Activism by Design
This report examines the relationship between urbanism and civil protest. Throughout the report, practitioners will understand and develop strategies on how to design for spatial justice through investigating relevant theories and practice. The writing acts as an embodiment of a protest piece by mobilizing designers as advocates for spatial justice.
This report examines the relationship between urbanism and civil protest. Throughout the report, practitioners will understand and develop strategies on how to design for spatial justice through investigating relevant theories and practice. The writing acts as an embodiment of a protest piece by mobilizing designers as advocates for spatial justice.
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Activism by Design
An Examination of Urbanism and Civil Protest
Daniel Fernando Avilan Medina
Daniel F Avilan Medina
RC12 | Luke Pearson and Sandra Youkhana
BENVGU22 | Design Thesis Report
Student Number: 16086623
Many thanks to David J Roberts and Roberto Bottazzi for their supervision.
dedicated to designers
who seek spatial justice...
Key Words:
Protest, Spatial Justice, Narrative, Network, Boundary, Control,
Semantics, Semiotics, Mobilize, Rhizome, Justice, Surveillance.
Contents
1 Abstract
2 Preface
4 Introduction
6 Spatial Justice
Narrative
8 Semiotics and Semantics
12 The London Cycling Campaign: Die In Protest (Case Study)
14 Semiotic Strategy (Design Project)
Network
16 Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design
and the Ring of Steel
18 Rhizomatic Revolution
20 Focus E15 (Case Study)
22 Micro and Macro Networks (Design Project)
Boundary
23 Panopticism
25 Spatial Appropriation
29 British Nail House: Wickham’s Department Store (Case Study)
31 Spatializing Surveillance: Accessibility and
Accountability (Design Project)
33 Conclusion
Abstract
Abstract
This report examines the relationship between urbanism and civil
protest. Throughout the report, practitioners will understand and
develop strategies on how to design for spatial justice through
investigating relevant theories and practice. The writing acts as an
embodiment of a protest piece by mobilizing designers as advocates
for spatial justice.
The report is made up of four chapters. In the first chapter, the theory
of spatial justice is used as a framework for extending these ideals
in terms of urban space. The second chapter frames revolutionary
narratives from theoretical perspectives, a case study that exhibits
these concepts, and the design as tactics of analyzing social space.
The third chapter examines urban networks through inaccessible
spaces of control, rhizomatic network theory, and a case study that
displays itself as a node within a larger rhizome. The third chapter
concludes with the design creating micro and macro socio-spatial
networks. The fourth chapter demonstrates urban boundaries from a
precedent on controlled urban space to theories on the issues and
solutions of spatial injustices. The fourth chapter then illustrates an
urban boundary symbolizing socio-political pressures and concludes
with the design strategies that generate spatial justice. The conclusion
establishes the groundwork for urban practitioners to use this report
as a guide to spatial justice.
1
Preface
The Relationship Between Design and Report
Activism by Design
Designers and architects have worked in ways that allow the city
to reinforce social injustice. Both the design and report investigate
how designers continue to be complicit with instances of control
that reinforce power imbalance and inequality that exist in society.
The report explores various ways in which urban practitioners have
designed for spaces of control in the era of mass surveillance. As
the report continues, theoreticians are drawn upon as links between
designers and urban social movements that critique the way spatial
injustice can be restructured through narratives, networks, and spatial
form. The report provides the design with case studies of civil protest in
London that are in turn used as methods of combating restrictions and
restraints. It also assists the design in creating a series of urban spatial
methods of resistance. The design proposes London as a game which
appropriates these tactics for urban practitioners to implement in an
authoritative super surveilled city.
The urban proposal recreates some of London’s high streets, transport
hubs, boroughs, districts, and commercial spaces as an inevitable
future state of mass surveillance. These sites include the Borough of
Hackney, Kings Cross, Bank and Monument financial center, Oxford
Street, Trafalgar Square, and the City of Westminster.
Within each of these varying landscapes, the player of the game sets
out to shape their world in order to thwart surveillance in the city.
Using theories set out by the report, the player masters a plethora of
strategies that guide other members of the city to follow. This is the
key relationship between the design and the report. The dweller not
only conceptualizes space but physicalizes how surveillance can be
seen as a spatial entity. This becomes an environment of accessibility
and accountability. As the player transverses the city, they intend to
transform the environment through theories linked in the report.
[Fig 5] Previous page:
Nike Headquarters,New York City, 2017
2
Preface
The report is as an assemblage of relevant theories, examples, and
strategies that depict London’s state of mass surveillance. This writing
thus acts as an embodiment of a protest piece. It can be presented to
designers who seek spatial justice. It can be read as a delirious report
of frantic paranoia one feels while playing the game. It sets to offer
alternatives to the misconception of designers and architects’ need to
comply with the current state of control and surveillance. Navigating
and mobilizing these relevant practices and theories set up the report
to influence the design.
By exploring the spatial relationships of socio-political urban
movements and acts of opposition, theorists and protests have
influenced the design to create a new paradigm of urbanism: one
which reinvents psychological urban space. Parallels are drawn
between the design and the report in terms of influence from urban
social movements and theoreticians who similarly use revolution as a
method of urban thinking.
3
Introduction
Activism by Design
Thousands of surveillance cameras within urban, suburban, and
even rural environments have been installed within the last several
decades as a result of increased urban control. In November 2016,
the Investigatory Powers Act passed in the United Kingdom giving the
Parliament a plethora of new machines that could track and hack with
security services more enhanced than any other country in the world
(MacAskill, 2016). Today, England has around 6 million cameras —
which is equivalent to the population of Lebanon (Barrett, 2013).
Recently, the government’s surveillance camera commissioner, Tony
Porter, spoke out about the risk of the privacy of the public. A massive
data base without the consent of the nation is collecting information
and becoming more invasive than ever before (Weaver, 2017).
The metropolis is beginning to adapt to these changes. Designers have
begun to integrate the rapid technological changes within their designs
in order to create a controlled urban environment. For instance, the
new roof of the Apple Store in Chicago looks like an enormous MacBook
Pro (Maggio, 2017). However, this detail is only visible from an aerial
perspective. The correlation between urban design and surveillance is
appropriated to be viewed from the hyper-global simulacrum of Google
Earth. Architecture and urbanism will begin to accommodate the mass
surveillance state within their plans in order to adjust to forthcoming
technologies.
However, the problem remains that designers cannot continue to
be complicit with these instances of control that reinforce power
imbalance and inequality that exist in society. Designers and architects
have worked in ways that allow the city to reinforce inequality due to
surveillance regulation that exists (MacAskill, 2016). Social movements
have found course of action that resists this structure in order to
demonstrate alternative fashions of living in the urban environment.
Theoreticians have learned from these social movement in order to
develop a clear methodology for architects and urban practitioners
to realize unfamiliar and unique city networks. This report aims to
conceptualize how urban revolution have influenced theoreticians as a
method of designing for power imbalance and spatial inequality. Three
case studies — the London Cycling Campaign at Bow Roundabout,
London’s Focus E15 campaign, and the Wickham’s Department Store
in West London — introduce three themes that structure urban social
movements.
[Fig 6] Previous page: Churchix design
tactic illustration
4
Introduction
The report is comprised of four parts: spatial justice, narrative,
network, and boundary. In the first chapter, the concept of urban
spatial justice is introduced. The origins of the idea are displayed
in terms of affordability, transport, and various freedoms in public
spaces. The report interprets urban theorist Edward William Soja’s
concept of spatial justice as a conceptual framing on how justice
translates into space. Spatial justice is then extended through ideas of
control and surveillance as an opening for design to work along within
the theoretical underpinnings. The framework of the former analysis is
translated into terms of time and space. The second chapter discusses
urban theorists and their influence on revolutionary narratives, the
London Cycling Campaign’s response to spatial injustice, and the
designs translation into space through theory and semantics. The third
chapter continues by describing the relationship between network,
Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, and London’s Ring
of Steel. This is followed by theories of rhizomatic revolutions and
Focus E15’s civil action as a consequence of networked organization.
