3983 research outputs found
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To go or not to go: The challenges of UK public toilet provision
Full text linkThe United Kingdom's public toilet provision currently faces many challenges. This paper sets out some of the key barriers to providing inclusive toilet provision. We suggest that one of the key challenges provision faces is the taboo of the public toilet and that this contributes to a lack of recognition in the essentials of provision. However, we argue that the taboo around public toilets also affects future funding, not only of the provision itself but extends to research of the provision and it's social and economic necessity. Such research would generate evidence on the importance of public toilets for everyone's successful urban living, but especially from a public health perspective that affects everyone
Beyond squrrealism
No full textSix contemporary artists in dialogue with Surrealist masterpieces from the collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen This autumn, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen presents Beyond Surrealism, a group exhibition with six internationally renowned artists: Kerstin Brätsch (Germany 1979), Monster Chetwynd (UK 1973), Laure Prouvost (France 1978), Tai Shani (UK 1976), Emma Talbot (UK 1969) and Raphaela Vogel (Germany 1988). Each has chosen works from the museum’s collection to be shown in dialogue with their own work, and several have produced new works for the exhibition. In the exhibition This visually impressive exhibition will stimulate visitors’ urge to think critically about social issues and to look differently at the world around us. Beyond Surrealism will surprise visitors by showing masterpieces from the museum’s collection in combination with contemporary art, encouraging visitors to think outside the box
Aligning digital futures with ecological citizenship for sustainability
Full text linkAs digital technology continues to embed and influence everyday life, its social and environmental impacts need to be addressed seriously. This article introduces and clarifies the concept of Ecological Citizenship (EC), defining it as a form of citizenship that extends rights and duties beyond the human social sphere into ecological systems, requiring individuals, communities, and institutions to take responsibility for the environmental consequences of their digital practices. Unlike traditional forms of citizenship tied to legal or territorial boundaries, EC is grounded in shared ecological accountability and civic responsibility. We argue that EC offers a distinctive lens for shaping the evolution of a Sustainable Digital Society (SDS), where digital innovation and sustainability are co-aligned. Through theoretical analysis and case studies, this article examines how EC can support community-based, policy-led, and design-focused approaches towards digital sustainability. We look to highlight ways in which EC can be embedded in digital behaviour, infrastructure, and product design while acknowledging barriers such as the digital divide, unequal resource allocation, and adverse policy settings. This research aims to offer policymakers, technologists, and educators’ pragmatic advice for realising sustainable design, environmental literacy, and universal digital access. The study looks to argue for a more systemic reconsideration of digital development, a consideration which places environmental values at the forefront of technological progress, to ensure that digital transformation is both socially equitable and beneficial to planetary well-being
Public engagement: MyCity: MyCity: Mapping socio-spatial experiences of teenage girls in urban public spaces
No full textUrban public spaces as play a crucial role in social transformation and identity formation of individuals and groups. However, teenage girls are significantly underrepresented in these spaces due to a combination of environmental, social, and structural barriers. Such factors not only deter girls from accessing public spaces but also impact their physical and mental well-being. Therefore, it is crucial to have girls’ perspectives and active participation in the socio-spatial environment for fostering inclusive and equitable cities. By using design-led methods, MyCity engages with teenage girls from London Borough of Wandsworth to map and understand their daily experiences of using urban public spaces to initiate a dialogue with relevant decision-makers in the design and planning processes. A public engagement day was organised at Southside Shopping Centre in Wandsworth where members of the local community were invited to take part in a reflective session on issues related to equitable access to our city. The public engaged with the artefacts created by teenage girls and shared their thoughts on the pressing socio-spatial issue
The wellbeing framework for consumer experiences in the circular economy of the textile industry
Full text linkConspicuous consumption, driven by immediate satisfaction, novelty, and status, contradicts the Circular Economy's (CE) goals of reducing consumption and waste. As the CE evolves into a global mission supported by legislation, it must address overconsumption by adopting a humanist, design-focused, participatory approach that fosters alternative cultures of consumption. This paper investigates the potential of leveraging human wellbeing as a strategic approach to achieving circular sustainable consumption of textiles. It proposes that strengthening the connection between human wellbeing and material resource flow, particularly through a garment’s lifecycle, can aid in reducing the textile consumption necessary for a successful CE. The ‘Wellbeing framework for consumer experiences in the circular economy of the textile industry’ positions consumer wellbeing as essential for the circular value chain of textiles. It