So many memories

On my return from the eddBE conference this afternoon I wandered through the MOB on Ann Street to look at the collection of Robert BrownHall.

Reminding me of the pallate of Jeffrey Smart, many paintings immediately ellicted memories of brisbane and the sunshine coast. Besserblock walls. External pipework. heat. light. rain. wind. pavement.
Blown head gasket immediately reminded me of the time I blew the head of my parents' old mitsubishi nimbus at Dickies Beach.
One work immediately reminded me of the work of Pieter Brughel:







In another, the yellow light was so accurate that I could feel the humid afternoon heat on my neck:







And this last one took me immediately back to the front verandah in the January rains:






Beautiful memories resound instantly from these and the many other paintings like it.
When i find this pleasure again in my memories of Brisbane, I wonder afresh what it is that defines this place. It's not a gateway to everywhere else - a 'non-place'... it does have a magnretism, an attraction, a pace, a place for me...
.. but is ever so elusive and difficult to define for some strange reason. Is it the sound of cicadas that greet you at the airport in summer, or the crisp breeze in winter? or the ghostly raggedy gum trees irregularly formed and placed, each with their own face and story to tell?

EddBE2011 - best paper award

"PLAY in the CITY: Parkour and Architecture" recieved the prize for best paper at the close of the inaugral postgraduate sustainable wellbeing conference. In the last few days I've given two phone interviews and tomorrow I will be interviewed by Phillip Smith live on 612 ABC breakfast radio. It's so encouraging that the research is finding fertile reception.

This week has been very exciting, and a dramatic learning curve for me in many respects.

Thank you very much to Craig Cowled and the organising comittee for the conference at QUT. Thank you also to Mirko Guaralda, my supervisor, for his encouragement and guidance.

eddBE 2011 inaugral conference

Today was the first day of proceedings for the inaugral 2011 eddBE conference focusing on sustainability and wellbeing in the built environment. Papers and speakers presented a lot of interesting research from different fields, from the design of underwater oil pipelines and the aeronautical fibre-reinforced-plastics coatings, to the design of aged care homes and night clubs.

I have been privelidged to present my paper on Play and the City, and the QUT media did a write up with photos of me jumping off stuff at qut.



http://www.news.qut.edu.au/cgi-bin/WebObjects/News.woa/wa/goNewsPage?newsEventID=35715

By being a part of this event, I have recieved a lot of encouragement and support from my peers and mentors. Many thanks to Mirko Guaralda, Craig Cowled, QUT and my friends and family who I have lived life with.

Privately Owned Public Space

Reading around I found some cool links which document the extent and location of privately owned public space throughtout NY and LA. There are also some intersting discussions.



I have been meaning or some time to document the extent of POPOS in Brisbane city, and also cataloguing their methods of governance and their behavioural exceptions as a result of city ordinances.

One such example is the Queen Street Mall, and whose operation exists under seperate legislation entitled The Local Government (Queens Street Mall) Act 1981 and is subject to management ordinances not found elsewhere in the city.
Similarly South Bank Parklands is entirely owned by The South Bank Corporation, operating under the auspices of the South Bank Corporations Act.

Some rules and regulations surrounding behaviour in these public places have since been repealed by the new Police Powers and Responsibilities Act 2000.

The results of this can be seen in discussions within the parkour community, and in Maps they have generated for comunicating places of potential (desire), and places of conflict (fear).

The POPOS in the photo described above was the first place in Brisbane to 'ban' parkour and 'parkour-like' activities: Mincom Plaza.

Again, we find hidden terrains of desire and fear imbedded deep within our city.

Play quote by shane clairborne

"Once, there was a small group of kids who decided to go to a park in the middle of the city, and dance and play, laugh and twirl. As they played in the park, they thought that maybe another child would pass by and see them. Maybe that child would think it looked fun and decided to join them. Then maybe another one would. Then maybe a business man would hear thm from his skyscraper. MAybe would look out the window. Maybe he would see them playing and lay down his papers and come down. Maybe they would teach him to dance. Then maybe another businessman would walk by a nostalgic man, and he would take off his tie, toss aside his briefcase and dance and play. Maybe the whole city would join the dance. Maybe even the world. Regardless.. they would enjoy the dance." Claiborne

PLAY in the CITY: Parkour and Architecture

As part of the coursework M.Arch program I was required to write a research paper.



I was motivated to explore ways in which emergent fringe activities take the urban initiative and use old space in new creative ways. I belived that these activities are very powerful creative forces within our cities... I just didn't know why...



Reading Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, i discovered a beautiful quote:

“…Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears,
even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their
rules absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and
everything conceals something else…Cities also
believe they are the work of the mind, or of chance, but
neither one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls.
You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy
wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of
yours…or the question it asks of you, forcing you to
answer, like Thebes through the mouth of the Sphinx”

(Calvino 1974, p44)

These PLAY activities that we see emerging in the urban environment are powerful tools that reveal the desires and fears of urban actors. They reveal shortcomings and conflicts that arrise from our design, procurement and management practices, and they involve all urban players (public, commerce and governance) in a virtual space where these desires and fears can be iterated. The place of play.

So read it.. and then go off and run amok... but be conscious of what you are saying when you play, and be conscious of the dialogue that you are entering into, with both the architecture, and the other urban actors around you.'

Many thanks goes to Mirko Guaralda for his support and supervision this semester.

Peace

PLAY!

Here is my literature review, written for an upcoming QUT research paper about Parkour and Architecture. In it the concepts of play and unregulated ludic activity are explored, and parkour is described as a highly accessable form of play that is very dependant upon the urban context. Existing research proposals which have not yet been conducted are then explored.

view it here...

...and then go outside and play in the street!