The third chapter concludes with the designs investigation of rhizomes
to create spatial justice. The fourth chapter analyzes the English
philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s infamous panoptic prison scheme as a
structured boundary of surveillance. Theories are then used to define
boundaries as both limitations and spatial opportunities through such
concepts as the production of psychological space. In the latter half of
the fourth chapter, Wickham’s Department Store extends boundary,
void, and space proceeded by the designs spatial and conceptual
boundaries.
It is important to mark the influence of protest solely on the basis
of spatial, social, and contextual issues, rather than the political
agenda or the principles in which the protesters use to appropriate
their movements. Also, the report aspires to raise questions and self
reflection from urban practitioners, architects, designers, and theorists
rather than solve the issues raised in these case studies. The way in
which their actions appropriate urban space is key to understanding
social and spatial injustices.
5
Spatial Justice
“...it is also just the beginning of a new stage in the struggle
for spatial justice and regional democracy that is being made
more urgent and necessary by the deepening world economic
crisis.”
― Edward Soja, Seeking Spatial Justice, 2010
Activism by Design
Spatial justice is a theory developed on the strong influence of the
organization of space and social relationships within societies. This
approach creates an integration between equality and the urban
environment. During the 1960s through the 1970s, philosopher Henri
Lefebvre demanded a new insight into urban life and quality (Lefebvre,
Kofman and Lebas, 2008). He theorized a concept of ownership
of the city, or the Rights to the City. This idea challenged the social
class construct that continually mandated how cities are perceived
and produced. A form of justice was called for by Lefebvre in order
to promote new typologies of unprecedented spatial arrangements
(Lefebvre, Kofman and Lebas, 2008). He continued to emphasize
these linkages which influenced geographer David Harvey to write on
a Marxist perspective of the city. Harvey makes a case for the Rights to
the City by stating that:
“The Right to the City is, therefore, far more than a right of
individual or group access to the resources that the city embodies:
it is a right to change and reinvent the city more after our hearts’
desire. It is, moreover, a collective rather than an individual right,
since reinventing the city inevitably depends upon the exercise
of a collective power over the processes of urbanization. The
freedom to make and remake ourselves and our cities is, I want
to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our
human rights” (Harvey, 2013: 4).
However, Harvey’s extensive research into the city tends to emphasize
on the social aspects of Lefebvre’s theory. Urban theorist Edward
William Soja hybridizes both the urban context of Lefebvre’s concept
with the individual liberties described in Harvey’s conclusions (Soja,
2010). Soja identifies space as the fundamental dimension of human
society; where justice is ingrained. Soja then specifies these interactions
between space and societies as a necessity of understanding social
injustices (Soja, 2010). A reflection is needed in order to design space
and carry out any theory of social and spatial integrity. He refers to
this theory as spatial justice, where space and justice are crossbred
in order to deliver a new typology of urban program (Lefebvre, Kofman
and Lebas, 2008).
6
Spatial Justice
[Fig 7] A everyday individual
seeking spatial justice.
Activism by Design
According to Soja, “spatiality has traditionally been given particular
attention in only a few disciplines, mainly geography, architecture,
urban and regional planning, and urban sociology… [and] it has
reached far beyond these spatial disciplines” (Soja, 2010: 14). These
ideas of spatial integration into the thought far beyond the realm of the
city design allows the local, urban, regional, national, and global scales
to create inclusive public debates on human rights, social inclusion–
exclusion, citizenship, democracy, poverty, racism, economic growth,
and environmental policy. Urban equity can transform the way spatial
production is invested (Soja, 2010).
Soja considered the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union for a successful and
inspirational model for spatial justice. After winning an unprecedented
legal battle with the city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, the buses
were mandated to reroute in order to serve the poorest residents of
Los Angeles. This victory for both the residents and for the future of
urbanism is a key example for Soja on spatial justice (Soja, 2010).
Soja continues by implying that the search for spatial justice is, for
some, a pursuit for defending public spaces (2010). It is suggested
that maintaining spaces completely public is quickly wearing away due
to privatization, commodification, and state control. Various modes of
communication, such as freedom of speech, can be at danger if spaces
continue to transition toward semi-public or private spaces (Soja,
2010). However, seeking spatial justice must not solely focus on the
struggles of public space, but the use of communication and exchange
of information is central to urban spaces that pursue geographical
freedoms.
7
Spatial Justice
[Fig 8] A protest taking place in
Trafalgar Square, 1951.
Narrative
“...a narrative, embodies an ambition, embodies intentions,
and has an aim. I think that we use some of the conventions
or laws or discipline of narrative to make sure that those are
tight and work well.”
― Rem Koolhaas, Helvetica / Objectified / Urbanized:
The Complete Interviews, 2015
[Fig 9]
This chapter ties the theories of desire production, ad hoc
organization, and public space in order to understand
semantics in the urban domain. Through language, image,
symbols, and signs, social movements (such as the London
Cycling Campaign) appropriate space with the reinforcement
of semantics. The chapter then concludes with two cases
within the game that allow designers and users to see the city
throughout the established theoretical groundwork.
[Fig 10]
Semiotics and Semantics
Activism by Design
The study of signs, symbols, text, and language have largely influenced
how architects, designers, and urban practitioners have developed
the city. The public uses these tactics in a different manner by
exchanging and broadcasting their visions within the city. Without such
communication, the separation between strategy and action can break
the movement started by the public. The narrative developed by civil
action comes in a plethora of forms and materials. Spaces, slogans,
signs, and action all are forms of expression formed in urban space.
Theories that draw upon desire production, the use of language and
signs, and public space as a site for urban experiences respectively are
exhibited in this passage as a course for understanding revolutionary
narratives.
In the 1970s, a manifesto for synthesizing demonstrative direct action
for social change was written by philosopher Gilles Deleuze and
psychiatrist Felix Guattari. They referred to these theories adopted by
social movements as desiring-production (1998). They believed that
the only connections that could be established between these two
productions would be secondary ones of adopting the attitudes of
other unconscious methodologies whilst defending oneself via means
of projection. Voice and narrative is a way to successfully invest oneself
in the desire of social production (Deleuze and Guattari, 1998).
Journalist Colin Irwin explains this mode of desire through what he
believes to be the birth of modern British protest movement began
(2008). In 1958, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament gathered in
London’s Trafalgar Square for a major outing; a fifty three mile march
to Aldermaston, the center of Britain’s nuclear weapons industry. The
protest permitted young musicians to write new songs in order to arouse
support along their lengthy expedition (Irwin, 2008). The people were
aware that the desire for a new kind of politics could be constructed
by the production of song and spatial choreography. This collective
experience of chanting allowed for an authentic mode of desire similar
to that of Deleuze and Guattari’s (1998). Songs, anthems, and chants
as an assemblage of urban action draws parallels within the domain
of philology.
8
Narrative | Semiotics and Semantics
The architectural theorist Charles Jencks wrote about language as
mode of production being applied outside the realm of linguistics
(2008). It became apparent that the use of these connections could
be implemented in the urban domain. Language allowed for the
explanation of how spatial forms came alive and fell apart (Jencks
and Kropf, 2008). As Jencks states, the conventional trio of semiology
always has formality, a concept and a representation — simply a
relationship between language, thought, and reality (2008). His theory
of adhocism posed the morphing of limited resources at hand for
the resolution of present needs. He left two proposals: revolutionary
interests should be recognized rather than limited to one of class
and the plurality of ad hoc organization should be preserved (Jencks
and Kropf, 2008). Jencks also concludes the groups are the basic
institutions of freedom and civil life and must be able to spring into
existence to protect institutions and law (2008). Several sensibilities
for such narratives entail a recognition for the old and personal
familiarity with identification. Furthermore, he poses a hypothesis on
the production of space through semiotics: if [architects] were trained
as anthropologists, with an ability to comprehend the various codes
which are employed by varying groups, then they could at least design
space which communicated as they intended (Jencks and Kropf,
2008). By juxtaposing Deleuzo-Gauttarian’s desire-production and
the ad hoc organization of Jencks, social movements can create nonhierarchical
hybrids of these theories in order to remain influential and
classless actions.
