and a right to social The process of labour migration is often not a smooth transition for migrant domestic workers. inclusion. Every Sunday, the Filipino FDHs materialise their struggle through the creative acts of Sociologist Rhacel Salazar Parrenas describes the four key dislocations that Filipino migrant appropriation and transformation of public spaces in Central. In doing so, they are repeatedly domestic workers face in global migration: partial citizenship, contradictory class mobility, the generating a collective agency to resist and rupture hegemony. pain of family separation and non-belonging.21 Cultural theorist Stuart Hall describes dislocations, or ‘narratives of displacement’, as the conjunctures or specific positionings of subjects in social Collective agency is also evident through public acts of political activism, in the form of political processes.22 Parrenas identifies the four dislocations experienced by Filipino migrant domestic rallies and protests, which take over Chater Road in Central (Figure 2). Chater Road is a street labourers through the analysis of migratory processes, the social settings for the subjection of that houses numerous flagship stores of high-end international fashion designers. When the road individuals and the structural formation of migrant domestic labour within globalisation.23 is closed to vehicular traffic every Sunday, it becomes the designated site for FDHs’ political demonstrations. A variety of protests take place, motivated by incidents of violation or injustice, 31 As we have seen, FDHs in Hong Kong dwell in a precarious spatial situation. Sociocultural such as the aforementioned court ruling, which saw over 10,000 people gather on Chater Road. anthropologist Nicole Constable focuses on the commodification of intimacy, gender and reproductive labour. In Maid to Order in Hong Kong, she claims that the migrant workers participate in their own oppression by disciplining themselves to secure their employment contract.24 Self-discipline involves changes made to their appearance and their behaviour. These changes include: wearing plain clothing, cutting their hair short, wearing no make-up, emphasising their subordinate status by addressing family members as ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ and obligingly responding to all requests.25 This is not the circumstance for all FDHs, as some employers formalise rules that the FDH must comply with.

I interviewed Christine, a FDH in her early thirties. She recalled a list that was given to her when she met her employer five years ago.26 It included a detailed description of how she should speak, dress and act, and it even dictated the allowable time spent in the bathroom. Her employer became more relaxed as Christine settled in, however she continues to comply with the rules. Reflecting on the interviews conducted with FDHs during my fieldwork, it is apparent that through various gestures, big or small, FDHs want to portray themselves as ‘good workers’ and unwittingly allow themselves to be subordinated by their employers. FDHs are therefore vulnerable, and, according to Constable, they become ‘disciplined migrants, docile workers’.27

Embedded with global dislocations and localised oppression, FDHs assert themselves repeatedly, en masse, into the urban landscape of Hong Kong. They continue to struggle for their ‘right to the city’, recalling Henri Lefebvre’s polemical 1967 text.28 This right – he asserted – was both a cry from the withering crisis of everyday life in the city and a demand for the recognition of this crisis and the urgent need for alternative urban engagement that is less alienated and more meaningful.29 This of course, as Lefebvre himself knew, was a perpetual pursuit of unknown encounters. Geographer David Harvey discusses the right to the city within contemporary contexts of urbanisation, claiming that such a ‘right’ no longer exists. The right to the city is an empty signifier with contingent meanings – appropriated both by the wealthy and powerful, as well as the homeless and ‘san-papiers’.30 Above Figure 10: Chater Road transforms as hundreds of FDHs gather to participate in choreographed dancing as part of the ‘One Billion Rising’ campaign on a Sunday in 2015. Photograph: Evelyn Kwok, 2015.

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CONCLUSION inhabitations of public space, Hong Kong incorporates a curious helpers.html (accessed January 4, 2015). Smith (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1991). flexibility in its urban regulations. It shows how elasticity may be 8. HKSAR Immigration Department, Employment Contract for Foreign 30. David Harvey, Rebel Cities (New York: Verso, 2012), 15. Domestic Helpers Recruited from Outside Hong Kong 31. Smaller yet consistent rallies and campaigns continue to take place, embedded into the governance of public spaces, whereby the , http://www.immd.gov.hk/ What can we learn from the FDHs’ temporary transformation of eng/forms/forms/id407.html (accessed March 2, 2015). protesting against sustained problems such as the unrestricted working hours, public space? Through creative appropriation and transformation system allows for multiple communities to co-exist – albeit in 9. Renate Wohrer, “No Room of One’s Own,” in Exchange Square, ed. the two-week rule and illegal agency fees. HKSAR Labour Department, Practical of interstitial urban interior and exterior spaces, this marginalised tension – without breaking.32 This ecological description of the Moira Zoitl (Berlin: Jovis Verlag, 2008), 50-57. Guide for Employment of Foreign Domestic Helpers, http://www.labour.gov.hk/eng/ contingent has generated new spaces that transgress the formal city proposes an alternative relationship to citizenship in the 10. This legislation did not explicitly include or exclude FDHs, however public/wcp/FDHguide.pdf (accessed August 18, 2014). 32. Sam Spurr and Evelyn Kwok, "Skywalking in Hong Kong: Disrupting and commercial boundaries of the city. Using their bodies and public realm. Instead of reading the city as a singular system that since being contested in 2013, it has been amended to exclude any foreign persons living in Hong Kong under the FDH Visa. flows in the consumerist wonderland," Lusofona Journal of Architecture and propels development and economic growth, an elastic, agile vernacular resources (such as society’s ‘wastage’ cardboard), 11. Agamben, State of Exception, 23. Education [Online], 0.8-9 (2013): 387-406, http://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/ these temporary transformations of public space demonstrate a and transformational ecology has evolved, with the capacity to 12. In 2003, the Employee Retraining Levy was introduced where revlae/article/view/4244/2896 subtle yet specific form of agency in the public realm. Beyond the incorporate communities of difference in the multi-temporal and approximately $9600 HKD was paid to the government by the employer for circumstantial oppressions that are practised in the homes of the multi-spatial contemporary city. every two-year FDH Visa applied for. This levy resulted in many employers employers, FDHs, as a collective, exist beyond the stereotype of taking portions out of the FDH’s wages to contribute to the levy. This levy was suspended in 2008 and permanently removed in 2013. HKSAR Immigration docile subjects of domestic labour. Every Sunday Little Manila acts NOTES Department, Employment of Foreign Domestic Helpers, http://www.immd.gov.hk/ as circuit-break in Central’s dedicated program of consumption, eng/services/visas/foreign_domestic_helpers.html (accessed January 6, 2015). which, while temporarily disruptive, does not destroy the 1. As of September 30, 2013, there are 319,325 Foreign Domestic 13. HKSAR Department of Justice, Public Order Ordinance, Chapter mechanism of economic flows. Helpers in Hong Kong. Amnesty International, Exploited For Profit, Failed By 245, http://www.legislation.gov.hk/blis_pdf.nsf/4f0db701c6c25d4a4825755c00 Governments: Indonesian Migrant Domestic Workers Trafficked to Hong ,Kong 352e35/14B03C325D4C1827482575EE0052311E/$FILE/CAP_245_e_b5.pdf 2013, 7. Website: http://www.amnesty.org/fr/library/asset/ASA17/029/2013/en/ (accessed January 7, 2015). While this paper discusses the specific agency of Filipino FDHs d35a06be-7cd9-48a1-8ae1-49346c62ebd8/asa170292013en.pdf (accessed June 14. Agamben, State of Exception, 35. in Hong Kong, it is worth noting that FDHs of other ethnic 28, 2014). 15. Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of backgrounds are also appearing in Hong Kong’s public spaces, 2. Jasmine Susanna Tillu, “Spatial Empowerment: the appropriation of Supermodernity, trans. John Howe (London: Verso, 1995). exercising their freedom in creative ways. In Causeway Bay, public spaces by Filipina domestic helpers in Hong Kong,” (masters thesis, MIT, 16. Liz Kenyon, “A home from home: student’s transitional experience Ideal Homes? Social Change and Domestic Life Indonesian FDHs are pushing the boundaries of public and 2011). of home,” in , ed. Tony Chapman & 3. University of Technology Sydney, ethics approval #HREC 2013000252. Jenny Hockey (New York: Routledge, 1999) 84-95. commercial space. Large roundabouts, underpasses and even the 4. Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, Servants of Globalisation (Stanford: Stanford 17. Ibid., 84. staged domestic interiors of Swedish furniture showroom IKEA University Press, 2001); Nicole Constable, Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories 18. Andrea (requested the exclusion of her surname), interview by are being creatively appropriated. of Migrant Workers (New York: Cornell University Press, 2007); Ligaya Lindio- author, Hong Kong, February 1, 2015. McGovern, Globalization, Labour Export and Resistance: A Study of Filipina 19. Jeanette (requested the exclusion of her surname), interview by Migrant Domestic Workers in Global Cities What is unique about the Filipino FDHs’ agency is the creative (London: Routledge, 2011); Jeff Hou, author, Hong Kong, February 8, 2015. Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities 20. Law, “Home Cooking: Filipino women and geographies of the senses adaptation of public space, which forms a socio-spatial ecology. (New York: Routledge, 2010); Jeff Hou, Transcultural Cities: Border-Crossing and in Hong Kong,” 266. What might first appear an odd assortment of spaces, objects and Placemaking (London: Routledge, 2013); Ron Shiffman et al., Beyond Zuccotti Park: 21. Parrenas, Servants of Globalisation, 23. activities in the urban interiority of Central is in fact a systematic Freedom of Assembly and the Occupation of Public Space (California: New Village 22. Stuart Hall, “Ethnicity: Identity and Difference,” in Radical America 23, construction of informal domesticised spaces, routinised activities, Press, 2012). no.4 (1992): 9-20. organised settlements and an informal economy. As such, these 5. Lisa Law, “Home Cooking: Filipino women and geographies of the 23. The commodification of reproductive labour is a global phenomenon that senses in Hong Kong,” Cultural Geographies, no.8 (2001): 264-283; Galvin Chia, extends beyond the situation of FDHs in Hong Kong. It involves an interdisciplinary temporary spaces are fundamentally a political phenomenon and “Focusing the Familiar? Locating the Foreign Domestic Worker in Postcolonial examination of sociology, economics and gender studies that is beyond the scope of an exercise of citizenship that produces a collective culture of Hong Kong Discourse,” Cross-sections: The Bruce Hall Academic Journal VIII (2012): this paper. solidarity and resistance. The existence of the informal territory 1-18; Janet Ng, Paradigm City: Space, Culture and Capitalism in Hong Kong (New 24. Constable, Maid to Order in Hong Kong, 15-17. in Central is reflective of, and part of, the cultural politics of York: State University of New York Press, 2009). 25. Ibid., 181-198. global labour migration and socio-spatial inequality. This example 6. Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago 26. Christine (requested the exclusion of her surname), interview by Press, 2005), 23. author, Hong Kong, February 1, 2015. also demonstrates the capacity of Filipino FDHs to dwell within 7. The minimum allowable wage of FDHs is HKD$4050 (approximately 27. Constable, Maid to Order in Hong Kong, 15-17. a mutable spatial zone, somewhere between the private and USD$510) each month. HKSAR Immigration Department, Employment of Foreign 28. Henri Lefebvre, Le Droit à la Ville, 2nd ed. (Paris: Anthropos, 1968). public sphere. By spatially and legally tolerating these ritualised Domestic Helpers, http://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/services/visas/foreign_domestic_ 29. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-

