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Urban drifting

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Urban drifting as a mean for contemplating urban environments A preface for the soon-to-be-submitted essay for the Critical Readings module January 2015, MA Architectural and Urban Design University of Brighton
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URBAN DRIFTING URBAN DRIFTING ...as a mean to contemplating the city and urban environment << So it began: my ritual of early morning long walks on Sundays in an emptied-out Los Angeles. Better at that early hour so that I could truly see it, the old bones, the dreams and find my place within them. These walks have been a way of slowing time down to better understand the city’s layered story. >> Lynell, George: Visions and revisions: The spirits of Los Angeles, Boat magazine #8, p.19 Urban drifting is the process of walking within urban environments (cities, towns, megapolis) without having any particular destination or motive. Letting yourself be part of the crowd and the urban flow. Discovering scenerys and aspects of the urban web through the act of disclosure, which, otherwise you would not had the chance to witness or pay attention to. Cities - urban dwellings in general - are continously growing multilayered entities, hence composed by diverse but coherent smaller parts and the latter in smaller. Their individual interpretation and contemplation is essential for the better understanding of the city’s function as a whole. Urban drifting contributes to a more vivid and precise depiction - charting - of the sense of the city and its elements that is being consisted of. Those would vary from built environment (buildings, construction sites, sculptures etc) to visual or nasal stimulis. (park, seafront, open market etc) A B C A. strolling through Austin, Texas B. << to walk from one end of the plan to another, at a uniform pace, will provide a sequence of revelations [...]>> sketches from Gordon Cullen’s ‘ The concise townscape’, Routledge, p.17 C. Ryan Jensen, sketches, University of Colorado D. Urban analysis of New York: A hyper-mediated space of networks and flows. Drawing prepared by Justine Ala and Patrick Little for Architectural Design 7, UFL, 2010 D AIM 37: CRITICAL READINGS, STTAGE 1, MAAUD ALEXANDROS DANIILIDIS
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Page 1: Urban drifting

URBAN DRIFTINGURBAN DRIFTING...as a mean to contemplating the city and urban environment

<< So it began: my ritual of early morning long walks on Sundays in an emptied-out Los Angeles. Better at that early hour so that I could truly see it, the old bones, the dreams and find my place within them. These walks have been a way of slowing time down to better understand the city’s layered story. >>

Lynell, George: Visions and revisions: The spirits of Los Angeles, Boat magazine #8, p.19

Urban drifting is the process of walking within urban environments (cities, towns, megapolis) without having any particular destination or motive. Letting yourself be part of the crowd and the urban flow. Discovering scenerys and aspects of the urban web through the act of disclosure, which, otherwise you would not had the chance to witness or pay attention to.

Cities - urban dwellings in general - are continously growing multilayeredentities, hence composed by diverse but coherent smaller parts and the latter in smaller. Their individual interpretation and contemplation is essential for the better understanding of the city’s function as a whole.

Urban drifting contributes to a more vivid and precise depiction - charting - of the sense of the city and its elements that is being consisted of. Those would vary from built environment (buildings, construction sites, sculptures etc) to visual or nasal stimulis. (park, seafront, open market etc)

A

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A. strolling through Austin, Texas

B. << to walk from one end of the plan to another, at a uniform pace, will provide a sequence of revelations [...]>>sketches from Gordon Cullen’s ‘ The concise townscape’, Routledge, p.17

C. Ryan Jensen, sketches, University of Colorado

D. Urban analysis of New York: A hyper-mediated space of networks and flows. Drawing prepared by Justine Ala and Patrick Little for Architectural Design 7, UFL, 2010

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Page 2: Urban drifting

URBAN DRIFTINGURBAN DRIFTING...as a mean to contemplating the city and urban environment

<< [...] The stranger paused, and, for a moment, seemed lost in thought; then, with every mark of agitation, pursued rapidly a route which brought us to the verge of the city [...] It was the most noisome quarter of London, where everything wore the worst impress of the most deplor-able poverty, and of the most desperate crime.>>

E.A.Poe, The man of the crowd, , The complete works of E.A.Poe, Thomas Crowell & company, New York, p. 134

Through his character, E.A.Poe succeeds to give the reader a notion of Lon-don’s most unexplored corners with an exquisetely poetic and discriptive word. Essentially, the protagonist acts as an urban drifter, whose curiosity for a certain character of the play led him to places and situations which, potentially, would never had experienced. This example gives us an even stronger notion of the process of contemplating an urban space with its components of all types.

<< Just as it is possible through choice of materials and colors to create a certain palette in a city, it is equally possible through planning decisions to influence patterns of activities, to cre-ate better or worse conditions for outdoor events, and to create lively or lifeless cities.>>

Jan Gehl, Life between buildings , Island press, p.31

But how can those ‘‘decisions’’ be established? Which experiences and ideas tend to empower the process of ‘‘deciding’’? According to my opin-ion, urban drifting as an essential tool to chart a city and all of its ‘‘micro-cells’’ that actually turn it into a living entity, may prove very useful for our personal contemplation of the city and its features and ,thus, plays an important role on building/establishing a decision about an urban space - considered issue.

London map: Stephen Walter, hub map of London

small sketches: Eduard Angeli

(l-r) Lizzi Lima, perspective sketch, pinterest

Scheme for the Bircham Park, Derriford,Plym-outh - Lorraine Farrelly, Drawing for urban design,Laurence King, p.85

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