An interdisciplinary workshop about the character of the street.
Project website
Streets are key elements of urban space; they are in essence public spaces and connect diverse areas of the city, weaving the urban fabric. Our understanding of cities has grown in complexity in the last half century. How do we analyse street space? How do we communicate this analysis? Can we use a language that different disciplines will understand? How can we use these methods to change/improve street spaces?
This workshop will explore different approaches to the analysis of streets as public spaces. We invite students, academics and professionals of architecture, planning, anthropology, sociology, history, psychology, film, media, arts and any other discipline interested in the analysis of public space.
We will develop a series of layers of analysis including but not limited to: mapping, drawings, diagrams, photographs, interviews, archive work, soundscapes and more.
We are not looking for a universal solution to the use, design and management of streets, but a culturally specific array of possibilities that our streets could potentially have. North Street is an ideal case study to consider, for it is in the core of the city, it connects very different areas, and above all it is loaded with meaning and potential.
Sound Mapping North Street
The group investigated the sounds of North Street by recording the types of sounds in the street and specifically the thresholds between private and public space.
Humans of North Street
Our group used photography as a way of getting at the untold stories of North Street. We asked shop-owners, their customers and passers-by if we could take their photograph. This provided a starting point to a conversation about why they were in the area, what they thought of it and how they thought it could be improved. From the ‘oldest barbershop in Belfast’ to a new cafe-come-art gallery, the idea was to foreground the kind of stories that do not make it into conventional street maps.
Qualities of North Street
Our group set out to analyse concepts about ‘good’ streets, and try to analyse North Street through those filters. We collected 62 concepts that regard qualities of streets. While authors considered diverse elements, they all tended to define a middle ground. They gave a general normalised series of characteristics, and tended to ignore very relevant issues such as ‘diversity’ of all kinds.
Much of this literature is used by urban design firms to design urban areas commissioned by city councils. The observation of North Street through this lens only starts to shed light on the many questions that have to be asked to a site. The analysis is just beginning…
Layering North Street
This group looked at the historic maps of Belfast to establish the continuity of certain elements, such as the wall that used to surround Belfast. Overlaying maps is a difficult task, because older maps would not exactly align with eachother. However, the observation of the historic maps sheds light on the value of the place and its history, while reminding us of the historic possible futures in these documents.