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to be in a phase of transition, characterised by large movements of people between continents and economic crises struggling to be resolved. Nevertheless, we recognise some human constants remain unchanged and, since the time of the ancient Greeks, resonate in and around us. So now, Reloading Spaces: How design makes urban spaces as then, the relationship with a friend or a place remains central in our sphere of values, also – and more liveable perhaps even more – in the challenges of the current economic state: Family bonds, the sentimental ones, those with the neighbourhood, the district, with the Barbara Camocini, Daniela Petrillo and Agnese Rebaglio : territory, they seemed to have disappeared, remaining in the background of a society that in recent decades seemed to liquefy (...) and now re-emerge as major players. In this sense Politecnico di Milano, Italy we are now beyond the liquid modernity.’ 1

ABSTRACT This renewed bond with the territory where you live, where you are ‘at home’, seems to emerge from the multiple forms of re-appropriation of urban space implemented by its inhabitants.2 Design has been often used as a key-lever in the transformation of urban places to respond to the arising needs of the contemporary society. Our cities see the growing demand for places where people can cultivate a sense of wellbeing, share their daily life and get closer to other inhabitants. This paper focuses on the challenging task of This process provides a new agenda for institutions and politicians, raising the question of re-lived designing new scenarios to reactivate urban spaces and abandoned or underutilised interiors, on the ground level and re-semantised spaces in our cities. Spaces and significant urban places, which have sometimes of the city, in some difficult contexts. Urban interior design could help to create welcoming public places where the become privatised, are occupied through dissent and re-invented into public spaces. Places of the ethnically diverse neighbourhood, the co-existence of a progressively ageing population together with young families, urban landscape that were sadly closed or underused are re-activated by different ideas – such the mix of council housing and private ownership, could be a value. This paper introduces the neighbourhood as the common good, the importance of sustainable living in cities, the principle of social justice. of San Siro, where the final design studio lab experience of the Bachelor of Science in Interior Design, School of These are critical responses to the processes of unbridled globalisation and address the need to Design, Politecnico di Milano, Reloading Spaces took place. Design lab projects were aimed at the activation of make all living spaces accessible. dynamic redevelopment and revitalisation of the neighbourhood through strategies for the re-appropriation of the urban spaces that bond different environments in order to communicate and strengthen a common identity of the neighbourhood. The ultimate goal of the design lab projects was to imagine possible scenarios that could become Interior urban design includes new instances and adopted tools, methods and processes – of innovative trends, starting with an enquiry into people, their behaviour and their contemporary needs. which fewer and fewer seem to belong to the discipline of architecture; while some are historically established they are increasingly influenced and affected by related and varied disciplinary practices. The boundaries between the process of design and the project will fade due to the activation of participatory and inclusive paths in which the community becomes the main stakeholder. Design practice will be more and more integrated with artistic practices and reflections carried out by social disciplines that are anthropological and geographical in nature. Common areas, collectives, FROM HABITABLE TO LIVEABLE URBAN INTERIORS micro-worlds and courtyards are sought and re-activated as urban interiors. Spaces are immediately and temporarily changed, so that people can ‘be’ and ‘do’ together. The ancient Greeks had a custom that involved giving a fragment of pottery or a coin to a departing friend as a symbol so that, upon their return, they could be identified through a process of matching At the macro level, many authors describe the development of the city through the expansion of the fragment with the corresponding object that had been preserved in its original place. The its margins and a reduction of its density, highlighting new modes of relations between town and token served, therefore, to ‘recognise’ the friend; a process of identification and recognition that is country as well as the emergence of new forms of inequality and difficulties of cohabitation.3 At based not on personal features but on a symbol of the friend’s being and, ultimately, of ourselves. the microscopic level, these phenomena leave their mark on urban living space that has suffered processes of divestment of productive places, privatisation of public spaces, diffusion of small There was a time when the ‘great stories’ (meta-narratives) of the past ended and we were residual spaces. The re-appropriation of these spaces and the establishment of new connections immersed in a post-modern era that was networked and liquid, where horizons seemed to be only reveal inherent values in these spaces, not only functional but an urban sociality manifested through global and the forces of time, image and immateriality were predominant. Yet we still, now, seem the awakening of a collective creativity and a new demand for wellbeing and happiness.

