Sandra Viña

By Sandra Viña (updated on January 19th, 2012)

VITALIZING EXPERIENCES OF PUBLIC PLACES THROUGH SITE SPECIFIC DESIGN INTERVENTIONS

Sandra.vina@aalto.fi

The ongoing research work lies in the vitalization of public places through site specific design interventions. The core of my research is study how design interventions enhance the experience and participation of people in public places. The work looks into three aspects for vitalizing experiences and participation. First, design qualities of interventions touches upon aesthetic, functionality, and emotional associations trying to stimulate curiosity and attraction towards the site. Such design qualities attempt to reach a higher level for participation based on physical and intellectual aspects. Second, the socio-cultural environment deals with the subjective or particular qualities of the area and community. Content, contextual information and learning play an important role for enhancing participation and content creation.

Photo by Can Ersen Firat. 2001

Finally, activity has to do with the dynamics, interactions and communication between the entities at the site specific design intervention. It looks into experiential and participatory systems that facilitate activity and synergy for vitalizing experiences in public sites. The realization of the research consists of an empirical approach and practice based research. The reflections gathered from the empirical work attempt to lead to at least two strategies for vitalizing public experiences and sites. The future work will look into participatory design techniques for site specific public interventions, challenging the outcome for producing engaging public places.

So far, I have planned and implemented two site specific design interventions. One took place in November 2009 called Canvass and, the other intervention, Animato, occurred in three different contexts during the year 2010.