El Raval, Barcelona

We’re excited to announce our forthcoming AHRC Sensory Cities Workshop to be held at the Centro of Cultura Contemopranea de Barcelona on the 16-17th of June 2016. The broad theme of the workshop will be ‘Power and the Senses’ and our focus of attention the neighbourhood of el Raval, see below the provisional programme. Attendance is by invitation only, so please email either astrid.swenson@brunel.ac.uk or monica.degen@brunel.ac.uk if you would like to attend.

Provisional Programme (please check a few days before for final schedule)

Ziel des Projektes ist Experten verschiedener Fachrichtungen aus Wissenschaft (Historiker, Soziologen, Geografen, etc) und Praxis (Architekten, Stadtplaner, Museumskuratoren etc) in einer Reihe europäischer Tagungen in London, Köln und Barcelona zusammenzubringen. Zwei Tage lang werden Methoden zur Erforschung, Gestaltung und Repräsentation der Sinne aus verschiedenen europäischen Perspektiven in verschiedenen Städten ausgetauscht und entwickelt. Endziel ist es ein alternatives und sinnliches ‘digitales toolkit‘ zu entwickeln, das Stadtexperten sowie ein breiteres Publikum gebrauchen können, um das charakteristische Eigenleben einer Strasse zu erfassen und somit die Sinne als wichtigen Gegenstand der Stadtplanung zu integrieren. Mehr Information: http://www.sensorycities.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

Das Projekt ist eine Zusammenarbeit von Brunel University, London mit dem Kölnischen Stadtmuseum, dem Museum of London und dem Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona. In jeder Stadt findet neben einer Tagung mit Vorträgen auch gemeinsame ‚Feldforschung’ statt in einer Strasse, welche die gewachsene, und oft widersprüchliche Natur des Lebens in einer modernen Stadt verkörpert. Gibt es dafür eine bessere Gegend als den Eigelstein, diese urkölsche Veedel voller Vielfalt und Gegensätze?

FRIDAY 26 FEBRUARY 2015, NS-DOKUMENTATIONSZENTRUM & STADTMUSEUM COLOGNE

9:00am –  Registration and Coffee, NS-Dokumentationszentrum

9:15am – Welcome: Dr Mario Kramp (Director, Kölnisches Stadtmuseum) & Dr Werner Jung (Director, NS-Dokumentationszentrum )

9:30am – Monica Degen & Astrid Swenson (Brunel University London): The Sensory Cities Network: aims, findings, questions

10:00am – Presentations & Discussion: Designing with the senses

• Hanna Katherina Goebel (Universität Hamburg, Institut für Bewegungswissenschaft), ‘Users without bodies. Material paradoxes of ‘socially’ engaged architecture’
• Rainer Katzig École d’Architecture de Grenoble),‘ Typical Atmosheres: an approach to facilitate communication on atmospheres’
• Sandra Kurfürst (University of Cologne): Semiotics of urban space: producing and negotiating meaning in the city
• Carolina Vasilikou (University of Kent): The doors of thermal perception in sensory research

Chair: Gillian Rose

11:15am – Coffee

11: 30am – Presentations & Discussion: Senses, Belongings, Contestations

• Eva Herr (Stadt Köln – Dezernat Stadtentwicklung, Planen, Bauen und Verkehr): Current Challenges for City Planning in Cologne
• Isabel Finkenberger (Studio if+ .Büro für Stadtentwicklung und räumliche Transformation, Cologne), ‘Die Stadt von der anderen Seite sehen’/ Seeing the ciy from a different side‘
• Arno Steffen (Musician and ARSCH HUH E.V), Music and the mobilisation of the city against racism (title tbc)
• Tayfun Keltek, (Vorsitzender des Landesintegrationsrates NRW), The Integration of Migrants into the City

Chair: Monica Degen

1pm – Lunch and time to visit the NS-Dokumentationszentrum

2pm – Curating the Senses – Museum Tours in Kölnisches Stadtmuseum
Rita Wagner, Stefan Lewejohann and Sascha Pries : (Kölnisches Stadtmuseum) “Curating the Senses in the Cologne City Museum” – Guided Tours in German and English

3:00pm – Jochen Schmauck-Langer (dementia+art) – Dementia tour

3:45pm – Coffee – NS Dokumentationszentrum

4:00pm – Presentations & Discussion: Eigelstein: Visualising Sensory Histories – sensorialising visual histories 

• Stefan Lewejohann (Kölnisches Stadtmuseum) – Eigelstein: History and Curation
• Eusebius Wirdeier (photographer), ‘Fotografische Arbeit am Eigelstein’/Fotographic work on Eigestein’
• Astrid Swenson (Brunel University): ‘In the Shadow of the Cathedral: writing sensory histories’