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For some years now, we have seen how ‘wellbeing’ has been collective dimension of wellbeing) has been established. Further, In 2007, Cronache dell’abitare (translated by the authors as and regenerative interventions in critical neighbourhoods for researched and measured ‘subjectively’ by quantifying the some institutions have been working on the measurement of Chronicles of Living), an extensive study about the state of dwelling whom the concept of ‘periphery’ is not strictly linked to the perceived wellbeing of people. In 2007, the European Union additional significant and innovative data: that of happiness.10 The in the city of Milan led by the research group Multiplicity,14 physical distance from the city centre, but concerns the elements launched the initiative Beyond GDP (Gross Domestic Product)4 OECD in particular measures life satisfaction, which depicts how described the ‘condition of difficult living’ characterised by the of exclusion and the unequal distribution of resources, services and to develop indicators that are as clear as the existing GDP but people evaluate their life as a whole rather than their current concurrence of three main conditions. The first one is a lack of opportunities. Thanks to a joint effort between the government more inclusive of environmental and social aspects of progress. feelings. But it also refers to ‘happiness’, or subjective wellbeing, integration between locals and foreigners from disadvantaged and local stakeholders, beyond the aim of improving the physical Economic indicators such as GDP were never designed to be which is measured by the presence of positive experiences areas, many of whom are from non-European seaward and tangible places of everyday life, there are several supporting comprehensive measures of prosperity and wellbeing. In addition and feelings such as enjoyment, feeling well-rested, smiling Mediterranean countries. Indeed it involves people who have actions and social cohesion initiatives. The main tool that connects to the more traditional indicators of GDP, the concept of the or laughing, and/or the absence of negative experiences and a long tradition of immigration to Italy and become part of a the department and residents is the Centre for Social Activities, measurement of wellbeing was developed. Wellbeing indicators feelings such as pain, worry or sadness. Among other initiatives network of informal protection when they arrive. This is the which mainly consists of a group of educators who support and are used to broadly illustrate people’s general satisfaction with life it is important to note the United Nations’ working program case of immigrants from Egypt, Morocco and the Philippines. promote empowerment in the neighbourhoods. Since 2002, the or to give a more nuanced picture of wellbeing in relation to their UN-Habitat, which aims to focus on the quality of cities: ‘Its There are also many groups of people that come to Italy ‘without city of Milan has adopted the Neighbourhood Contract II and it is jobs, family life, health conditions, and standards of living.5 Perhaps mission is to promote socially and environmentally sustainable a network’ who must integrate into their new community with currently active in five districts: Ponte Lambro, Molise-Calvairate, it is the economic crisis that makes additional measures of the new human settlements development and the achievement of their own poor resources. The second condition is the lack Mazzini, San Siro and Gratosoglio. GDP even more important and necessary. In 2009, the European adequate shelter for all.’11 of adequate housing that necessitates the coexistence between Commission of the Measurement of Economic Performance and vulnerable categories, such as recent non-EU immigrants, In the European context different experiments have been Social Progress presented its report to the French President, We observe, therefore, a new and growing attention to ‘soft’ and as well as students from other cities or elderly people. The conducted on similar urban situations that work through Nicolas Sarkozy.6 The Commission recommended broadening subjective values in the development of a framework of ‘living inaccessibility of the housing market necessarily leads them collaborative and participatory processes. Indeed the 12 the scope of traditional measures for economic performance to together’ within the urban environment in transformation. to choose home sharing. The house collects many different redevelopment of urban interiors as spaces that are able to pick include measures of quality of life, inequalities and wellbeing, as It is also interesting to note that specific proposed indicators individuals who have their own private requirements and yet, up the threads of relationships fosters the coexistence between well as better taking into account sustainability and environmental are always present: on the one hand, connections/relationships; due to their circumstances, not even the bed corresponds to diversities. One of the most interesting of these experiments is conditions. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and and on the other, the perceived quality of environment ‘matters the sole function of sleeping; instead, it plays a role in daily living. the one that involves the district of Peckham in South London. Development (OECD) has advocated the need to develop new intrinsically as many people attach importance to the beauty and The third condition concerns the lack in the quality and the The history of this area is marked by the presence of the North 13 measures of people’s wellbeing and societal progress and has the healthiness of the place they live.’ In this sense, we can maintenance of the built environment; this is not necessarily linked Peckham Estate,17 one of the largest complexes of social housing recently launched its Better Life Initiative.7 The general objectives say that an urban space in which to identify, in which to build to the previous two but is clearly related to the public building in London, which in the 1980s became one of the most deprived of the operation call for the identification of policies for improving relationships, which recognises an aesthetic quality – in short, that sector. This stems from the absence of building maintenance by residential areas in Western Europe. Vandalism, graffiti, arson attacks, the quality of the built environment: ‘The framework for regional is liveable and more habitable – has to be at the heart of political responsible institutions and has a relevant endemic character burglaries, robberies and muggings were commonplace, and the and local wellbeing starts with the consideration that making agendas, as well as the designer’s sensibility. because it produces and disseminates further degradation area became an archetypal London ‘sink estate’.18 Since the early better policies for better lives requires making where people around the inhabitants.15 Neglect of buildings weighs negatively 2000s, thanks to the innovative and visionary approach of Alistair live a better place.’ 8 Participating in the international debate on URBAN INTERIOR AND THE PARADIGM OF on interpersonal relations among the occupants, leading to Huggett at the Southwark Council, the Peckham Programme ‘overcoming the GDP’, Italy presented, in 2013, the first Report DIFFICULT LIVING weakened social bonds and conflicts. The coexistence of these was launched.19 In addition to the residential and services on Sustainable Wellness Fair (BES), a project coordinated by ISTAT three conditions creates the scenario of social exclusion and redevelopment – including, for example, the Peckham Library by (Italian National Statistical Institute) and CNEL (Italian National The challenges of liveability in urban places are more real when economic poverty, but especially that of cultural weakness that Will Alsop, who was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2000 – many Council of Economy and Labour). For the first time in Italy, the we observe a stress in the dynamics of social inequality and in prevents a clear interpretation of the system of causes and bottom-up actions have also taken place. The strength and value of National Statistical Institute has promoted a collection of data complicated cohabitation, where the goals of individual wellbeing effects. these phenomena are noteworthy, especially when they happen involving 134 indicators grouped into 12 domains that express an are far from being achieved and often are accompanied by a in those communities where the biggest problems are related to overall sense of wellbeing. 9 collective discomfort. In the Italian context, we refer in particular In order to counter these phenomena, since 1998 the Italian multi-ethnic coexistence and cultural integration. In the case of to the council housing estates, where there still exists an excessive Infrastructure andTransport National Department, in collaboration Peckham, in fact, the traditional London working-class community At the international level, the need to observe expectations concentration of occupants in difficult conditions and what we with the local , has supported the ‘Neighbourhood now coexists with other communities from Bangladesh, China, that are personal (but, at the same time, almost always refer to a could define as ‘difficult living’. Contract’ programs.16 These programs provide a series of actions , Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey and Vietnam. These communities