For instance, the infamous international activist network Anonymous
features their trademark mask from the film V for Vendetta (2005).
Their intention is to create a face for their organization while creating a
faceless leader for the group; allowing everyone to take part in the idea
of being innominate (Anonymous News, 2004). This method is crude
but effective. The organizational structure of Anonymous can be seen
as an ad hoc way of remaining largely influential to mass culture while
strengthening the limitation of one class group. Jencks’ proposals
are seen here as a form of communication through a mask whilst the
desire to project equality through the faceless campaign creates a
Deleuzo-Gauttarian mode of production.
9
Activism by Design
[Fig 11] A cloak featuring stripes and
patterns to confuse surveillance cameras.
Narrative | Semiotics and Semantics
Communication is used by protests as a mechanism for direction
and management. Semiotics allows revolutions to organize social
production and spatial limitations through modes of declaration.
Lefebvre questions communication as a way to organize urban space
(2014). It could be considered a virtuality or to some extent a presenceabsence.
Lefebvre believes linguistics could contribute to an analysis
of the urban phenomenon (2014). However, he suggests that this is
not to say that the urban is a language or sign system, but that it can
be considered to be a whole and an order, in the sense given to those
terms by semantics (Lefebvre, 2014: 52). It can set up as a set of rules
to enact an event, a situation, a desire, or a formal production in the
sense of revolution. The definition of time and space must be refined
in order to comprehend the urban construction — a deconstruction of
voice and urban form (Lefebvre, 2014).
10
Activism by Design
[Fig 12] An aerial view of Trafalgar
during a massive protest, 2012.
Narrative | Semiotics and Semantics
Lefebvre refers to public space as a relic for this collective experience
of desire (2014). For he claims that public space is the only
conceivable site of social life. It brings people together — beauty and
monumentality go hand in hand (Lefebvre, 2014). Lefebvre declares
the very essence of, and sometimes at the very heart of a space in
which the characteristics of a society are most recognizable and
commonplace, cities embody a sense of transcendence, a sense of
being elsewhere (2014). They have proclaimed duty, power, knowledge,
joy, hope. The marches and symbolic displays of civil demonstrations
are the narrative of the public opinion. Oral, visual, and kinesthetic
means of exhibition are displayed as artwork on the streets. The urban
space responds directly to these social dialogues as familiar cries of
aesthetic power (Lefebvre, 2014). Trafalgar Square operates on this
inclination mentioned by Lefebvre. This square has been the heart for
community gatherings, and civil protests such as the climate change
protest and as early as the Bloody Sunday protest in the late 19th
century. It is ironic that Trafalgar, being built for the celebration of
imperial power, has now become London’s center for public meetings
against imperialism, militarism, and capitalism (Forty, 1976).
A complex structure like semantics deserves all the considerations
and particular attentions of urban space in order to identify the
presence in space. Urban practitioners can determine a manifold of
ideals on how semiotics can influence and affect urban space. Through
desire production, the use of language and signs, and an attention
to public space would create hybridized city environments that could
induce spatial justices. Language is spatialized as a result of civil
protest by various methods such as gestures, chantings, signs, and
symbols. Each, with its own consequence, allows for coordination and
subsequent movements to transpire. In the digital age, the circulation
of information becomes evident in its success when other groups are
inspired and arise. The speed of these networks are driven in part by
the operation of technology. The London Cycling Campaign as a result,
uses digital media to influence and occupy a tube station to mobilize
their movement.
11
The London Cycling
Campaign: Die In Protest
Case Study
Activism by Design
This case study uses narrative as a form of performance to appropriate
urban space. In late 2013, the London Cycling Campaign organized a
protest at the Bow Roundabout in east London. A cyclist was struck
and killed by a large goods vehicle on the cycle route (Stuttle, 2013).
Coordinated via the online social media platform Facebook, over
one thousand of London’s cyclist joined in to what appeared to be
the largest hit and run in British history (Stuttle, 2013). According to
the daily British newspaper, the Guardian, the organizers created a
photoshopped image of mass murdered cyclists being laid across the
front of the Transport for London (TfL) Headquarters that was circulated
to bikers around London (Stuttle, 2013). An online community was
immediately formed and an event was set to take action. Over the
next ten days, thousands of leaflets were distributed across London
in order to spread ideas raised by the image. After the then mayor of
London stated that the cyclists were to blame for the several accidents
happening in the area, the campaign took physical action. The crowd
of bikers scattered across the street, blocking traffic, and speaking on
the behalf of the deceased. Finally, the cyclist gave a list of demands to
the TfL (Stuttle, 2013).
The movement turned into a realized version of the collaged protest. The
rendering created by the protesters was acted out on the streetscape.
As the protesters lay dead on the street — as if they had too been hit
by a heavy goods vehicle themselves — they listened to the victims
names from the past twenty years whose lives were also taken (Stuttle,
2013). Some protesters crossed their arms and held their body tight
like a wake before a funeral. Others sat on the pavement with their bike
lights blinking by their side (Stuttle, 2013). The enactment went on,
each cyclist interpreting and reflecting on the victims final movements
and poses that had occurred. As they rose up, the Guardian, and other
media outlets surrounded the spectators as they recalled the violent
acts that had transpired (2013).
[Fig 13] Previous page: Cyclists die in
protest, Southwark Station, 2017.
12
Narrative | The London Cycling Campaign: Die In Protest
The campaign initially called for fifty participants. However, with the
dynamic use of the digital collage, many people were inspired by
the image to participate (Stuttle, 2013). The campaign overlaid their
psychical bodies onto the street in order to represent the act taken
shape on the urban block. The movement found that narrative is a way
to successfully invest oneself in the desire of social production. They
created a physical reenactment of the digital collage in order to display
their frustrations within the urban space. Jencks’ tripartite theorem on
concept and representation combined the use of language, thought,
and reality in order to serve the urban space as a canvas for the
photoshopped image (Jencks and Kropf, 2008).
As Edward Soja had emphasized, social justice is spatial justice. He
accentuates the case that justice in the practice of the law acts by
determining rights and assigning rewards or punishment based on this
actions (Soja, 2010). Spatially, the word justice can interweave to create
a geographical imprint on the environment. The Cycling Campaign
appropriated the urban space by applying inequality as a method
of power and hope for a better system of equality. By appropriating
space, the campaign creates a block in the street through both a digital
collage and a physical performance. Tactics like these can be formed
by designers in order for the public to learn their own strategies and
experiences with the environment.
13
[Fig 14]
Semiotic Strategy
Design Project
[Fig 15]
Urban Protest
In the design, the game uses a plethora of urban tactics in order for
the user to subvert surveillance and systems of control. This passage
utilizes these urban strategies in order to mobilize the theories set out
formerly and educate the public about surveillance.
The game allows for the player to traverse the city whilst evading
the overwhelming amounts of surveillance that surround them. For
instance, closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras exist throughout
London in an alarming quantity — around one for every eleven citizens
of London (Barrett, 2013). The player can modify London’s street lamps
and adapt their beacon as disco light LED’s in order to blind the camera
as they pass. This optic fashion of influencing the urban environment
enables ad hoc methodologies of using limited resources at hand for
the resolving present needs (Jencks and Kropf, 2008). Simultaneously,
unconscious methodologies defends the player via means of projection
similar to the desire production set out by Deleuze and Guattari
(1998). This dichotomy acts as establishment of the semiotic strategy.
Using symbols within the game gives the user and the designer an
understanding of how surveillance works within the city and impromptu
approaches of subverting the control. As an urban practitioner, one
can see the spatial implications by envisioning disco lights placed
throughout varying London streets. This comic transformation creates
a enjoyable process of seeing the city in a new light while assessing the
repercussions of such actions.
14
Narrative | Semiotic Strategy
[Fig 16] Lamp posts are changed
into disco lights that blind
surveillance cameras.
