John Weeks just sent me a link to a great platform designed by The Economist:  http://thinkingspace.economist.com/#/explore

I like the design - the general space, but also the pictures with the red dots that point to the evocative objects of the person thinking space. It reminds us the materiality of thinking.  It is also interesting to see whether people really have spaces (locations), or if their thinking spaces consist mostly of objects (mobile, that they take with them in different places). I also like the collaborative aspect of it: people can build their own thinking space.

Thanks John!

Yasmine Abbas is involved in a book project Taking from, leaving in, moving on by the Austrian architect and artist, Renate Mihatsh

Her contribution will be about neo-nomads whom she defines as “individuals constantly on the move who construct and reclaim a sense of belonging to places through digital means.” She argues that technology allows people to recreate a sense of place and notes that neo-nomads “sample cultures and the urban environments they roam in to reuse in the creation of a comfortable, personal and movable space.” Technology seems to allow people to carry with them, in their laptops, Iphone, Ipod, or any other portable devices, as well as by allowing access to various platforms, much more than one could put in a box, a bag or a suitcase. Our letters, packs of photos, favorite CD (or tape)… can be saved “online”. Yet, what is then the evocative object? The content or the object which allows to store or gives us access to the storage place?

Related to the theme of the suitcases, an interesting exhibition on immigrants: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/gallery/2009/mar/11/communities-immigration?picture=344441838

Attached is an essay by Yasmine Abbas (one of our blog members) on the co-production of space and the role of participatory and crowdsourcing practices.

c2-yasmineabbas.pdf

She discusses BSWW as an attempt of “communal space making”…

Here is an interesting essay by one of our blog members, Laura Forlano (published on Urban Omnibus) and how work and work practices have evolved and its implications for space, and for the design of cities.

http://urbanomnibus.net/2009/06/work-and-the-open-source-city/

Two points that I’d like to highlight in Laura’s article:

1.Laura highlights the tension between “the ways in which these emergent forms of organizing are deeply embedded in physical places and, at the same time, enabled by new technologies such as laptops and wireless networks.” This leads me to the more general discussion that is taking place in organizational studies on the role of materiality (boundary objects, space, etc.). It also highlights the point discussed at length on this blog on the merging, intertwining between physical and virtual space. Last, it is important to note that these new forms of organizing, sometimes described as virtual forms of organizing are not immaterial - just think of the laptops and the wireless networks!

2.  I found the anecdote on Laura’s experience in Japan really interesting. First of all, it reminded me of some of Pico Iyer’s descriptions of his life in Japan. Second, and more importantly, it leads to the question of the “nature” of technology. Even if we agree on the socially constructed nature of technology, we often still assume its cultural neutrality. Here as my work on videoconference also led me to discover (but unfortunately not investigage further) technology can be seen as a cultural lens - as it has been shown to be a social lens. This of course raises issues for researchers… all this work on informal interactions and innovation and creativity, and the role of space, does it make sense in all societies? in all cultures? what does it mean for global organizations?

thanks Laura for this great essay which raises so many important questions,

al

to follow up on Yasmine’s post about distributed spaces (April 5th) and her idea of “simultaneous happenings in various locations”

and just a cool project aiming to create a sense of place through sound

on the relationship between virtual and physical space… when the “nomad” finds a home - “virtual” yet “real”.

“I soon realised that the site would evolve into some parallel living space, some sort of lateral existence in connection with a different world, through the lens of design. (…)”

See “behind the scenes” at  http://www.bazartropicando.com/home_works.html

Hi,

just read an interesting article, My Living Room, in the Urban Omnibus by James Reeves, writer and designer.

James Reeves describes his perception of New York as he has just moved to Helsinski and that leads him to reflect of what makes him feel comfortable in New York and what is different in Helsinki. He highlights how cities, places in general (and our perceptions of it) emerge from structures, material dimensions (size of the blocks, street labels, stoops vs. court yards, etc.) but also social affordances - which includes mores and practices: cheap food, stores open all night long, etc. in NY which allows a certain life style and a certain type of interactions, and defines your personal space in a different way - your apartment is not the walls of the space you rent, but it extends out in the street. It reminded me my friend John Klima who always told me that “the city was his kitchen”.