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have also experienced a steady gentrification of some of the areas Pocket Places Peckham Spaces. Temporary installations to simulate to the south of Peckham and this has meant that it was necessary the interventions proposed by the community have been created to create services and spaces able to represent the positive multi- and are accessible as a test phase aimed at realisation. It is also an cultural character of the neighbourhood through transformation. event in which people are involved in workshops and animations As well as the webzine Peckham Peculiar 20 and the creative and in order to emphasise the relationship between people and their educative charity Peckham Platform,21 there are other examples daily places. Sustrans has also recently launched several calls for of virtuous design projects. One of them is Peckham Co-Design 22 artists, designers and makers to build permanent interventions in involving the Southwark Council, who wanted to work with local some parts of the district. The most recent of these interventions, people to understand and realise their aspirations for sites around currently in development, is a series of ‘parklets’ by Not Tom25 Peckham. The initial co-design process was commissioned in 2014 outside the Peckhamplex Cinema in Moncrieff Place. to examine new visions for the area around Peckham Rye Station. The Co-Design Shop hosted meetings, discussions, exhibitions, Alongside these informal bottom-up activities, there are official workshops and editorials that were led by several creative interventions in public spaces. The latest involves two focal points teams in partnership with the people of Peckham. Throughout of the borough, the Peckham Rye Station Square led by Landolt the process, Peckham Co-Design has engaged writers, urbanists, + Brown Architects and the Peckham Library Square led by Carl horticulturalists, artists, filmmakers, poets, activists and visionaries. Turner Architects. What emerges from these experiences, and The group has grown thanks to a democratic and inclusive vision which will be described below with further study, concerns the where ‘anyone can become a co-designer because it means to concepts of ‘care’ and ‘beauty’. Regarding care, as our existence be passionate about Peckham and to choose to get involved in occurs in the world when we take care of things, things exist 23 when we are able to use them. This suggests our closeness shaping its future.’ The group is today engaged in many activities conditions through strategies of redevelopment and adaptive Both Reloading Spaces and Mapping San Siro were, and continue to things implies that they have to be reachable and ‘at hand’. that are shared and updated on an online platform. The most reuse. The design lab focused mainly on areas located on ground to be, part of the activities promoted by Polisocial, a program Space is not an abstract form, but it can be defined as the set of innovative aspect of this process is the tool ‘Atlas of Aspiration’, level of the neighbourhood San Siro in Milan, thus involving public launched in 2012 by the Politecnico di Milano in collaboration determinations of proximity or distance from things, based on their which is a set of thirty priorities defined through an online voting outdoor spaces, and abandoned or underutilised interiors on the with Politecnico di Milano Foundation, to foster the dynamics useability. ‘Beauty’ is an ingredient of wellbeing and of happiness. system on which the group intends to work in co-operation with first floors of buildings. of change in society and extend the university’s mission to The lack of beauty is, in fact, one of the most immediate ways of the Southwark Council. social issues and needs that arise from the city of Milan and the recognising poverty and deprivation.26 Beautiful development – An ultimate goal of the lab projects was to imagine possible surrounding territory. well designed, attractive and set in a well-designed landscape – is Pocket Places Peckham is simultaneously occurring within scenarios for the development of the neighbourhood, 24 easy to market and likely to perform better, in terms of demand this process. It is a brand-new project signed by Sustrans, a incorporating innovative trends and starting with an enquiry The neighbourhood of San Siro is located in the northwest part and in people’s readiness to look after and preserve it. Its value charity. The main goal of this two-year- into the people, their behaviour and contemporary needs. of the city of Milan. It was built between 1935 and 1947 in accord will continue to rise. Beauty is not a guarantee against decline and long project is to intervene in the high streets to make them Existing research by students in the Department of Architecture with the rationalist approach of some of the greatest Italian abandonment, but it is good policy. Pride in a place can democratic for people to travel via cars, two wheels or on foot. and Urban Studies titled Mapping San Siro29 provided detailed architects of the time, among them Franco Albini, Renato Camus motivate collective action to protect beautiful assets.27 The people of Peckham are invited to collaborate and innovate information on the architectural heritage of the concerned urban and Carlo De Carli. The entire neighbourhood was designed to to make unused space along Rye Lane live again. It is a process area and also an ethnographic study of its population. Further, achieve a high building density and this was at the expense of oriented to the discovery of ‘potential’ spaces through a series DESIGN STRATEGIES FOR RELOADING URBAN the Mapping San Siro team had already activated relations with green areas and public facilities.30 Today, still, the ratio between of actions that build a sense of awareness and belonging. The SPACES: A CASE STUDY the neighbourhood and with associations that support the local population and public facilities is not sufficient to ensure the moments of debate are spaced out through practical activities, citizens. This co-operation enabled students from the final design quality of life of the residents. The static linear buildings, three such as the Evening Pocket Tour, to visit the area during the night The final design lab (design studio) of the Bachelor of Science lab of the School of Design to start their project process with or four floors high, are interspersed with courtyards and are and discover its unusual aspects, or to plant seeds of new species in Interior Design, School of Design, Politecnico di Milano titled an ‘in-depth knowledge’ brought by the contribution of diverse distributed along a neatly orthogonal street system that of trees during the Seeding Days. The most important event that Reloading Spaces28 envisioned new scenarios to encourage the skills, among them the approach of traditional urban planning and determines the characteristic frame of the neighbourhood, now has a real impact on the main street, Rye Lane, is the festival reactivation of public urban spaces affected by difficult living architecture disciplines. known as ‘the quadrangle of San Siro’. Above Figure 1: Aerial view and some glimpses of the San Siro district. Photographs: Daniela Petrillo, 2015.

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The areas selected for the student projects included public urban sites, such as a system of existing ones; the design of urban interiors became a display of new needs of sociability, public two squares, a small street park and some highly visible abandoned retail spaces overlooking safety and a sustainable use of space. Finally, the proposed activities and scenarios within the the squares. The retail spaces are in public ownership and could be included in the public-space selected projects promoted skills training and the creation of new activities in the employment system, hosting indoor and outdoor interventions. Both the recently renovated system of streets field, which helped to attract external investment into the district. and the one affected by extreme critical social issues were also considered suitable project areas for temporary settings to enable residents to interact within and ‘reload’ urban space with new Several design strategies were proposed in order to pursue these goals. The design process began meaning. Schoolyards and the urban road system around the schools have a relevant value because with the identification of certain ‘actions’ – to celebrate, to take care, to make, to share – which they represent the first opportunity for migrant women to become members of the community could allow various aspects of community life to be evoked and introduce some interesting subject through their children. The courtyards, between one linear building and another, are fenced and areas as a basis for conceiving projects. A specific subject area was assigned to each of these protected semi-public spaces. They were already strategic within the original project of the 1930s ‘actions’: ‘to celebrate’ explored innovative forms of ‘cultural spaces’ in which the community could and today they represent the chance to create a community of neighbourliness and mutual support, meet; ‘to take care’ could offer a variety of fields of design from which we selected ‘welcome even if they are often the place of mistrust and contrast. Gatehouses are the focus of these and hospitality spaces’; ‘to make’ corresponds to the contemporary debate on the return to self- controversial relationships. Furthermore, some important abandoned buildings were proposed as production in its different forms, and involved the envisioning of innovative ‘workspaces’; and ‘to points of reactivation through the introduction of new or mixed functions. They stand out in the share’ addressed the thematic area of ‘food spaces’. neighbourhood, thanks to their architectural form and their importance in the local history. For example, the ex-ANPI was a headquarters of the National Association of Italian Partisans, while Students individually investigated their chosen thematic field in an effort to give a personal reading the former ONMI – Centre for Maternity and Childhood – was an important public service to through keywords and diagrams. They identified consumer trends and current behaviours in the citizens in the 1930s. cultural spaces, hospitality, workplaces and food spaces. Having identified the trends, the students tried to test them within the local situation on the basis of the knowledge acquired through The progressive ageing of the Italian population, the increasing presence of immigrants seeking scene investigations and contact with stakeholders. Then each student, individually, prepared ten A5 housing and individuals with mental health issues are the main demographic features of the San format ‘cards’, representing selected case studies to be played within the macro-thematic groups. Siro district. This plurality of issues has triggered and fuelled a widespread conflict that affects the The comparison of keywords and cards has allowed students to select and adopt their own lives of residents, feeds prejudices and thus leads to an increased sense of insecurity. Furthermore, specific scenario of intervention and then continue with the development of their project. The a series of physical, territorial and social elements outlines an image of marginality that, over time, scenarios that emerged in relation to each subject area were: has been linked to this area of the city. The partly decaying buildings, few remaining shops and the neglected public spaces have strengthened the perception of ‘social enclaves’. Alongside these ‘To celebrate’ marks a meaningful day or event, typically with a social gathering. The reason to critical issues, some elements of social dynamism are recognisable, including the active presence celebrate can be tied to religion, sports and entertainment, or just to a specific place to be of groups who support the residents, volunteer associations and social co-operatives. Despite honoured. It requires a narrative to share meanings and values and often includes a performance, a this, interaction and dialogue with the rest of the city is still essential to help activate latent socio- prayer, a dance or an artistic exercise. That is the reason we assumed that, in the design lab activity, territorial conditions and expand the horizon of action of the local community. This change in the action ‘to celebrate’ could refer, in a broader sense, to the category of ‘cultural spaces’. The perspective then allows for the transition of the identity of the neighbourhood from a ‘fenced’ and construction of ‘urban theme parks’ was one of the chosen approaches, with reference to music confined place to a more open and attractive one as a part of the big puzzle of the city. and sound – Symphonian Park – and another highlighted the new projects foreseen by the design lab – Admira – within the district. They produced entertainment facilities and lighting systems to The overall objective of the final design lab Reloading Spaces was to imagine strategies that could enhance and make accessible the urban areas. enable the processes of rehabilitation of space and revitalisation of the neighbourhood of San Siro. The projects, which include the design setting of ‘urban interiors’, such as temporary events and ‘To take care’ means ‘be cautious’ and ‘keep oneself safe and welcome’. ‘To take care’ can be community laboratories, were characterised by different specific objectives, some of which were addressed to categories of weak and vulnerable users, such as the elderly, children or new at times integrated with each other. Actions were aimed at encouraging citizens to take care of migrants. People in these categories often require the assistance of other citizens, and specific the urban environment in which they live, thus helping to create the awareness of belonging to dedicated spaces. This involves the construction of a community around them. Domestic Outdoors a community. The projects also provided innovative services to the community and suggested was a project that proposed to activate a new relationship between neighbours in the courtyards