DISCO
Activism by Design
The game reflects on public spaces like Trafalgar Square. Lefebvre
depicts public space as the relic for this collective experience of desire
production (Lefebvre, 2014). Appropriating ad hoc methods of design,
the player in the game can use traditional methods of camouflage
in order to mask themselves within the urban environment to avoid
Google’s satellite imagery. By using this large collective space, the
user in turn subverts surveillance and creates a new layer in the urban
environment. This layer uses similar applications to the London Cycling
Campaign by transforming a digital imprint to appropriate space (Stuttle,
2013). The layer animates the player to create a disguise against the
macro mapping software of Google. Ad hoc methods of distortion and
simulacrum can exhibit itself in public space as forms of suppressing
the excessive modes of surveillance. Viewing the city from an aerial
perspective, one may see the act transpire. However, from a street
level, this method would seem counter-intuitive. Nonetheless, urban
designers must reflect on this experience as way to deal with public
space to conceal the public from control and surveillance. Through
active learning and reconfiguration of urban space, spatial justice is
formed. If this new layer could be reenacted throughout the entire city,
a network of camouflage could begin to occur. These tactics can be an
educational application for designers and users alike to create urban
spaces that develop networks, strategies, and information on pressing
issues that exist in the city.
15
Narrative | Semiotic Strategy
[Fig 17] Above: The player using camouflage
to blend in with the environment.
[Fig 18] Below: A protester using game
tactics in Angel Islington.
MASKING
With Google Maps, real-time data is tracking for route planning
Network
“The prevalence of networks in organizing social practice
redefines social structure in our societies.”
― Manuel Castells, Toward a Sociology of
the Network Society, 2000
[Fig 19]
This chapter begins with the linkage between two socio-spatial
concepts: The Ring of Steel and Crime Prevention Through
Environmental Design (CPTED). These act as defense networks
that deny urban accessibility. Then, philosopher Gilles Deleuze
and psychiatrist Felix Guattari’s theory of rhizomes sets into
motion sociologist Manuel Castells’ theory of rhizomatic
revolutionary networks. As a result, London’s Focus E15
campaign makes use of rooted networks to take action against
London’s ongoing housing crisis. Finally, the game uses macro
and micro scaled urban networks to generate spatial justice.
Crime Prevention Through
Environmental Design and
The Ring of Steel
Activism by Design
London has used the Ring of Steel and Crime Prevention Through
Environmental Design as networks of civic control. These two
interweaving networks have established London as a city of mass
surveillance and restraint. These social structures have excluded the
public from having full access to their city.
In the early 1970s, surveillance networks were continually being
introduced at a rapid rate with the growing use of technology and urban
organization. A United States criminologist C. Ray Jeffery coined the
term Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) as a
foundation for urban surveillance (Draper and Cadzow, 2004). The
framing of this work was based on Jeffery’s suggestions that physical
and social environments provided opportunities for crime to occur, while
proving that their were also opportunities to reduce the alternating city
environment (Draper and Cadzow, 2004). Architect Oscar Newman
was influenced by the principles set out by Jeffery and approached the
concept through the term defensible space (Draper and Cadzow, 2004).
This gave way to a new conceptual network of organizing space to
prevent crime. CPTED has three overlapping doctrines: access control,
surveillance, and territorial reinforcement. According to the CPTED
program, these core concepts “offer a framework for the effective
design and use of space to minimize undesired behavior” (Draper and
Cadzow, 2004: 9). However, it does not characterize the personality of
the alleged undesired behavior (Draper and Cadzow, 2004).
[Fig 20] Previous page: Map of the Ring of
Steel, London 2017
16
Network | Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design and The Ring of Steel
London created a response to this behavior by producing a new “ring
of steel” to prevent further terrorist attacks on the city. Wrought iron
security gates began to enclose certain spaces within the city, sealing
off from public access (Coaffee, 2004). Urban geographer Jon Coaffee
wrote on The Times newspaper suggesting “the City should be turned
into a medieval-style walled enclave to prevent terrorist attacks” while
other papers went as far to suggest “a national identity card scheme”
for London (Coaffee, 2004: 203). All entrances to the central financial
zone were activated through this new ring. The city thresholds were
reduced from over thirty to seven road-checked entrances guarded by
armed police (Coaffee, 2004). Coaffee questioned the balance that
many cities would face as the threats of terrorism continue (2004). The
urban network will be at threat and blur the boundaries between public
and private space. The most alarming claim was that this response of
authorities, public, and private security agencies will produce serious
consequences for urbanity and the civic realm, and in particular for
social control and freedom of movement (Coaffee, 2004).
These new rings of exclusion evidently changed the urban network.
But the public continues to reframe themselves to adjust to the new
contextual change. With these adjustments, urban social networks can
once again produce social and spatial justices within the metropolis.
A new form of network is needed in order to make the urban domain
more accessible.
17
Rhizomatic Revolution
Activism by Design
The rhizome as a network derives from philosopher Gilles Deleuze and
psychiatrist Felix Guattari who believe that this botanical theory can
influence how metropolitan networks are formed. Within the urban
realm, social movements create modes of commutation, structure,
interconnections, and systems that coordinate to exchange and interact
within the city network.
In 1980, philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychiatrist Felix Guattari’s
writings posed biological theory in relationship to the urban network:
a rhizome (2014). Similarly to plants with their arbitrary roots are
rhizomorphic in other respects altogether. They call the rhizome a very
diverse form from which creates extensions in space in all directions
to concreted nodes of importance. They suggest that the beauty of the
rhizome is the ambiguousness of the change in nature and connection
(Deleuze and Guattari, 2014). The cartographic nature of the rhizome
is not susceptible to any generative generic production; “the rhizome is
altogether different, a map and not a tracing” (Deleuze and Guattari,
2014: 12). For the map is a network in all of its levels; detachable,
reversible, susceptible and consistently modified by individuals, groups,
and social movements (Deleuze and Guattari, 2014: 2).
[Fig 21] Previous page:
GPS tactic illustration.
18
Network | Rhizomatic Revolution
[Fig 22] Anti-Oedipus : Capitalism and
Schizophrenia cover illustration, 2009.
Activism by Design
The urban relationship with the rhizome is what sociologist Manuel
Castells refers to as a “seed [that] grows every day following the
rhizomatic logic which characterizes social movements” (2015: 242).
In urban space, the rise of a common pattern in social mobilization
within the metropolis has taken shape through rhizomatic networks.
Social movements have been a lever for social change and mobilization,
according to Castells (2015). The idea of networks guides individuals by
overcoming fear of social injustice and transform into a conscious and
collective actor for spatial justice. The network society lives as a new
construct for social movements toward making a difference with sociopolitical
action (Castells, 2015). The Internet, mobile communication,
social networks online and offline, preexisting and preceding networks
are some of the plentiful forms of rhizomatic networks (Castells,
2015). UK Uncut, a grassroots civil action group, allows the public
to create their own action and organize their own event (2017). They
assist by advertising, having knowledge of legal rights, and giving
supportive feedback to there organization and those who desire
to join. Furthermore, they created an event map that lets the public
notice when the next action takes place and how to attend (UK Uncut,
2017). This type of rhizomatic networks builds and overlaps with other
institutions within the same matrix.
The complex system that creates the urban environment acts as the
structural roots that Deleuze and Guattari suggest as alternatives to
organizing and activating urban space (2014). Lefebvre finds that
understanding and learning laws governing the realities of the city need
to add concepts such as systems, divisions, arrangements and more
specific concepts like network (Lefebvre, 2014). These juxtapositions
and superimpositions should be defined, according to Lefebvre (2014).
The challenge remains that seeking spatial justice confronts with
the necessity to build diverse associations and networked social
movements in order to extend the mobilization of urban space. Greater
ties within the local communities along with expansive and widened
networks of social activism strengthen an equal geographical context
for the public (Soja, 2010). As social rhizomes start at a local scale,
such as the Focus E15 in London, they have the potential to unfold into
extensive networks throughout the city.
19
Network | Rhizomatic Revolution
[Fig 23] UK Uncut web page, 2017.
[Fig 24]
Focus E15
Case Study
Activism by Design
[Fig 25] Mums of E15 after
social housing protest, 2014.