Chair: Rebecca Madgin

5:00pm – Fieldwork Methodologies

• Manuela Barz (London Metropolitan University): Introduction to Digital Toolkit
• Working groups meet

5:30pm – Final Discussion: Chairs: Astrid Swenson & Monica Degen

6pm – End of workshop

7pm – Dinner at Brauerei Päffgen

c. 10pm – Visit of NachtRaumStille Installation, St. Gereon (Lange Nacht der Kirchen) http://www.nachtraumstille.de/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

SATURDAY 27 FEBRUARY, EIGELSTEIN & NS-DOKUMENTATIONSZENTRUM

9:00am – Meet at Dom for Fieldwork in Eigelstein.

12:00am – Lunch at Doy Doy

1:00pm – NS Dokumentationszentrum: Preparation for methods presentation

1:45pm – Exhibition proposal presentations

2:30pm – Coffee

2:45pm – Exhibition proposal presentations

3:30pm – Concluding Discussion: Astrid Swenson & Monica Degen

4:00pm – End of Workshop for Participants

4:00pm – Steering Group meeting till 5 pm

By Monica Degen, Astrid Swenson & Manuela Barz

In this document we summarize the key points that emerged from the presentations and discussion of the 1st international AHRC Sensory Cities Workshop in London. The workshop focused on urban planning and researching the senses. The first day consisted of a range of presentations that outlined the importance of the senses in the particular professions and disciplines. On the second day a range of inter-disciplinary, cross-professional groups trialled different methods inspired by the discussions.

It is important to note that urban development does not only restructure the city physically and economically but radically transforms the somatic and experiential landscape of places affecting individual’s place attachments. It was therefore strongly felt by participants that a) research on urban sensing is too narrowly discipline based would strongly benefit from a more interdisciplinary and cross-professional approach and dialogue, b) planning and building the city, hence shaping the experience of the urban environment, operates within a complex network of power relations and legal-political constraints. A better understanding of how urban sensory experiences are moulded by these constraints will help to get a more detailed insight of how cities are planned and built.

Discussions at the workshop highlighted a range of themes:
1. Expertise and the senses: Participants noted how the professional and academic training individuals receive informs and shapes their ‘sensing’ as well as their methodological approaches to urban experience. Moreover, practitioners and policy makers – i.e those who shape the sensory experience of the city professionally – are under a large number of other constraints such as legal frameworks, time pressures, economic considerations, and powerpolitical constraints that frame how they approach the ‘curating’ of the senses in the public realm.  Practitioners felt that while they are aware of the importance of sensory perception in the urban realm, they find it difficult to quantify their impact and would welcome a ‘toolkit’ that would help to create better processes to evaluate the senses in urban experiencing.

2. Planning and the senses: A key difficulty identified by urban professionals is how to quantify the senses. In part because of their ephemeral nature but also because evaluations of sensory perception are linked to questions of taste. Several speakers highlighted the importance of ‘gut feeling’ when assessing planning applications, CGI’s or evaluating research data. This highlights the importance of ‘tacit knowledge’ which has been shaped by years of professional training. A common dilemma identified by planners and architects is the balancing of public and private interests. The senses are crucial in mapping the socio-economic stratification of areas both in terms of promising what is to come and in attracting or detracting certain social groups and uses of the public space. Practitioners and policy makers agreed that knowledge and awareness of the sensory is already embedded in the architectural and planning profession but it is less embedded in policy. The latter appeared, according to the urban professionals, hampered by a lack of understanding of how people perceive and understand the city. It would be desirable to have better methods and processes to attend to memories and personal feelings about places. Urban practitioners and policy makers suggested the need for more robust feedback mechanisms after planning changes have been applied.

3. Methods and senses: On the second day of the workshop we spent some time on Whitechapel Road trying out different methodological approaches to researching the senses in mixed groups of academics and practitioners. It is important to point out here that one should view these as ‘methodological approximations’, in other words they are explorative in nature and experimental in their conception. To explores the benefits, difficulties and potential complementarity of analogue versus digital and observational versus interactive methods, the four groups came up with the following methodological approaches.

Social Media and the making of place: The first group examined the ways in which people use Instagram/twitter to represent themselves in and in front of buildings. The main questions were: What types of filters are used (and what filters are provided by the particular technology?). What kind of sensory atmosphere is displayed through social media? What are important buildings in social media? How are emotional connections to places represented through people’s photographs? The approach provides a visual-emotional account of a site.

Standing and sketching: The second group chose a public space to stand still for 30 minutes and tried out a range of analogue methods by using paper and pen. Some sketched what they could see and made movement notations; another person drew a list of her immediate sensory impressions. This method tries to get closer to the fluid nature of urban sensing and capture some of the evasive and temporal aspects of urban life.