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incorporating a market or urban vegetable garden. Indeed, nutrition is highly topical and thoroughly represented in the contemporary cultural debate thanks also to the great international event EXPO Milan 2015, Feeding the Planet. Energy for Life.

TRUST SAN SIRO

The design concepts of the final design lab worked to remedy some features of the difficult living in a city that aims to play a relevant role in the global context. EXPO fostered a wide process of urban regeneration throughout the whole city of Milan with the renewal of central districts, involving public transport improvements, new spaces for culture and , and an increasing demand for hospitality facilities. Nevertheless, some parts of it, some peripheries, demand specific and innovative tools of intervention.

The design of everyday living spaces, as urban interiors, becomes a central element for the located between one linear-shaped building and the other. Outdoor Wellness, creating settings for of the city. There, the social exchange leads to the recognition and to training, play and entertainment, was another important approach proposed by some students the construction of interpersonal relationships necessary to the individual and collective wellbeing. in order to provide new urban spaces geared towards elderly residents. The action ‘to take care’ For San Siro, the main aim was to ‘feed’ the urban interiors with projects able to reactivate the enabled us to investigate the design of spaces for ‘welcome and hospitality’ that sought innovative connections and relationships between the residents. These could provide services and places forms to support the reactivation of the district and contribute to the construction of its identity. to allow the sharing of positive experiences and to enhance the qualities of the environment, One scenario, the fragmented hostel project titled Drew Hostel, spread its services over different through bottom-up actions and ‘soft-qualities’ approaches. This approach cannot exclude some sites throughout the neighbourhood. other primary needs of the neighbourhood occupants such as housing, jobs and social inclusion. In these challenging contexts, discussing the design lab projects with occupants was a tricky but ‘To make’ introduced the contemporary debate on the fragmentation of production and processing significant phase. with the return to self-production and, thus, involved the creation of innovative interpretations of the ‘workspace’. Co-working spaces for collaborative and synergetic activities, as the concept of a hub of workers, allow users to test new development opportunities for the community. These spaces can promote the sharing of knowledge, the training in new skills and the opportunity to address the economic decay of a segment of the population in this district. Some students designed systems of urban laboratories for the creative activity of ‘making together’, sharing tools and equipped spaces, for sewing together – Atelab – or recycling work outdoors and indoors – Mislands.

‘To share’ signified the joint or alternating use of something – goods, a residence, etc. Indeed, the ‘sharing economy’ refers to economic and social systems that share access to goods, services, data and talent. The reference to categories of design related to co-working and co-housing can be traced in the previous sections ‘to make’ and ‘to take care’. ‘To share’ can invoke, instead, a broader meaning of conviviality and participation as expressed in ‘food spaces’. This sphere of action, in the district San Siro, was an effective lever to celebrate the identities of different cultures. This theme is currently strongly linked to the spread of the culture of nutrition with a growing attention to origin, seasonality and quality of food. Some students proposed food-focused projects – for example Mondopiatto, Food Urban Oasis, and The Shape of Taste – with a mixed-used restaurant Opposite left Above left Figure 2: Final design lab. Domestic Outdoors, 2015. Figure 4: Final design lab. Urban Living Room, 2014. Design: Yiyi Ren, Francesco Rossetti, Vanessa Sbravati, Fabrizio Scribano Design: Laura Bani, Giulia Begal, Gaia Cairo.

Opposite right Above right Figure 3: Final design lab. Mislands. An indoor and outdoor maker lab, 2015. Figure 5: Final design lab. Mondopiatto. A mixed-use restaurant, 2015. Design: Valentina Trentarossi, Simone Vecchi, Davide Vitali, Luca Zambelli Bais.. Design: Valentina Cerra, Chiara Corbani, Chiara Ferro, Camilla Panzeri. IDEA JOURNAL 2015 URBAN + INTERIOR 128 129

