DRS2012 Bangkok Proceedings Vol 4 - Design Research Society

Making Sense of Interventions in Public Places as Drivers of Urban Renewal
Currently, we are facing with globalized architecture, buildings, services and structures
looking the same in different parts of the world, and frequently neglecting local
knowledge, culture, development and, the regions’ identity. Standard designs often make
spaces monotonous; and diminish the state of the arts and culture that would add
essence, uniqueness and authenticity to the building, street, community, public site and
the city area in general. Standards designs are also evident in our daily city environments
in form of visual images and pictures. Visual culture is produced within society as it
involves art, design and society as means for expression (Walker and Chaplin, 1997).
Visual culture aims at communicating ideas, values, moral messages and stories which
are embedded in things, such as forms, colors, and dimensions. However, the aesthetics
of urban landscapes are often dominated by the power of industry. For example,
advertisements in which the desire and need for people to consume are illustrated. This
capitalist aesthetic is often the central characteristic of public places, messages denoting
one-side approach of communication. The role of people in urban places has mainly
become to consume messages denoting commercial interests, leaving behind the central
notion of public places as being reciprocal, participative, common, democratic and selfgoverning.
(Eriksson, Riisgaard, Lykke-Olesen, 2007).
The design of everyday aesthetics, the city and the utilization of urban public places bring
about activities of domination, ownership and, to a great extent, of public participation.
Frequently, the utilization of the city space is planned by decision makers and urban
governance and by their aesthetic taste and attitude. The city, then, becomes more a
semi-public realm in which physical spaces are utilized as platforms of colonization with
specific values and objectives. Everyday aesthetic preferences often lead to results that
go deeper than the simple preoccupation with the surface, and which have an effect on,
besides the daily life, also on the state of the society and the world. The supremacy of
aesthetics lies in the influence it determines on our attitudes and actions. (Saito, 2007).
Aesthetics can promote social change through their aesthetic effect on people’s senses,
sensitivity, feelings and understanding (Fuad-Luke 2009).
The city and urban revitalization comprises a variety of layers established by temporal
and permanent human acts in urban spaces that deal with specific objectives and
perspectives. They constitute urban aesthetics, experiences and interactions, which are
established and carried out by private and public sector and, by individuals and groups of
people. Currently city designs, and the new renaissance of cities often applies a
marketing approach that sets places as products and tries to stick on them a brand. This
commercialized approach to places is often superficially created putting in question the
authentic social and cultural aspects of regeneration such as heritage and tradition.
Often, urban revitalization can be compared with the general perception of design as
being commercialized and commodified products that call for consumerism. On the
contrary one can apply to urban regeneration a social design approach, as the design of
everyday is moving towards design for social innovation, co-creation, co-design and
social design. This implies participatory and social approaches to the construction from
the city. Aristotle said “a citizen is someone who has a part in the act of governing and
being governed” (cited in Rancière 2004:12). The appropriation of public places is an act
of freedom, capability of expression, and reflection, and it contributes to urban
revitalization as the quality and essence of change, such a person is a political being, an
interventionist and an activist.
Interventions in Public Places
The role of interventions in cities and especially for urban revitalization is essential. In this
paper an intervention in the public space is defined as a temporal action caused by a
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