Network | Focus E15
The London Focus E15 campaign adopts Deleuze and Guattari’s
theory of rhizomes as a way to build their network from the micro
to macro urban scale. This local and small scaled urban activist
campaign formed in 2013 in East London. The Focus E15 housing
campaign started as a group of mothers living in a housing unit E15
in the borough of Newham (Watt, 2016). This area, along with most of
London, has been affected by the ongoing housing crisis that leaves
many low-income Londoners living in absurdly small units or even
being evicted from their homes. The crisis produces class polarization
and class politics that many cities have had to face (Watt, 2016). Urban
practitioner Paul Watt explains that a large amount of campaign groups
have begun to combat the current struggle that exist (2016). He also
explains that in uber-gentrifying areas with rising rents and housing
prices, the Londoners’ Right to the City is vanishing (2016: 302).
Watt’s continues by adding that this social cleansing is being driven
by a combination of economic austerity and the demolition of councilbuilt
estates under the guise of gentrification (2016). As the mothers
from Newham were threatened with eviction, they campaigned for
housing and urban rights in London and successfully prevented the
initial threat. They then changed the original movements name from
“Focus E15 Mothers” to the “Focus E15 campaign” in order to widen
their network to other groups with similar matters (Watt, 2016).
The group began by collecting signatures for a devised petition whilst
meeting other groups, such as the Revolutionary Communist Group,
who came together to forge something new together (Watt, 2016).
The new campaign began to shift to estates that were in motion to
be bulldozed or vacated in order to evict tenants even though the
development lacked leadership (Watt, 2016). They hung portraits of
local estate residents with the help of those locally to the neighborhood.
With the help of the main stream media, the local group received citywide
attention and the campaign estimated over one hundred media
interviews in two weeks. The group now holds several social media
networks with over 30,000 followers across Facebook, Twitter, and
their own web page (Watt, 2016).
20
Activism by Design
[Fig 26] Public meetings for
spatial justice, 2014.
Network | Focus E15
A once small group of young mothers transpired into a network larger
than they had possibly expected. The relentless fight of Focus E15 led to
the high profile rhizomatic rise of the group. The campaign was able to
create a fruitful growth of spatial justice by demonstrating the political,
economic, and social contradictions underpinning London’s housing
crisis (Watt, 2016). As a network, they allowed for an indefinable center
and ensured coordination by having multiple nodes (Castells, 2015).
Castells stresses the fact that these networks become a movement by
occupying the urban space (2015: 250). Focus E15 has continued to
grow it’s rhizomatic network by traveling to Serbia to join the European
Action Coalition For the Right to Housing and to the City (Focus E15,
2017). Movements, like the Focus E15 campaign, must work at the
micro and macro scales to build their networks and seek spatial justice
as a collective group.
21
Micro and Macro Networks
Design Project
Activism by Design
The game engages with both micro and macro networks through
the urban tactics. These strategies establish a matrix for which the
player can grow their own network with Deleuzo-Gauttarian rhizomatic
manipulations.
According to a study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, smart
phone apps collect extensive amounts of data on users’ locations as
much as every three minutes (Sifferlin, 2015). As the player traverses
the game, they encounter this dilemma. The player adapts; repurposing
London’s red telephone box as a Faraday cage which aids them in
depositing their cell phone every three minutes in order to evade the
location network. In this instance, the player paradoxically defeats the
macro location collection of smart phones with the micro network of
neglected red telephone boxes.
At the root of the issue, the player strategizes actions that will subvert
surveillance of their location. The systemic issues of being tracked
without the desire or sometimes the knowledge of the public is fearsome.
The player dramatizes this issue by creating a physical urban network
that assists the public in fending off surveillance. The rapid paths the
player must take in order to successfully cross through the game gives
the user and the design a sense of urgency on the issue. Thus the game
mobilizes the importance of this problem in our society today. As a
society, large amounts of data are collected into major networks that are
stored without our knowledge and sometimes consent (Solon, 2016).
This is troublesome for those who wish to conceal their private lives
from the public. By using the networks at hand, a rhizomatic revolution
can occur. In the game, decrepit and forgotten pieces of architecture
are reused in the interest of the network. Transposed in the real world,
these methodologies seem improbable. However the network itself can
be studied as a way of organizing this system in terms of control. As in
the case of Focus E15, it takes the stem of one node to begin its root
and connect to other nodes within the urban realm (Watt, 2016). The
red telephone Faraday cage acts a didactic rhizome for designers who
aspire to create spatial networks in the metropolis. These networked
boundaries create a collective system of spatial organization.
[Fig 27] Previous page: Scaled model of
red telephone Faraday cage.
22
Architectural practice Coop Himmelb(l)au created a surveillance jacket
made of conductive metal in the fabric creating a Faraday cage that disrupts
Network | Micro and Macro Networks
[Fig 28] Faraday cages distributed
throughout the game.
CELL PHONE CAGE
Boundary
“Without a revolutionary theory there cannot be a revolutionary
movement.”
― Vladimir Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, 1901
[Fig 29]
This chapter introduces panoptic design as a way of
enabling control by constructing boundaries of surveillance.
Theoreticians are then drawn upon to reinvent these
boundaries by reviving psychological urban space. Throughout
the latter half of the chapter, the Wickham’s Department Store
case study creates a physical boundary to evade real estate
development followed by the game’s tactics that utilize spatial
and conceptual boundaries.
[Fig 30] The Geometrical Ascent to the
Galleries in the Colosseum,
Regent’s Park, 1829
Panopticism
Activism by Design
The panopticon design by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham created
a system of boundaries that allowed for extreme levels of control and
surveillance. Many urban practitioners and architects have been
inspired by this design for it’s fundamental principle of boundaries as a
tool for supervision that empowers spatial injustice.
Boundaries, both just and unjust, are associated with social, conceptual
and spatial organization. Through means of control, boundaries have
been used in varying approaches that either assist or dismiss spatial
injustices that these constraints may evoke.
[Fig 31] De Koepel panoptic prison
in Haarlem, the Netherlands, 2017.
23
Boundary| Panopticism
English philosopher Jeremy Bentham speculated on the idea of the
central inspection principle. Bentham came to realize his study for
his proposed prison an “Inspection House” (The Panopticon, 2017).
It entailed a circular building in which prison cells would be arranged
around a central inspection tower. This node was able to inspect all
cells at any time while speaking to inmates through an elaborate
system of communication ducts. The inmates, however, would never
be able to see the inspector within the tower itself. The idea created
a constant mode of fear and absolute surveillance (The Panopticon,
2017). Although the prison that Bentham designed was never built,
the designs influence was used to plan and build panoptic architecture
that enables control and surveillance (The Panopticon, 2017).
In 1975, philosopher Michel Foucault analyzed the theoretical
components of Bentham’s panoptic architecture (1979). The prisoner
of these cells became an object within the system of control. The
inspector who is administering the inmates must assume their
responsibility for the constraining power (Foucault, 1979). The
controller in a sense has anonymity as well as dominance. The central
inspector becomes part of the tower itself as a implicit object within the
building (Foucault, 1979). This boundary creates an assured state of
power even though the one asserting it may not be there at all. These
subtle and concealed forms of surveillance have altered the way cities
think about control of the public (Foucault, 1979). As Foucault states,
“justice no longer takes public responsibility for the violence that is
bound up with its practice” (1979: 9).
Social psychologist Shoshana Zuboff makes a note that the behaviors
felt whilst inside this physical panoptic boundary could be escaped
once one exited that physical place (2015). She sees that the blurring
boundaries of both the public and private surveilled realms as
more of a concern following the leaks of former Central Intelligence
Agency employee Edward Snowden (Zuboff, 2015). However suitable
the building acted on the inmates during their prison sentence, the
idea of massive separation, individualizing distributions, and an
overhaul into the intensified control and the extension of total power
were all consequences of the panoptic visions that Bentham set out
in his designs (Foucault, 1979). This spatial boundary has influenced
cities to construct and maintain control of the urban environment.
24
Spatial Appropriation
[Fig 32]
Activism by Design
Reinventing urban boundaries is a fundamental aspect of achieving
spatial justice. Spatial boundaries in the city can create restraints or
produce possibilities of spatial justices and injustices. The former, both
narrative and network, have the capacity to challenge spatial, social,
and conceptual boundaries. However, in the neoliberal era, urbanism
has the tendency to base itself around control and order as a product
of societal and political shifts.