We wondered if our proposals were too ambitious. The projects have been presented and 13. OECD, “How’s Life? 2013: Measuring Well-being,” http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/ discussed in official public consultations promoted by the Municipality of Milan with the presence economics/how-s-life-2013_9789264201392-en#page1 (Accessed May 2015). 14. The group was based at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Urban Planning and Architecture and was led by of local stakeholders and residents. This showed us that the residents’ expectations were flowing in architect Stefano Boeri. the same direction as our wide perspective. Facing our humble showing of the students’ proposals, 15. George L. Kelling, James Q. Wilson, “Broken windows: the police and neighbourhood safety,” in The Atlantic, the participants’ assertive response was: ‘Why not here? Trust San Siro.’ March 1982, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ (Accessed December 2015). 16. Definition of “Contratto di quartiere” taken from the website of Italian Infrastructure and Transport Ministry NOTES http://www.mit.gov.it/mit/site.php?p=cm&o=vd&id=60 (Accessed December 2015). 17. The complex was demolished in 2000 after the murder of young Domilola Taylor. More about the story of the 1. Francesco Morace, Crescita felice. Percorsi di futuro civile [Happy growth. Path towards a civil future] (Milano: Egea, area and its community at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/1841755.stm 2015), 21. 18. A sink estate is a British council characterised by high levels of economic and social deprivation. 2. The phenomenon is widespread and well-known, although perhaps not sufficiently well-documented. A sort of The term is relatively new and came into usage in 1990s, probably coined by British journalists. catalogue was presented at the 13th International Venice Architecture Biennale (Fall 2012) in the U.S. Pavillion. It was titled 19. Peckham Programme News, http://www.southwark.gov.uk/news/200184/peckham_programme (Accessed Spontaneous Interventions and can be seen here: http://www.spontaneousinterventions.org/. ‘Spontaneous Interventions February 2015). frames an archive of compelling, actionable strategies, ranging from urban farms to guerilla bike lanes, temporary architecture 20. The Peckham Peculiar, http://peckhampeculiar.tumblr.com/ (Accessed February 2015). to poster campaigns, urban navigation apps to crowd-sourced city planning.’ (From the website). 21. Peckham Platform – connecting art, people and places, http://www.peckhamplatform.com/ (Accessed February 2015). 3. Edward Soja, “Regional Urbanization and the End of the Metropolis Era,” in The New Blackwell Companion to 22. Peckham Rye Co Design, http://peckhamcodesign.org/ (Accessed May 2015). the City, ed. Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). Edward Soja is the main reference for 23. Peckahm Codesign Manifesto, http://peckhamcodesign.org (Accessed May 2015). the American post-metropolitan phenomenon; also the European cities, although smaller than other , were 24. Sustrans Join the Movement, http://www.sustrans.org.uk/ (Accessed February 2015). described as widespread-cities (Enzo Rullani, “La città infinita: spazio e trama della modernità riflessiva,” in Aldo Bonomi and 25. Not Tom, http://not-tom.com/ Alberto Abruzzese, La città infinita [Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2004] 65-93. Bernardo Secchi, La città del ventesimo secolo 26. Irena Bauman, “Beauty, deprivation and Richmond Hill,” in Beauty, localism and deprivation - People and places. [Bari: Editori Laterza, 2005]). Essay three, Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment CABE, 2010 (Accessed September 2013). http:// 4. Beyond GDP. Measuring progress, true wealth, and the well-being of nations http://ec.europa.eu/environment/ webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110118095356/http://www.cabe.org.uk/files/people-places-irena-bauman.pdf. beyond_gdp/index_en.html (Accessed April 2015). 27. Ibid. 5. ‘Wellbeing measures can be both “subjective” and “objective”. The subjective measures are based on self- 28. Almost 100 students attended to the final design lab of the Bachelor of Science in Interior Design at the School reporting by individuals, which makes it possible to capture direct measures of high complexity such as life-satisfaction. of Design of Politecnico di Milano entitled Reloading Spaces in the academic years 2013/14 and 2014/15. Professors: Agnese Objective measures, on the other hand, attempt to capture these complex life-satisfaction variables by looking at indicatory Rebaglio (co-ordinator), Barbara Camocini, Elena Giunta, Luigi Brenna, Alessandro Colombo; tutors: Maddalena Mainini, variables, such as leisure time, marital status, and disposable income’. Beyond GDP. Measuring progress, true wealth, and the Riccardo Pagura, Silvia Panza, Daniela Petrillo. wellbeing of nations: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/beyond_gdp/indicators_en.html (Accessed April 2015). 29. Courtesy of Francesca Cognetti and Beatrice De Carli - http://www.mappingsansiro.polimi.it/ 6. In 2008, under the leadership of Sarkozy, the government established a commission which brought together 30. An in-depth analysis about the borough available at http://www.laboratoriodiquartiere.it/contratto_quartiere_ Nobel laureates such as Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen. The goal was to overcome the traditional view of the national index.htm accounts, proposing an integrated approach: no more than one number (such as, for example, GDP), but a set of indicators related to more dimensions. 7. The website http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/ allows one to compare wellbeing across countries, based on the 11 topics the OECD has identified in the areas of material living conditions and quality of life. 8. Framework to measure regional and local well-being: http://www.oecd.org/gov/regional-policy/regional-well-being- framework.htm (Accessed April 2015). 9. The 12 domains of the BES report are: health; education; reconciliation of work and family life; economic wellbeing; social relationships; policy and institutions; security; subjective wellbeing; landscape and cultural heritage; environment; research and innovation; quality of services. Measuring and evaluating progress in Italian society.: http://www. misuredelbenessere.it/ (Accessed April 2015). 10. Some institutions that explored the topic of happiness are, for example universities (see http://worldhappiness. report/) but also private agencies (see http://www.actionforhappiness.org/about-us). 11. http://unhabitat.org/un-habitat-at-a-glance/ - mandated by the UN General Assembly in 1978 to address the issues of urban growth, it is a knowledgeable institution on urban development processes, and understands the aspirations of cities and their residents. 12. Richard Sennett, Together: the Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).

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as their main goal. Currently a lecturer at Queensland University of Technology, Gretchen teaches design and art theory classes and works as the assistant editor for Art & the Public Sphere.

Biographies Luciano Crespi, architect, is a full professor of design in the School of Design at Politecnico di Milano, president of the Interior Design program, a member of the PhD Faculty Board of Design, head of the postgraduate international Masters in Urban Interior Design and of the postgraduate Master in Exhibition Design. He is also coordinator of the DHOC (Interior Design for Hospitable Cities) research group at the Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano, which addresses the design of interior and exterior urban spaces. Among Luciano’s projects are Soncino Square in Cinisello Balsamo, near Milan and the redevelopment of Lambruschini Street, Milan. Recent publications Paramita Atmodiwirjo is a senior lecturer in the Department of Architecture, Faculty of , include The City As (2011) and Da spazio nasce spazio. L’interior design nella riqualificazione degli Universitas Indonesia. She teaches courses on architecture and interior architecture design, research ambienti contemporanei (2013). methodology and architectural psychology. Her research interest is on the relationship between architecture/interior and the users. Davide Crippa, PhD, is an architect and adjunct professor at the Politecnico di Milano. Graduating with a thesis about model making and innovative prototyping in architectural processes (published Suzie Attiwill’s research practice poses questions of interior and interiority in relation to contemporary by Clup), in 2004 he founded the firm Studio Ghigos with Barbara Di Prete to provide architectural conditions of living, inhabitation, subjectivity, pedagogy and creative practice. The research is conducted design, design and communication. In 2008, he designed the exhibition Vignette dal mondo per i diritti through a practice of designing with a curatorial emphasis that focuses on spatial, temporal and umani for the Italian Ministero delle Pari Opportunità. Since 2010, Triennale di Milano has shown material relations. Suzie is an associate professor of Interior Design and deputy dean of Learning & his project Panchina a Dondolo worldwide in The New exhibition. In 2011, Maxxi Teaching, RMIT School of Architecture and Design, Australia. From 2005 to 2012, she was program Museum selected Studio Ghigos for the YAP Competition and their project was then displayed at director, Interior Design. Suzie is a member of the Affective Environments Laboratory – http://aelab. MoMA in New York. In 2014, Davide contributed to the Rice Cluster design in EXPO Milan 2015. org/. From 2006 to 2012, she was chair of IDEA (Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Association). She holds a PhD by research practice (Interior Design), RMIT University. Els De Vos, PhD, is an engineering architect and spatial planner. Els is also an associate professor at the Faculty of Design Sciences at the University of Antwerp. Her PhD dissertation on the Barbara Camocini is an architect with a PhD in exhibition design and interior architecture. architectural, social and gender-differentiated mediation of dwelling in 1960s-70s Belgian Flanders Research fellow and adjunct professor, Design Department, Politecnico di Milano and member of was published by the University Press Leuven in 2012. She has co-edited several volumes in the Lab.I.R.Int – Innovation and Research Laboratory on Interiors, Barbara investigates adaptive reuse field of architecture and has published in several national and international journals, including practice and its effects upon urban evolution and ultimate urban functions. She is a faculty member Technology and Culture and Home Cultures. Els is a member of the scientific committee of the new teaching Masters courses in and Italian Culture, and a , architect open source magazine INNER The Interior Architecture Magazine. and professional researcher in many international projects of architecture and design at Domus Academy Research. In addition, she was a consultant for Reggio Children by Studio Andrea Branzi, Barbara Di Prete, PhD, is an architect, curator, adjunct professor of Interior Design and a coordinator EXPO Milan 2015. of the Master in Urban Interior Design (MUID) at the Politecnico di Milano. In 2004 Barbara founded Studio Ghigos with Davide Crippa – a practice that works in the fields of architecture, Gretchen Coombs explores socially engaged art and design practices in the US, the UK and Australia. urban design and communication with a deep interdisciplinary approach. Since then, she has been She combines the skills from her PhD in anthropology with her MA in visual criticism to write essays mentioned in both national and international competitions, and published in the major Italian on contemporary culture. Gretchen’s research will result in a book, The Lure of the Social (2016). design magazines. Her research into dissolving disciplinary borders through opportunities of She is a visiting fellow at Otis School of Art and Design (Public Practices) in Los Angeles. Further critical reflection on project issues has been explored through exhibitions, international workshops, research will explore new funding models for social art and design projects that have social justice conferences, publications and teaching activities.

