Public Art & Urban Design Interdisciplinary and Social Perspectives − π ο λ ι σ e 1 A.REMESAR INTRODUCTION Public Art & Urban Design Interdisciplinary and Social Perspectives web version nr, 4. ISSN 1139-7365 E-Book Edition: ISBN: 84-475-2767-0 PUBLIC ART & URBAN DESIGN: INTERDISCIPLINARY AND SOCIAL PERSPECTIVES. WATERFRONTS OF ART III 1 A.REMESAR INTRODUCTION Contents Introduction Public Art and Urban Design: Interdisciplinary and Social perspectives ......................................................................... 03 A. Remesar PUBLIC ART & URBAN DESIGN: STRATEGIES Regenerating and marketing cities and their ‘public’ spaces: A British way ............................................................. 22 Z. Muge Akkar Designing Cities – Urban Design and Spatial Political Economy ............................................................................. 36 Alexander R. Cuthbert Construir cidade com espaço público............................................................................. .................................................... 44 Mafalda G. Teixeira de Sampayo PUBLIC ART & URBAN DESIGN: MEANINGFUL WORKS Creating Significance through public space. An Inclusive + Interdisciplinary practice .............................................. 47 Margareth Worth Public art and pseudo-history ..................................................................................................................................... 60 Paul Usherwood Approaching the city through its public art. Development of Monere project in Lisbon ............................................. 74 Helena Elias, Inês Marques, Carla Morais PUBLIC ART & URBAN DESIGN: CIVIC PARTICIPATION Visual Arts on the Edge: Marginality and Regeneration ............................................................................................. 90 Anne Douglas In collaboration with Chris Fremantle and Heather Delday Analysis of a Visual Art Practice: Artist as Author of an Inclusive Cretative Method..................................................................... ............................................................................................................... 107 Stephanie Bourne THE CHALLENGE OF AN INCLUSIVE PUBLIC SPACE Ambiguity in an Urban Development Masterplan. Deception or Miscalculation? .................................................... 120 Tania Carson Conforming to the Process of Land Commodification and The Deterioration of Territorial Cultural Interaction: A Case Study on Bali ................................................................................................................ 129 Ayu Suartika A possible genesis for urban furniture ...................................................................................................................... 140 Cristóvão Valente Pereira PUBLIC ART & URBAN DESIGN INTERDISCIPLINARITY & COLLABORATION Non-Monument Monument: A Collaborative Conceptual Design ............................................................................. 143 Andrew Gale & Martell Linsdell The Kyoto Proposal: eco-art and a form of conflict ................................................................................................... 154 David Haley acts of collaboration .................................................................................................................................................. 157 MILNE & STONEHOUSE Interdisciplinary discourse between art, architecture and design ........................................................................... 162 Lorenza Pereli APOCALYPTIC - INTEGRATED 20 notes of "parallel thought", on public space and economy, and some new types of public spaces. ................................................................... 163 Pedro Brandão, arch. PUBLIC SPHERES................................................................................................................................................ 169 Malcom Miles PUBLIC ART & URBAN DESIGN: INTERDISCIPLINARY AND SOCIAL PERSPECTIVES. WATERFRONTS OF ART III 2 A.REMESAR INTRODUCTION Public Art and Urban Design: Interdisciplinary and Social perspectives A. Remesar CER POLIS. Universitat de Barcelona 1995 was the date when we initiate a period of reflection and analysis on Public Art. In that occasion, the Fundació Tàpies managed by the current Director of the MACBA, Dr. Manuel Borja-Vilell, hosted the event. After this event, that you can consult in the derivative publication of (Remesar, ed. 1997) they followed others. A few, international workshops (Rotterdam, 1999; Barcelona, 2000; Porto, 2001; Manchester, 2002), others, conferences opened to all the disciplines. (Barcelona, 1999; Exeter 2000; Barcelona 2001; Lisbon, 2002). 2003. MACBA. Barcelona. I believe it supposes a point of inflexion. The Public Art Observatory has fulfilled a big part of its objectives. It has created debate by means of the international conferences and the deriva- tive publications, and has also generated space of project reflection by means of the workshops. It has supported, with great difficulty, an Internet site that appears among the international references. Nevertheless, here, now, are present only few of the institutions that launched the project, those that have supported the flame of the initial project, Barcelona, Exeter, Manchester and some of those that came later, but that have stimulated the project: CPD and FBUL in Lisbon. The planning of activities that was defined in Porto, in 2001, it is blown in the air. We lost the workshops rhythm; we will have to decide what to do with this initiative. The biannual candidacy of Barcelona does not have continuity right now for the next event, though we hope that the University of Central England could be, next year, hosting the symposium. In spite of all that, I believe that we have produced a quantity of knowledge on the area in which we are interested: public art, urban design, the city. Knowledge that we can trace not only in the publications, academic programmes and sites that have been generated, directly or indi- rectly from the activity of the Observatory. In this respect we must remind the M.A’s that de- velop the Manchester Metropolitan University or Portuguese Centre of Design in collaboration with the University of Barcelona; the Ph. D. programmes developed at the University of Ply- mouth and at the University of Barcelona. Certainly, in 1995 nothing of that existed and, we believe, that the Observatory and its activities have contributed to their existence. Nevertheless there is something that does not work properly in our scheme. In spite of the fact that year after year we have managed to extend the base of disciplines that intervene in the symposium, only marginally we have attracted the social scientists, the architects and the urban planners. The geographers and the historians, in spite of being systematically invited, have dem- onstrated very little interest for our meetings, meetings opened to all the disciplines. What is what fails? I believe that as coordinator of the Observatory, I got the sufficient perspective to indicate some reasons. PUBLIC ART & URBAN DESIGN: INTERDISCIPLINARY AND SOCIAL PERSPECTIVES. WATERFRONTS OF ART III 3 A.REMESAR INTRODUCTION 1.- The eternal return to the beginning We do not advance. Each symposium supposes returning to reinvent the world. To return to discover what had been already discovered and analysed several years ago. At this respect you can consult our on-line library (http://www.ub.es/escult/1.htm). We have discussed about the problem of the site specificity, of the interdisciplinary relations…. And, we go back again to the beginning, to discover again a line of argumentation that, for the rest, has been demonstrated false: A reference to the USA model, as a general model able to explain the historic specificity and the general framework of our problematic. Definitively, though marginally, we reproduce of systematically the discourse of the mainstream of the recent historiography. A lack of solid research? Excessive managing of literary references?. Impossibility that an academic discourse could frame a real object and not only the object of the enunciated words? 2.-The fracture of the scale When planners or architects talk about public space, public art and urban design are es- sentially peripheral to their argumentation. When artists or creators talk about the city, this one loses her polyhedral character and remains limited to be a kind of “setting” in the one to pro- duce the artistic intervention [Could be interesting to raise that most of the new kinds of public art are based on pictures and video]. There is a radical incoherence in the methods, in the ap- proximations, in the valuations. It looks like practically impossible, that some and others be able of crossing the different necessary scales to understand the object of study. Possibly, in this level, there exists research but its framework is excessively disciplinary or is excessively practical, eliminating the possibility of an interdisciplinary discourse. For example, is quite normal when studying waterfronts cities, to segregate a flagship operation from the general policy for the city, so Battery Park becomes = to New York; the Docklands= to London or 2004 project in Barcelona = to Barcelona. Also it is quite normal not to discriminate the urban and social framework for operations of completely different scope and scale. So a small operation in Cork is compared with a large-scale operation in Barcelona; an inner city