Since 1872, Speaker’s Corner had been deemed one of the most
important sites in London for freedom of speech. George Orwell had
described it as “‘one of the minor wonders of the world’” as he had
listened to Communists, Trotskyists, the Socialist Party of Great Britain,
Mormons, vegetarians, and many more (Coomes, 2015). This site was a
place for religious, political, social preaching, and debate. The amount
of people who attend the Sunday afternoon discussions has decreased,
but the proportion of religious meetings has increased (Coomes,
2015). The debates critique and reflect on the demographical changes
in London, especially being surrounded by high priced neighborhoods
around Hyde Park. People come together face to face and discuss
pressing issues on the corner of London’s largest public park (Coomes,
2015). Can spaces like Speaker’s Corner be replicated? The Speakers’
Corner Trust started a foundation setting up corner-style spaces where
citizens can engage in face-to-face debate (O’Neill, 2008). These
just spaces create spatial boundaries on the rights to the space and
discussion. Soja encourages the active participation of producing more
just spaces for freedom of speech in order to redefine what it means to
be public (2010). The view is to gain greater control over the generators
of urban space and reclaim democratic means of everyday democracy
from those who have been using it as an economic, social, or political
advantage. Seeking rights to city is a radical effect of re-appropriating
space is a constant challenge for theorist such as Lefebvre (Soja,
2010).
25
Boundary | Spatial Appropriation
[Fig 33] Speaker’s Corner, Hyde Park,
2015
Activism by Design
The boundaries separating the specialized sciences of human reality
are illuminated by the practical uses of those sciences on everydayness
(Lefebvre, 2014: 140). The indication remains on the emergence
and urgency of a new social practice no longer typical of “industrial”
but of urban society (Lefebvre, 2014: 140). Lefebvre asserts that it
cannot exist without utopia (2014). It must recognize that there are
a multiplicity of situations. This plays in the largest cities becoming
uncontrollable, ungovernable, and problematic proven difficult to
resolve. It must combine the juxtaposing forces of revolt against a
repressive society with social forces that are capable of resolving the
problems of the megalopolis (Lefebvre, 2014).
Castells argues that Lefebvre must also consider the way in which social
boundaries produces social relationships (1980). It is the increase of
action and communication, encouraging at one and the same time
a free flowering, rhizomatic, pleasurable, the unexpected sociability
and desire. Castells states that “‘social relations are revealed in the
negation of distance’” (Castells, 1980: 90). As Castells describes, for
instance, that class struggle appears to be regarded as the motive force
of history (1980). Revolution and civil protest stretch the limits of urban
boundaries (Castells, 1980).
26
Boundary | Spatial Appropriation
For instance, Trafalgar Square is infamous as a political space for
protests against nuclear, war, apartheid, and tax to name a few. The
poor design and inappropriate structures have inhibited not only people
from walking, but organizing around the space for public demonstration
(Escobar, 2014). When Ken Livingstone was the then Mayor of London,
he seemed to make Trafalgar a more accessible place and a reflection
of London as a world city. The ideas he set out, however, were deemed
to continue the ongoing class polarization; changing the landscape
to fit those with economic advantage (Escobar, 2014). Even though
the redevelopment of Trafalgar Square led to spatial boundaries that
limited the publics capacity to freely experience the openness that once
existed in the square, it did not halt any political demonstrations from
taking place (Escobar, 2014). According to the British Broadcasting
Corporation, over 200,000 — although police put the number at
100,000 — gathered in Trafalgar in 2003 to protest the war in Iraq
(2003). There were major city center disturbances early that day as
a result of the occupation (BBC News, 2003). Lefebvrean modes of
production take place in spaces of control (2014). The urban fabric
grows and extends It borders in order to accommodate city life. The
displacement of objects throughout the square unaffected the means
of displacing information and inhabitants of the space. These are the
features characterizing the space within the city; a landscape and
appearance of city inhabitants seizing public space through modes of
production.
27
Activism by Design
[Fig 34] Brexit protest,
Trafalgar Square, 2016.
Boundary | Spatial Appropriation
Despite the need for production, an overall unease remains. Boundaries
ergo the institutional public space — the space for the formulation of
thought — is occupied by the dominant elites and their networks. Civil
movements need to carve out a new public environment that is not
limited to the Internet, but makes itself present in physical social life
(Castells, 2015). A mechanism to overcome this unsettling emotion
is social adjacencies that can confront and trespass. The contested
borders are usually those of symbolic meaning and power. This entails a
affirmation of the right to use this space and a reclaiming of speculative
property (Castells, 2015). These movements are constructed through
the hybridization of the social networks of the Internet and the formal
urban space. The former is usually recognized as a free flowing
platform used to gather social adjacencies while the latter is the stage
on which the protest is played (Castells, 2015). Designers have to
be responsible for constructing these hybridized spatial networks as
part of their proposals. Designed spaced can house protest within the
constraints and opportunities boundaries fabricate.
Charles Jencks references architectural theorist Rem Koolhaas in
his stance on the quintessential “new urbanism” (Jencks and Kropf,
2008: 306). Koolhaas claims that new urbanism must accelerate the
expansion of concepts, negating boundaries, and refuting separations.
It must discover unnameable hybrids and stop the obsession with the
city and begin to manipulate infrastructure for endless intensifications
and diversifications, shortcuts and redistributions — a reinvention of
psychological space (Jencks and Kropf, 2008).
Boundary crossing in the urban domain is part of human nature —
a stage played by the everyday citizens (Lefebvre, 2014: 140). The
paradox is both engaging and opposing the site in which they interact.
Edges, lines, points, and planes become the interface in which network
and narrative must appropriate space. Physical, social, and theoretical
obstructions hinder the impact on the space. Hybridized means that
Koolhaas sets out in his view could be a methodology used to develop
the metropolis (Jencks and Kropf, 2008). In London’s East End, local
real estate holdout creates a negotiated boundary between resistance
and control.
28
British Nail House:
Wickham’s Department Store
Case Study
[Fig 35]
Activism by Design
Real estate development has changed the urban landscape through
stringent boundaries. China has seen rapid urban growth and
development with the last several decades (Parkinson, 2015). Within
this real estate expansion, many housing estates and buildings
are demolished and replaced with contemporary high rises and
construction. However, some curious and surreal imagery of Chinese
homes and properties that holdout real estate by not selling their homes
to developers create a landscape of new and old coexisting within the
same space. These sites are referred as nail houses due to their refusal
to be hammered down by property development (Parkinson, 2015). The
nail house phenomenon has led to some owners carrying on the fight
for years while gaining widespread media coverage. It is said that some
councils cut access to utilities to encourage owners to leave or even to
demolish homes when they are out for the day (Parkinson, 2015).
The early twentieth century in London was driven by an extreme
heightened influence due to capital coming in from rapid
industrialization. Large scale development was in full swing as London
saw fundamental urban change. In the east end of London’s Mile
End Road, the industrialization created an unusual scene to a 1920s
department store (Parkinson, 2015). The Spiegelhalters, a small local
family business of clock makers and jewelers, was made an offer to buy
out their property by a neighboring business the Wickham’s Department
Store. The department store hoped to create a large colonnade and
tower in order to attract clients away from their rival companies. After
a prior displacement made to the Spiegelhalters’ family, they declared
they would not be selling their property (Parkinson, 2015). This created
an asymmetrical divide in what was to be a block long department
store. The department store continued their construction leaving a void
cutting through the facade of the storefront (Parkinson, 2015).
[Fig 36] Spiegelhalters hold out
real estate, 1920.
29
Boundary | British Nail House: Wickham’s Department Store
Almost a century later, more than 2,700 people signed a petition to
keep the façade of the Spiegelhalters as historic precedent of refusal.
Architectural critic Ian Nairn described it as “a perennial triumph for
the little man, the blokes who won’t conform… may he stay there till
the bomb falls” (Parkinson, 2015: 1). Both the English Heritage, the
Twentieth Century Society, and the Victorian Society have denied the
need for renovation or removal of the façade (Parkinson, 2015).