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Chunfang Dong, PhD, is an associate professor at Tongji University in China, where he teaches in Madrid, a firm whose main task is the creative transformation of cities. She also teaches and architectural design and contemporary architectural theory. His research topics focus on high- researches in the group Re-thinking Cities, at Universidad CEU San Pablo in Madrid, Spain. She density urban development and fabrication. He has been a visiting professor at the University coordinates the Bilingual Program in Architecture and co-directs (MUID) Master in Urban Interior of Hong Kong (1998) and, as a researcher, associated with the University of New South Wales, Design: Public Living Spaces in Contemporary Cities taught at CEU Madrid and Politecnico di Australia and Osaka University, Japan. He is a registered architect and has received several prizes Milano, where she is a visiting faculty member. in his years of practice in urban renovation nationwide. Evelyn Kwok is a spatial theorist and designer with expertise in cross-cultural situations of Davide Fassi is an associate professor in the Design Department, Politecnico di Milano and Tongji urban informality. She is currently undertaking PhD research at the University of Technology University (Shanghai) where he is director of the Master in Product Service System Design. Davide Sydney into the politics of public space as played out three-dimensionally every Sunday by is an architect and has a PhD in Technological Innovation for Architecture and Industrial Design foreign domestic helpers within the dense urbanity of Hong Kong. Integrating spatial analysis, from the Politecnico di Torino. He teaches in the BSc Interior Design and MSc Product Service ethnographic observations, interviews and photographs, this work explores the ways in which System Design programs at the Politecnico di Milano. Davide is co-ordinator of GIDE (Group of marginalised groups inhabit and augment public space. Evelyn also teaches spatial design studio International Design Education) and a member of the international co-ordination committee at and collaborates with interdisciplinary designers to create exhibitions and installations. She has DESIS Network (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability). Publications include In-Trattenere presented work in Hong Kong and Lisbon, and has also exhibited at the Sydney Biennale in (2010) and Temporary Urban Solutions (2012). Davide conceived Coltivando, the convivial garden at 2012. the Politecnico di Milano (see IDEA Journal 2014 for an article on this project) and Il sabato della Emilio Lonardo, interior and graphic designer, graduated in 2012 from the Politecnico di Milano, Bovisa, two projects in Milan. where he now works as a tutor in the Master of Urban Interior Design (MUID) program. Moving between professional and academic fields, in recent years he has collaborated with major Elena Enrica Giunta, PhD, is a designer. Her research interest is focused on the specific implications, companies and architects. He is currently working on researching new ways of living in urban and arising from places and artefacts, of intangible assets (both social and cultural) and their use toward domestic spaces. the innovation of systems and the empowerment of communities. She is a member of GIDE (Group of International Design Education) and coordinator of the international Master in Urban Valerie Mace is a senior lecturer at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts Interior Design (MUID) at Politecnico di Milano. Since 2003, she has been involved in research London, where she currently leads the BA (Hons) Spatial Design program. She has a Masters in programs, both national and international, on topics addressing interior design at an urban scale Interior Design and her research practice centres on subjective spatial experiences, documenting Pro-occupancy and design strategies for cultural heritage enhancement. Recent publications include sensory perceptions and atmosphere to investigate ways to enrich emotional wellbeing through Design Research on Temporary Homes – Hospitable Places for Homeless Immigrants and (2012) and , design. Grounded in architectural environments, blurring the boundaries between inside and Refugees (2014). outside while retaining an interior perspective, projects incorporate interdisciplinary design practices, phenomenological and sensory ethnographic modalities. Martí Guixé studied interior design in and industrial design at the Scuola Politecnica di Design in Milan. He lives and works ‘on living matter’ between Barcelona and Berlin, dedicating Carlos Martínez-Arrarás is an architect and urbanist. He is the founding partner of the office himself to the invention of ‘bright and simple ideas made of a curious seriousness’. He considers Taller de Ideas (established in 1988) where he developed his professional work for 25 years, himself an ‘ex-designer’ and works for firms such as Alessi, Camper, Estrella Damm, Droog Design, directing and managing numerous urban design and architecture projects. The work done during Magis and Danese. He has exhibited at MoMA in New York, the in London, the this time has received numerous awards. In addition, Carlos is the founding partner of Urban MACBA in Barcelona and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Networks, established in 2010. Since 1991, he has engaged in research and teaching activity as a faculty member of the School of Architecture at the Universidad San Pablo CEU in Madrid, Belén Hermida is a practising architect and educator from Spain with an international education. where he lectures in the fields of urbanism, landscape, and territorial and metropolitan planning. Her current PhD thesis is The Design of Urban Space: Three Squares by Rafael Moneo, with whom Carlos’s research is directed towards urban design and the development of tools for the symbolic she worked between 1989 and 2007. Since 2013, she has been a partner at Urban Networks construction of the city, as well as the relationship between art and the city.

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Antto Melasniemi is a hospitality and culinary expert, facilitator and concept director renowned Verarisa Anastasia Ujung is a research and teaching assistant at the Department of Architecture, for his highly praised projects like the pop-up restaurant HEL YES! in London. He also runs the Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Indonesia. She is a design studio tutor in interior architecture. restaurants Ateljé Finne, Kuurna, and Pute’s Bar and Pizza in Helsinki, and has recently worked for Her research interest is on a micro-level approach of interior architecture as a way to reveal the clients such as Artek, Iittala, Nokia and Flow Festival. relationship between space, inhabitation and wellbeing.

Daniela Petrillo has a PhD in Design from the Politecnico di Milano. Her research is related to Maarten Van Acker is fascinated by cities and what shapes them. He is a professor of urban design developing reassuring design strategies as triggers for urban wellbeing (urbanreassuring.tumblr.com). at the Faculty of Design Sciences, University of Antwerp. His research focuses on infrastructure Collaboration with the Design Against Crime Research Centre at Central Saint Martins, London, and urban design. Maarten is a member of the Urban Studies Institute and represents the Research in 2013 has been an important contribution to her research. Since 2009, she has worked on the Group for Urban Development. He holds a PhD for his research From Flux to Frame: analysing the social aim of design practice – beginning with the research enquiry About Love and Punishments, impact of infrastructure design on the urbanization of Belgium since the 19th century. In New York, which was then developed into a focus on places for affectivity in prison. As part of this, she has Maarten continued his post-doctoral research on urban (infra)structures at The New School. become an educator for the Human Library project at Bollate Prison, Milan. Daniela worked as a Jing Xiao designer at the Achille Castiglioni Foundation for five years. , PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow in the history and theory of architecture at the City University of Hong Kong and works on urban Asian cities. He graduated from the University of Mark Pimlott is assistant professor of architectural design/interiors at Delft University of Technology, Nottingham (2013) with his PhD thesis on the Chinese visual representation of architecture. He has written for several journals including Habitat International and Studies in the History of Gardens the Netherlands, visiting professor of Architecture of Interior at Politecnico di Milano, and a visual & Designed Landscapes. He also holds a Master of Architecture from Tongji University, China (2007). artist and designer, whose practice incorporates , public art for places, and interiors. He is the author of Without and Within: Essays on Territory and the Interior (2007), In Passing (2010) Yandi Andri Yatmo is a professor in the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, and The Public Interior as Idea and Project (2016). Public art works include World, BBC Broadcasting Universitas Indonesia, where he is currently the head of department. His expertise is on architectural House, London (2013), and La Scala, University of Aberystwyth (2003). Interiors include Red design methods and theories. Yandi’s research interest is on the development of research-based House, London (2001) with Tony Fretton Architects, and Puck & Pip restaurant and bar, The Hague design practice and its relevance to everyday spatial practice. (2007) with Zeinstra Van Gelderen Architecten.

