Deactivated spaces
Places that cease to exist without the public. Or not?
Squeezing between lines of seats and tripping over the feet of other movie-goers in the dark to get to your seat is part of the architecture of cinemas. Standing on your tiptoes to see your favourite band because the tall bloke in the front keeps obstructing your view is part of the architecture of show venues. Navigating walls of rowdy football fans and being rendered nearly half deaf by their chants is part of the architecture of football stadiums. People are part of the architecture of these spaces. What do these spaces become without people?
Simply deactivated.
“Space activation focuses on how the space between buildings can be used for community-building.”
— District of Columbia Public Space Activation & Stewardship Guide (2018)
Activating a public space is old school concept, it is so overused that my German studio tutor in my alma mater rolled her eyes when she heard this phrase repeated over and over again during a review (that was pre-pandemic). Space activation is a design pedagogy that was coined in the 80s, a time when there was renewed interest in the urban potential. You can trace its origins back to a peculiar film called “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces” that was published in response to the so-called dead spaces in Seagram’s Plaza.
In the film, Whyte returns to primary tools of observation to test the hypothesis for these public spaces. He identified the factors at play within the intricate mechanism of activation: the position of the sun, flexible moveable seats (my favourite), food stands, performances on the street, planned events, and simply just impromptu encounters.
Prior to this discovery, there was an abundance of spaces within the city that people did not want to use. With the injection of outdoor spaces that embraced these elements, his discoveries breathed a new life into public outdoor spaces.
However, the rules of pandemic have become the antithesis of communal spaces. New regulations of outdoor gatherings and restrictions have sucked the life out of public spaces that were previously bustling with people. To reintroduce these spaces that are now rendered useless, perhaps we need to transform the way these spaces are delivered. Perhaps only the physicality of these spaces is deactivated, but its digitalized abstraction can be activated.
Let’s take a dive into the digital world.
We now know of the abstraction of the public through the digitalized number on the screen. People are able to transcend traditional physical boundaries and still be a part of a collective via the World Wide Web.
The audience limit of a zoom call has become the digitilized manifestation of the tall bloke obstructing your view. The hiccups of your internet speed are the feet that you trip over while you find your way to your seat in the movie cinema. The obnoxious adverts at the beginning of video clips are the inevitable football fans that you have to navigate your way around before you take a seat in the stadium.
Perhaps the insistence of knowing things as they were to is not a good indicator of whether a space is working, perhaps it is time to update our understanding of public spaces in the context of this new era.
