A warm welcome to our first cohort of Designing Cities students! The ice-breaking exercise was to discover the ‘everyday urbanism’ of London through direct observations and by taking pictures of daily activities and people. Cities are shaped by different actors resulting in a multiplicity of public and private choices and often, urban spaces, although carefully planned and officially designed, might be in contrast with everyday activities, ‘the connective tissue that binds daily lives together’ (Crawford, 2008). The ongoing exhibition at the Tate Modern in London ‘Living Cities’ (The George Economou Gallery) shows how ‘Artists around the world have examined the modern city in works ranging from panoramic overviews to close-up images recording the minutiae of daily life’. A good coincidence to think on how to capture the social and cultural complexity of daily life in contemporary cities and to understand the way people use the public spaces: whether this is accepted, tolerated, legal, illegal, appropriate, coherent, contradictory and so on. A way to expand the vocabulary of city designers since the very beginning! Nice results and nice pictures!
(Reporter: Giulio Verdini)
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