“Colonnadus Interruptus” was the term coined for the obscure facade
that remained from the development (Moore, 2015: 1). A case of
Lefebvre’s theory of abstract and concrete space (2014). Mile End
Road’s nail house depicts an insertion of the concrete space in abstract
space. A series of memories and symbols of small city ventures are
struck through a fatuous neoclassical capitalist development. The
boundary here seems all the more physical in its lasting appearance,
but similarly to the everydayness that Lefebvre mentions, the boundary
must be read on a multidimensional scale (Lefebvre, 2014: 140). The
mechanism used here is of economical resistance. This idea of holding
out or refusal to modify constitutes as a drawn boundary. Comparable
to the Chinese neologism, the Spiegelhalters can deem themselves
an actor for spatial boundary resistance — where the abstract is seen
equal to or part of the whole of concrete space and construction
(Moore, 2015). The two boundaries are often seen as different. The
architect separates themselves from the physical boundary of concrete
space in order to design. An architectural competition proposal to
design a “sculptural shard…to create a bold, new public entrance”
seems to create a tomb burying any recollection of the revolutionary
creativity created by the Spiegelhalters’ hold out (Moore, 2015: 1). The
social boundary broken down by the breaking of the colonnade created
unexpected social interest in the action, allowing for its existence within
the city (Parkinson, 2015). The conservationist aided the interruption
to exist as an example of the city of London civil protest. “It would have
been ironic if Spiegelhalters’, a building that Hitler couldn’t destroy
during the Blitz, was removed forever now” (Parkinson, 2015: 1). This
symbol of boundary as resistance spatialized urban real estate control.
The space is in turn regenerated to induce a pattern of boundaries that
are resolved through accountability.
30
Spatializing Surveillance:
Accessibility and Accountability
Design Project
GPS ROAD
With Google Maps, real-time data is tracking for route planning and public
transport. Customization and mobility allow for an accurate reading of the
city.
As the player traverses the city, they encounter the moment in which they
can change the building architecture in order to adjust the Google Maps
real-time data.
Urban Protest
Boundaries control urban space through modes of inaccessibility. By
spatializing surveillance, urban practitioners, architects, designers, and
users can occupy the urban environment within this context in order to
confront spatial injustice.
Cameras and other photographic electronics have become mobile
with the development of Body Worn Cameras (BWC) as tools of control
(Big Brother Watch, 2017). Within this relatively new technology come
the spatial implications that are associated with this footage. Local
authorities are able to view the public as they walk, shop, park, and
interact with urban space. As a result of these spatial ramifications,
people are no longer able to walk the city without concerns of being
surveilled (Big Brother Watch, 2017). Within the context of the game,
these technologies can be spatialized. The boundary that once was
hidden from the view of the inspected is shown in order to guide the
player around cones of vision. It may be that games ability to create
virtual elements and make them real is cliché, but in a real urban
environment, these cones illustrate the gravity of the situation.
Boundaries that become real within the game grant the user strategies
to avoid these modes of control. By carefully thinking through these
boundaries, designers can intentionally produce spaces that meander,
intersect, overlay, juxtapose, and at times even open up for the public
to traverse the city in unconventional ways. Similar to Koolhaas’
quintessential new urbanism, space must create unexpected
boundaries within the urban realm to generate psychological space
(Jencks and Kropf, 2008). Understanding pressures that control have
on society must be brought to the forefront of boundary production.
[Fig 37] Previous page: GPS Road tactic
for evading surveillance.
31
Boundary | Spatializing Surveillance: Accessibility and Accountability
[Fig 38] Body Worn Cameras are
spatialized with view cones
BODY WORN CAMERAS
Sony appears to be getting ideas from the cult satirical science-fiction show
Black Mirror as it’s revealed the company is working on a smart contact
Activism by Design
On a larger scale, Google Earth allows their users to develop their own
boundaries as they take varying paths to work, school, or home. Despite
the convenience of such technologies, these conventions track massive
amounts of user data and personalize your life without the knowledge
or consent of the consumer (Solon, 2016). The game creates physical
boundaries between themselves and the satellite by creating false
roads, parking lots, and parks on rooftops and between buildings to
avoid tracking and hacking of information. Similar to the micro evasion
of BWC’s, the directional finder reacts with the players transformation
of the urban environment. Not only is the player directly influencing
the boundary but creating consequences to the city itself. In a similar
manner to the Spiegelhalters, the physical imprint in the game creates
a tangible footprint that remains for others who long for a relatable
issue (Moore, 2015). These tactics serve the purpose of educating and
spatializing surveillance. Designers who physicalize unseen elements
of control have to opportunity to hold accountable those in control of
urban space. By creating simple boundaries — whether geometric of
conceptual — urban space becomes more accessible as a result.
32
Boundary | Spatializing Surveillance: Accessibility and Accountability
[Fig 39] Aerial tactics evading
satellite tracking.
[Fig 40]
Conclusion
Activism by Design
As the United Kingdom and the rest of the world endure the age of
mass surveillance and its foundations, the socio-spatial environment
will continue to adapt with these advancements. Spatial justice
will allow urban practitioners, architects, designers, and theorists
to conceptualize space in order overcome being complicit to these
challenges set by surveillance. By acting on spatial justice, designers
will not be bound by the power imbalances and inequality that exist in
society. This action will accommodate the public for which they design
for. Through examining the relationship between urbanism and civil
protest, these practitioners can study revolutionary action within the
context of the city and control.
Spatial justice contains the framework for designers to link urban
spaces, peoples’ Right to the City, and socio-political equality in space.
As they are extended for control and surveillance, the initial theory of
spatial justice is taken further in order to translate into terms of time
and space. Social movements emphasize spatial justice as meaning to
their urban action. Narrative, networks, and boundaries reinforce ideals
used by protest in order to mobilize relevant theory and practice.
Ad hoc methods of organization, desiring-production, and the
importance of public space develop the city through language and
meaning. Communication and symbols inspired movements such as
the London Cycling Campaign to organize a protest appropriating space
in the urban domain. These theories and actions produced the games
use of impromptu approaches to design. Whilst enabling signs, symbols
and production as a driving force, the player evades surveillance and
control. These tactics enable designers to receive immediate feedback
on the relationship between the urban realm and surveillance. This
didactic relationship between the tactics and the designer creates a
shift in perspective in respect to urban and spatial theory. These nodal
points within the game constantly interact with the user, giving them a
experience of living spatial justices and injustices.
33
Conclusion
As these applications progress, the networks of strategies were
formed as a result. By examining London’s Ring of Steel and the
CPTED program, a framework was produced to demonstrate the
dangerous effects of mass surveillance and the cities’ accessibility.
Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Manuel Castells looked toward
rhizomatic rooted networks as influence on social organizations. These
revolutions established a system of non-hierarchical, dynamic, even
anarchic networks. By viewing spatial justice in this manner, local scale
campaign Focus E15 composes their network by joining with similar
smaller scale nodes. These nodes were able to achieve ambitious
large scale projects with concise rhizomatic planning. The game
subsequently conceived cues from the rhizome as an opportunity
to provide a framework for the player. These strategic urban tactics
support the game’s rhizomatic networks by acknowledging networks
of control. As the networks of surveillance are recognized, the player is
able to evade these exterior forces. The designer can see this pattern
as a method of subverting pressure whilst analyzing the potential
for social change and movements with rhizomatic structure. The
boundaries that make up the rhizome improve social conditions.
Boundaries, such as the panoptic case study, limit architects and
designers by enabling control and constructing boundaries of
surveillance. These boundaries serve as tools of massive separation
and individualism which creates social injustice. Places in London, like
Speaker’s Corner and Trafalgar Square, are precedents for socio-spatial
boundaries that allow public interaction and debate to transpire. Rem
Koolhaas calls for a new typology of urbanism where psychological
space and spatial justice is thought of firstly and foremost instead of
an afterthought. This mechanism is reinforced by the Spiegelhalters’
hold out real estate that created a permanent physical boundary in
the city as a living reminder of resistance and inspiration for similar
events. The game takes these urban tactics and creates overlapping
and intersecting boundaries as a framework for examining Koolhaas’
theorems. The layers that the game stimulates debate and designs
that integrate spatial justice within city boundaries.