Agnese Rebaglio is a designer with a PhD in Exhibition Design and Interior Architecture. She is a researcher and assistant professor in the Design Department, Politecnico di Milano and a member of the DHOC (Design for Hospitable City) research team. The research aim of DHOC is to design interiors and urban spaces that set up new kinds of hospitality in the contemporary city through innovative services and environmental qualities, and serve as new models of re-use of abandoned spaces. Agnese is a member of GIDE (Group of International Design Education) and a faculty member of the international Master of Urban Interior Design, (MUID) at the Escuela Politécnica Superior Universidad CEU San Pablo, Madrid, and Politecnico di Milano.

Tine Poot, PhD candidate, has been educated in the fields of interior architecture, urban planning and spatial design at the University of Antwerp, Faculty of Design Sciences. She uses this unique combination to its advantage in her research Public Interior: the design of durable, inclusive public interiors from an urban and interior perspective. Earlier research into the role of the interior architect in the design of public space, and the phenomenon of Guerrilla Urbanism as a tactical appropriation of urban public space evidences her affinity with public space from a broad and interdisciplinary perspective. Overleaf Saturday Morning New York’s Central Park Ice Rink, March 2012. Photograph: Carlos Martínez-Arrarás

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IDEA JOURNAL 2015 URBAN + INTERIOR CITATION The documentary-note (humanities) system of the Chicago Manual of Style Edition 15 is the adopted citation style. The IDEA JOURNAL ACCEPTS Chicago-Style Citation Guide is available at http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

DESIGN RESEARCH PAPERS COPYRIGHT that demonstrate development and engagement with interior design/interior architecture history, theory, education and Author/s or their nominated university retain copyright ownership in the works submitted to the IDEA JOURNAL, and practice through critique and synthesis. The focus is on the documentation and critical review of both speculative research provide the IDEA JOURNAL of the Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Association with a non-exclusive and practice-based research licence to use the work for the purposes listed below:

REFEREED STUDIOS that present the nature and outcomes of refereed design studios which have either been previously peer reviewed in situ • Made available/published electronically on the IDEA JOURNAL web site. and/or critically discussed through text and imagery for the IDEA JOURNAL. • Published as part of the IDEA JOURNAL publication to be distributed both locally and internationally. • Stored in an electronic database, website, CD/DVD, which comprises post print journal articles to be used for PROJECT REVIEWS publishing of the Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Association. that critically evaluate design-based works which seek to expand the nature of spatial, temporal and theoretical practice in interior design/interior architecture and associated disciplines. Reproduction is prohibited without written permission of the publisher, the authors or their nominated university. The work submitted for review should not have been published or be in the process of being reviewed by another publisher. VISUAL ESSAYS Authors are to ensure that any images used in the paper have copyright clearance. that demonstrate and present speculative research and practice-based research through visual media. REFEREES BOOK & EXHIBITION REVIEWS Brent Allpress, RMIT University, Australia Belinda Mitchell, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom to encourage debate into the emerging literature dedicated to the expression and expansion of the theory and practice Yoko Akama, RMIT University, Australia Francesca Murialdo, Middlesex University, United Kingdom of interior design/interior architecture. Benedict Anderson, University of Technology Sydney, Australia Philippa Murray, RMIT University, Australia Jen Archer-Martin, Massey University, New Zealand Jacquie Naismith, Massey University, New Zealand REFEREEING PROCESS Alessandro Biamonti, Politecnico di Milano, Italy Spiros Panigirakis, Monash University, Australia Each IDEA member university publicises the Call for Papers widely and encourages submissions from its academic staff, postgraduate students and the wider national and international multi-disciplinary academic design community. Registrations Marco Borsotti, Politecnico di Milano, Italy Renos Papadopoulos, University of Essex, United Kingdom of Interest are initially called for and an abstract outlining title, a concise summary of the project or paper and a brief Thea Brejzek, University of Technology Sydney, Australia Mark Pimlott TU Delft/ Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands biography is required. Registrations of Interest are acknowledged but not peer reviewed. Following receipt of the completed Chris Brisbin, University of South Australia, Australia Tiiu Poldma, Université de Montréal, Canada submission, the Executive Editor arranges for its anonymous assessment by at least two peer referees. Referees are selected Graeme Brooker, Royal College of Art, United Kingdom Julieanna Preston, Massey University, New Zealand for their acknowledged expertise and experience in scholarly and design academic review. The anonymity of author and Rachel Carley, Auckland, New Zealand Nicola Rainisio, Universita' degli Studi di Milano, Italy referee are maintained at all times throughout the double-blind process. Referees submit confidential reports directly to Kate Church, RMIT University, Australia Charles Rice, University of Technology Sydney, Australia the Executive Editor by a required date. The Editor and IDEA Editorial Advisory Committee meet to review final paper Lynn Churchill, Curtin University, Australia Sue Robertson, University of Brighton, United Kingdom selection and accepts the submissions that receive majority support from referees and/or are of critical value to the Journal Chris Cottrell, RMIT University, Australia Sean Ryan, RMIT University, Australia theme in the majority of the Committee’s expert opinion. Referees’ reports are made available to applicants. Sing D'Arcy, University of New South Wales, Australia Dianne Smith, Curtin University, Australia Andrew Douglas, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand Ro Spankie, University of Westminster, United Kingdom The decision of the IDEA JOURNAL Editorial Advisory Committee is final, with no correspondence entered into regarding Jill Franz, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Sarah Treadwell, University of Auckland, New Zealand the awarded status of the submissions. Jock Gilbert, RMIT University, Australia Raffaella Trocchianesi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy Luca Guerrini, Politecnico di Milano, Italy Michael Trudgeon, RMIT University, Australia For this issue, the Executive Editor received 83 Registrations of Interest, which resulted in 41 full submissions with 7 Dorita Hannah, University of Tasmania, Australia Nansi Van Geetsom, Thomas More University College, Belgium Research Papers and 1 Refereed Studio subject to double blind refereeing finally accepted. Edward Hollis, University of Edinburgh, Scotland Laurene Vaughan, RMIT University, Australia CRITERIA FOR ACCEPTANCE Daniel Huppatz, Swinburne University, Australia Isabella Vegni, University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland • Does the work address and expand the IDEA JOURNAL 2015 provocation URBAN + INTERIOR Rachel Hurst, University of South Australia, Australia Kirsty Volz, Griffith University, Australia • Does the work contribute to the discipline of interior design/interior architecture? Marieluise Jonas, RMIT University, Australia Malte Wagenfeld, RMIT University, Australia • Does the work present critical selection of precedent and provide contextual rationale? Nicole Kalms, Monash University, Australia SueAnne Ware, University of Newcastle, Australia • Is there is scholarly reflection leading to the exposure of new findings and arguments? Carlos F. Lahoz Palacio, CEU San Pablo School of Architecture; Gretchen Wilkins, RMIT University, Australia • Does the work meet high standards of scholarship through substantiated and critically discussed content? Urban Networks/Taller de Ideas, Spain Zhu Xiaocun, Tongji University, China • Is the work professionally structured and presented: well written; free of grammatical and spelling errors; Gini Lee, University of Melbourne, Australia Bernardo Ynzenga, Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM), Spain work of other authors have been cited appropriately; relevant literature is cited; references are well explained Eduardo Leira, Architect, Madrid, Spain in relation to context and images appropriate to content? Carlos Martínez-Arrarás, Urban Networks/Taller De Ideas, Spain Janet McGaw, The University of Melbourne, Australia Andy Milligan, University of Dundee, Scotland

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