Date: 30 May 03
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View online Exhibition
The Common Place seminar, which is a title suggesting both belonging and location, aimed to progress the themes and issues raised by the exhibition, namely what are common places and what do they mean to us.
It also aimed to juxtapose differing views, determine points of agreement and conflict and encourage awareness and lively debate around this theme of places that we both acknowledge but also take for granted. The seminar was chaired by the writer and broadcaster Muriel Gray and included speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds, each posing different perspectives, and included architects, landscape architects, academics, artists, anthropologists and urbanists.
Speakers
The seminar speakers were as follows:
- Muriel Gray (Ideal World Productions)
- Raoul Bunschoten (Berlage Institute)
- Charlie Sutherland & Jake Harvey (Sutherland Hussey Architects)
- Christopher Philo (Glasgow University)
- Eelco Hooftman (Gross Max)
- Dr Wendy Gunn (Dundee University)
- Pauline Gallacher (NESTA)
- Craig Dykers (Snøhetta)
- Iain Borden (The Bartlett )
- Malcolm Fraser (Malcolm Fraser Architects)
Points of Discussion
Hooftman addressed a question on the nature of collaboration by positing that they must be taken seriously and by doing so 'you can make people very brave'. There can be a down side too, for example with the Gross Max Hackney project, although the community comprises mixed cultures, it is essentially only white residents who come to the public forums.
Greg White of LOCI Design commented that he believed that people can't get a grip of what is a mad space and that we should just create multi-functional spaces and hope for a response from all.
Philo's response was to agree that there can be no real design criteria which can be applied to spaces that are not related to therapeutic places.
Responding to the question, 'Are we able to sustain our public spaces?' Gallacher claimed that in Glasgow we attempted to emulate the model of Barcelona, where a dense environment was carved out. This was a naïve supposition as there's not the critical mass of people to configure the street life of Barcelona. It has been a crude tool and now the emphasis is on recreational green space instead.
Dykers believed that we shouldn't use the terms 'success' and 'failure' when describing public spaces. 'There is no such thing as success or failure, it's just part of life. Things grow and change - it's just the speed that differs. I don't consider the Whiteinch garden as a failure - I think it will probably be re-discovered'.
Fraser expressed concern that many of the projects to develop public spaces do not go to creative architects but to corporate practices who lack the vision. Commissioning bodies should adopt a coherent approach to addressing and commissioning the development of common places.
Dykers summed up proceedings by claiming that often 'the best laid plans never get laid!'