These shifting theories, case studies, and strategies come together
as a call to action. Navigating and mobilizing relevant theory and
practice embody the shift in perspective for designers. This serves
as an orientation device that organize these alternative views into
a cohesive protest piece. We as designers can speculate on spatial
justice, implement these social movements, spatial theories, and test
them in order to produce spatial equality in the urban realm.
Activism by design will mobilize urban practitioners to seek spatial
justice.
34
Activism by Design
MArch Urban Design 2016-17
University College London
The Bartlett School of Architecture
Notes
Activism by Design
1. Developed by English scientist Michael Faraday in the 1830s, the Faraday cage or Faraday
shield stops mobile phone reception, wifi radiation, and shield devices from electronic wiretapping
through the use of conductive metals and meshes (Stinson, 2013).
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Figures
Activism by Design
Activism by Design
[Figure 1] Author’s own (2017) GPS Road — The Snooper’s Charter — Design Project. [Illustration].
[Figure 2] Author’s own (2017) Mirror — The Snooper’s Charter — Design Project. [Illustration].
[Figure 3] Author’s own (2017) Disco — The Snooper’s Charter — Design Project. [Illustration].
[Figure 4] Author’s own (2017) Phone Cage — Six Collages — Design Project. [Illustration].
Preface
[Figure 5] Nike (2017) Nike unveils New York headquarters topped with giant planted swoosh. https://
www.dezeen.com/2017/06/28/nike-nyhq-new-york-headquarters-giant-swoosh-usa> Site accessed 14
July 2017.
Introduction
[Figure 6] Author’s own (2017) Churchix — 20 Tactics — Design Project. [Illustration].
Spatial Justice
[Figure 7] Author’s own (2017) We Want Spatial Justice — Design Project. [Illustration].
[Figure 8] Rob Baker (1951) Another demonstration in Trafalgar Squre the following week. 19th Jan
1951. http://flashbak.com/100-years-of-protesting-at-trafalgar-square-part-2-19449> Site accessed
14 July 2017.
Narrative
[Figure 9] Author’s own (2017) Trafalgar Square — Snooper’s Charter — Design Project. [Illustration].
Semiotics and Semantics
[Figure 10] LNP (2017) Organisers say 40,000 protesters are marching in central London to protest
President Trump’s travel ban and planned state visit to the UK. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/
article-4191186/Thousands-protest-Donald-Trump-s-travel-ban-London.html> Site accessed 14 July
2017.
[Figure 11] Author’s own (2017) Facial Recognition Cloak — Design Project. [Illustration].
[Figure 12] World Visits (2012) Trafalgar Square – Travel Guide, London Attraction Place. http://worldvisits.com/2012/11/trafalgar-square-travel-guide-london-attraction-place>
Site accessed 14 July 2017.
The London Cycling Campaign: Die In Protest
[Figure 13] Getty Images (2017) Cyclists stage a “die-in” protest in London to raise awareness of
road safety. http://uk.businessinsider.com/self-driving-cars-revolution-cycling-safety-audi-nutonomycities-2016-7>
Site accessed 14 July 2017.
[Figure 14] Cycling Weekly (2015) Stop Killing Cyclists have organised a die-in outside TfL’s
headquarters on Friday evening to commemorate the 21 cyclists who have died since November 2013.
http://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/die-in-to-be-held-outside-tfl-hq-to-protest-cyclingdeaths-201722>
Site accessed 14 July 2017.
Appendix
Semiotic Strategy
[Figure 15] Author’s own (2017) Facial Recognition Cloak— Design Project. [Illustration].
[Figure 16] Author’s own (2017) Disco — 20 Tactics— Design Project. [Illustration].
[Figure 17] Author’s own (2017) Masking — 20 Tactics— Design Project. [Illustration].
[Figure 18] Author’s own (2017) Survey-lance — Design Project. [Illustration].
Network
[Figure 19] Author’s own (2017) Hackney — Six Sites — Design Project. [Illustration].
Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design and the Ring of Steel
[Figure 20] Harvard Design Magazine (2017) Map of the Ring of Steel, London. http://www.
harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/42/fortress-london-the-new-us-embassy-and-the-rise-of-counterterror-urbanism>
Site accessed 14 July 2017.
Rhizomatic Revolution
[Figure 21] Author’s own (2017) GPS Road — Six Collages — Design Project. [Illustration].
[Figure 22] Penguin Classics (2009) Anti-Oedipus. http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/
books/305132/anti-oedipus-by-gilles-deleuze-and-felix-guattari/9780143105824> Site accessed 14
July 2017.
[Figure 23] UK Uncut (2017) List your action. http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/list-your-action> Site
accessed 14 July 2017.
Focus E15
[Figure 24] Focus E15 (2015) Social Housing, Not Social Cleansing: Focus E15 Campaign’s Victories.
https://rs21.org.uk/2015/07/30/social-housing-not-social-cleansing-focus-e15-campaigns-victories>
Site accessed 14 July 2017.
[Figure 25] Focus E15 (2014) Focus E15 go to Bow County Court and win. http://thelostbyway.
com/2014/10/focus-e15-go-bow-county-court-win.html> Site accessed 14 July 2017.
[Figure 26] Focus E15 (2014) Public meeting for focus E15 campaign on the Carpenters estate 20
October 2014. https://focuse15.org/events> Site accessed 14 July 2017.
Micro and Macro Networks
[Figure 27] Author’s own (2017) Cell Phone Cage — Six Models — Design Project. [Illustration].
[Figure 28] Author’s own (2017) Cell Phone Cage — 20 Tactics — Design Project. [Illustration].
Boundary
[Figure 29] Author’s own (2017) Finance Bank — Six Sites — Design Project. [Illustration].
Activism by Design
Panopticism
[Figure 30] Getty Images (2017) The Geometrical Ascent to the Galleries in the Colosseum, Regent’s
Park, 1829. http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/the-geometrical-ascent-to-the-galleriesin-the-colosseum-news-photo/463974135>
Site accessed 14 July 2017.
[Figure 31] The New York Times (2017) De Koepel prison in Haarlem, the Netherlands, which recently
housed migrants. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/world/europe/netherlands-prisonsshortage.html?mcubz=2>
Site accessed 14 July 2017.
Spatial Appropriation
[Figure 32] Author’s own (2017) Mirror — Six Collages — Design Project [Illustration].
[Figure 33] Shoot the Street (2015) Speaker’s Corner, London. https://www.shootthestreet.co.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2016/07/Speakers-Corner-Photos-04-1.jpg.
Site accessed 14 July 2017.
[Figure 34] Margo Leach (2016) Thousands of people turned up at London’s Trafalgar Square for a pro-
EU rally on Tuesday despite organisers calling the event off. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/
pro-eu-rally-at-trafalgar-square-attracts-thousands-despite-event-being-cancelled-due-to-unprecedentedresponse_uk_5772b6c6e4b0220ef54faa0d>
Site accessed 14 July 2017.
British Nail House: Wickham’s Department Store (Case Study)
[Figure 35] Author’s own (2017) Chinese Nail House — Collage — Design Project [Illustration].
[Figure 36] Author’s own (2017) British Nail House — Collage — Design Project [Illustration].
Spatializing Surveillance: Accessibility and Accountability (Design Project)
[Figure 37] Author’s own (2017) GPS Road — 20 Tactics — Design Project [Illustration].
[Figure 38] Author’s own (2017) Body Worn Cameras — 20 Tactics — Design Project [Illustration].
[Figure 39] Author’s own (2017) GPS Park — Six Collages — Design Project [Illustration].
Conclusion
[Figure 40] Author’s own (2017) Cookies — The Snooper’s Charter — Design Project [Illustration].
[Figure 41] Author’s own (2017) Masterplan — The Snooper’s Charter — Design Project [Illustration].
Appendix