Mapping the senses: The third group chose an observational method. They suggested to create three maps of Whitechapel Road. The first one maps the senses of the observer on the street: What smellscapes can be identified? What can be seen? What do the touchscapes consist of? What can be heard? This is complemented by a map with subjective experiences from people interviewed: What are their feelings about the space? Do they experience a hostile, friendly, oppressive, etc environment? The third step is to create a ‘relationship map’ i.e. asking users of space: why do you experience this space as hostile, friendly or oppressive? The aim of this method is to create ‘places of translation’ bringing together the observational maps of the researcher with the experiences of interviewing people using this space.

Observation and evocative interviews: The fourth group chose to consciously reflect on their interdisciplinary set up by having each researcher observe the same place for 30 minutes by walking around the space. They then met to compare their observations: the disciplinary training informed very different observations of the same place revealing how our disciplinary training shapes how we sense. Agreements and disagreements came up which helped to problematise the subjective positioning of the researcher. This highlights the importance of a) group work; b) the need for interdisciplinarity when researching the senses and c) reflexibity. The researchers’ observations then fed into shaping an interview schedule in which 5 questions are asked to the diversity of users of space from the more general to the more evocative.

4. Dissimination and Education: In the final discussion about how to best represent and disseminate research findings, the importance of education was stressed: greater sensibilitation to one’s own sensory sensitivity seems important both for the researcher and for the public and it was recommended to offer ‘sensory workshops’.

To cite this report:

Monica Degen, Astrid Swenson & Manuela Barz, AHRC Sensory Cities Network, London Workshop Report, 23-24 October 2016, Museum of London, [http://www.sensorycities.com/workshop/london/report-from-ahrc-sensory-cities-london-workshop/]?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

On the first day we had range of presentations and discussion around the importance of the senses in the built environment and in urban planning. Presentations included (podcasts will be uploaded in the next few weeks on this website):

• Euan Mills (GLA) “What Really Matters in Architecture”
• Des Fitzgerald (University of Cardiff) “Mental Health and Urban Life: Sensing stress”
• Chris Miele (Montagu Evans LLP): “Measuring change in a changing city: Understanding London’s expansion”
• Katherine McLean (artist, Royal College of Art): “Invisible, Erratic, Ephemeral: Lives of Urban Smells”
• Maria Herrera (City of London) “Designing for the senses in the public realm”
• Raymond Lucas (School of Architecture, Manchester University): “Sensory Notations”
• Ben Townsend (Squint Opera) “Intrinsic Human Values”
• Stefano Faiella (360 architecture) “Senses in the Design process – from brief to product”.
• Alex Rhys-Taylor (Goldsmith College): “Fried Chicken and Flat Whites: Olfactory Agents of Demographic Change”
• Caroline Pembroke & Mahbubul Anam (Whitechapel Vision Delivery Team, Tower Hamlets Council) “Whitechapel High Street Regeneration”

In the afternoon, after a guided tour through the interactive displays of the Museum of London we divided into groups to devise methods to research the senses on Whitechapel Road.

On Saturday the different groups focused for three hours on Whitechapel Road to trial their methods which were presented in an afternoon workshop. Methods included: sketching experiences, mapping sensory-temporal rhythms, evocative interviews, embodied encounters to mention a few. More in the next few weeks on this blog.

http://ccaa.elpais.com/ccaa/2015/10/26/catalunya/1445884178_092590.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

The senses are our first access point in experiencing the street. Whether we are directly engaging with urban life in situ or mapping it via a digital means in an architectural studio, we feel the urban landscape through our bodies, sensorially. In this talk I suggest that developing a sensory dimension, or sensitivity, to researching the street offers a different and more complex approach to understanding urban life and politics, destabilizing the visual economy of the city. Drawing on a range of projects from cities such as Barcelona, Qatar, Milton Keynes and Bedford, I will offer some reflections on how both ‘traditional’ methods and more ‘experimental’ methods can be made more ‘sensory friendly’ to capture the often fleeting, immanent interactions between the social and material. They further allow us a more nuanced understanding of the ‘atmospheric’ transformation of streets, their design and social life (Bohme; Degen et al 2015). I will argue that an innumerable amount of sensations underpin everyday urban public life, and increasingly the urban economy and that these sensory predispositions shape and are shaped by power relations which need to be uncovered.

For more information see: https://www.kent.ac.uk/sspssr/news-events/streetlife-symposium.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

See more at: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/collections-research/research/look-of-austerity-conference/#sthash.lqbZGD6L.dpuf?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/aug/22/tate-sensorium-art-soundscapes-chocolates-invisible-rain?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss