PLAY IN THE CITY

02.
writing; its character, mood and motivation being unfixed. It is within
this context that Baudelaire pick out that which fascinates him as the
‘urban poet’; that one can find and loose love within an instance. This
implies that the temporality of the event increases its intrigue. With no
record of the love found, at last sight, one has only a memory which is
enriched further with the passing of time after the event.
As Benjamin tells us, Baudelaire views his city (Paris), through the
agitated veil of the crowd. 9 A shimmering homogeneous foreground to
the building and the operation of city space. Baudelaire’s fascination is
in the potential for the ‘veil’ to bring into view something, or someone,
which transcends the ordinary, but only for a fleeting moment.
Baudelaire is transfixed by the possibility of the extra-ordinary; that
which compels love or fascination. So here, much like Borden’s city, the
crowd brings forward fleeting experience, which blooms, but is fated
to disappear. Like Baudelaire, Borden is attracted to the temporary,
and the playfulness of the thing never known fully. We could consider
this antithetically; when the element of temporality is lost, do we leave
the world of play and become ground into the everyday?
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SEMINAR READINGS: PLAYFUL CITY
Benjamin, Walter. “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire” and “Paris, Capital
of the Nineteenth Century”, in Leach, Neil. Rethinking Architecture: A
Reader in Cultural Theory. London: Routledge, 1997, pp. 24 - 40.
Borden, Ian. “Tactics for a Playful City”, in Borries, Friedrich von, Steffen
P. Walz, and Matthias Böttger. Space Time Play: Computer Games,
Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level . Springer Science & Business
Media, 2007, pp. 332 - 334.
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9. Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”, p.27
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