Reeves notes:

“There are probably just as many people who prefer a city like Helsinki over New York, so perhaps it’s easier to tackle the question from another direction: is a personal connection to one’s environment simply a function of time and familiarity, or is it possible to arrive in a new city and, after taking a look at its buildings and establishments, immediately have a gut feeling that says, “Yes, this feels good. I could get comfortable here”? ”

I guess this article also touches me as I’m moving soon from NY after 3 1/2 years and my walks through Brooklyn and Manhattan take another dimension. I could empathize with his feelings as he’s reflecting on the places he knows, his routines as I feel the same when I go down Smith Street in the morning, stop by at Victory to get my coffee, or bike up to Prospect Park. Like Reeves I feel like I might not have taken enough photos and I do take some. My next stop is not Helsinski, but London - more exciting than Helsinksi many might say. I’ll tell you more in a couple of months.

I guess these issues can also be linked to the different ways people experience online spaces. We had lunch with two friends yesterday and we were discussing social networking platforms and other online tools. Two of us did not feel comfortable with facebooks and the type of interactions it supported but we loved skype which we perceived as a one-on-one communication tool which allowed us both fast (”peripheral” in some ways in the sense of “peripheral vision”)  and long (in-depth) interactions with people we know and like… More to be discussed here.

al

Austin just sent me a very nice story about robots, people and space in New York city. Kacie wrote:”In New York, we are very occupied with getting from one place to another. I wondered: could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it? More importantly, how could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself? To answer these questions, I built robots.”Read the rest of the story and/ or watch video to know what happened to the Tweenbots. I think it raises interesting issues about space and interactions…http://www.tweenbots.com/

Was talking the other day with Michael – Dub Studios principal – about his work on distributed high schools. The idea of distributed spaces reminds me / fits with the meta-architecture of storage spaces in the making and observed when studying neo-nomads (neo-nomads collect spaces). Sure these spaces are networked… what fundamentally changes the architecture of buildings though, is the fact that with technologies, distributed spaces can happen / be managed. So while blogger congregated to formulate and shape BSWW, I can’t help thinking of another movement… simultaneous happenings in various location.

During the fall, Anne-Laure invited me to become a member of this blog. I agreed. And life was as complex as ever, and I did not get around to thinking about this until flying to California (I live in Connecticut) for Thanksgiving. I printed out the postings and began working through them from the start. Very thought-provoking. Lots of notes. Not enough time. So I continued the effort over Christmas, with additional posts of course. More thoughts. In January I explained the situation to Anne-Laure who encouraged me to make a contribution. And just about the point that I was going to post, I noticed that all I had been looking at were the posts, and none of the comments. Well, that stopped me cold. As did work, and the pressures of life. I had to miss the opening of the installation, and feared that I would miss the whole thing.

So finally, I set aside a day - this Monday -, and Lynne (my wife) and I headed into “The City” to have lunch with Anne-Laure and experience the installation before it was only a memory. And so I found myself walking into the space. And enjoying it immensely.

And then it occurred to me that I had not been worried about entering the space even though much had already gone on there and I was clearly not “up to speed.” But in contrast, I had been seriously blocked about just entering the blog without having “done my homework” - reading what had gone before. What was the difference?

Possibly it was the fact that my entry into the installation was understood (by me, and the culture I live in) to not carry any expectation that I know what was happening. Walk into a space, and it is assumed that you will be able to join in even if it takes some effort to feel out the scene, align with what’s happening, and then engage. And this expectation is based on the reality that the hjstory of the preceding activity has not been is captured and made available by the space. In contrast, all that has gone before in a blog is available. And so feeling out, and aligning before engaging is a much taller task.

A second reason that when I walked into the installation, I could see who I was engaging, I could evolve my interactions with them with awareness of the effect that I was having. I could limit my interaction to one or a few at a time, I could make “turns at talk” suit the immediate and local situation and correspondents; I could practice “recipient design.”  In contrast, in the blog, Without reading everything, or at least a lot, I could not know who my recipients were. Indeed, with lurkers, even reading would not help. I was flying blind, interacting without any sense of the “audience” and their purpose.

Thirdly, in the installation I knew why I was there. I wanted to see the embodiment of a word-based virtual space.  I was aware of the difficulties and a-priori non-alignments of the installation space and the virtual words-space, and was there to experience the installation as a provocation around the metaphor of space. But with the blog, I was not so sure why I was there - other than that Anne-Laure had invited me. And this was less about the subject matter - it was the same as the installation - and more about the genre. For in truth, as all the above shows, I am not at all competent in the the dance that is participating in blogs.

So my opening thought is this: spaces built with words have accessible history, and that can be understood by newbies to imply something very different that is understood by experienced bloggers - namely, that you are responsible for everything that is there. Instead, Anne-Laure tells me that you have already discussed the sense that a blog is (like) a party - A Blog Party - something that you can enter into and accelerate into. It seems like an excellent metaphor.

And so here am I, late to the party, and looking to accelerate into whatever is happening.