serves as a cornerstone for designing consumer experiences that support a CE, informs alternative narratives for the industry and society, and has the potential to influence policy. The Framework is grounded in a comprehensive literature review examining how consumer wellbeing can drive the social health benefits of circularity, foster new sustainable consumption cultures, and serve as a consumer-centric tool for achieving zero waste through responsible and personalised engagement with consumption, reuse, and recycling. The iterative literature review and interdisciplinary elaboration followed five stages: review, selection, empirical testing, synthesis, and abstraction to achieve the final framework. The Framework comprises 16 wellbeing dimensions clustered into three categories: being well, feeling well and doing well. The primary contribution of this framework is its holistic approach to integrating and balancing the hedonic and eudaimonic dimensions of wellbeing within the context of the CE. It conceptualises wellbeing as a dynamic temporal process that evolves throughout the consumption journey, encompassing moments of both satisfaction and challenge, and addresses social factors such as the embodied experiences and self-perception elicited by a garment
An environmental approach to connected autonomous renewable energy vehicles, associated semiotics and the synthetically intelligent city
Full text linkConnected autonomous renewable energy vehicles (CAREV) will change our cities. CAREV are cited as environmentally regenerative, systemic future advanced transport modality integrated with the synthetically intelligent (SI) city to improve liveability and safety. This research is motivated by a concern to couple these changes to the wider changes needed to make our cities more environmentally sustainable, equitable, safe and just. This research argues for a social and environmental framework for the introduction of autonomous vehicles into our cities, as part of a diverse transport ecology. The project developed a ‘symposium method’ to include continuous feedback, iterative, diverse voices, and opinions in the design, thinking and transdisciplinary processes. The symposium method provided a formal structure to both bring other voices, informal dialogue and imaginative approaches into the work, and is replicated in the structure of this thesis. Several sub-questions arise: - Can we live with autonomous vehicle intelligence in the public realm? - Can we co-define an ecological framework in which technology positively influences the environment? - What opportunities and threats does this technology hold, regarding spatial or social justice, and which parts of societies might be affected? - Beyond the designs of cities and vehicles, what can we observe that will change due to autonomous vehicles (AVs) connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) or connected autonomous renewable energy vehicles CAREVs? - Does a change in the fleet from human-driven vehicles to CAREVs allow for deeper changes in the city fabric and its semiotics and communications, and might a ‘systemic semiotic technoecology’ arise? The project achieves its creative and cognitive contribution through design, and its symposium method. It is an investigation through an interwoven relationship of research practice in design, architectural multimedia, experimentation, thinking and writing. A layering of knowledge and creative insights emerge. The short videos provide access to the architectural multimedia, animations, film and a summary of the symposium method, the videos make the research accessible to a wide audience and form part of future consulting instruments. This research has been disseminated through publications, the research interface website, lectures and, ultimately, this PhD thesis, which comprises a thesis and the two videos which create an ecological view of a future transport modality
Situating the landscape: An enquiry into how the landscapes of Suffolk are experienced and historicised through the practice of analogue large-format photography
Full text linkThis research project explores the significance of affective encounters with history, and the value of using a large-format analogue photographic practice to instantiate those encounters – a form of creative historiography that does not give primacy to situating remnants of the past in a linear teleological narrative. It seeks to demonstrate how an analogue photographic practice – contextualised within an auto-ethnographic narrative – can draw attention to the ‘affective’ nature of the past, through its entanglement with the present. Consequently, it explores history as a relational dynamic phenomenon, which continues to shape and characterise how we experience and navigate the environments we inhabit. The research addresses two interrelated questions: How does the large-format analogue photographic medium and its various processes and techniques shape an embodied engagement with place? How can engaging with an embodied and situated experience of place create the possibility of historicising it through large-format analogue photography? This research joins with the creative historiographic practices of artists like the writer W.G.Sebald and filmmaker Patrick Keiller. What the practice shares in common with these artists is an examination of landscapes shaped by social history that are discovered or revealed by walking them. The personal histories that emerge from these embodied engagements with place are subsequently narrated through recollection alongside the use of lens-based imagery. I argue for the particular contribution that can be made to creative forms of historiography through the use of large-format analogue photography. Within this thesis three walks are narrated. Each walk departs from the same place, situated in a region of the Suffolk countryside featured repeatedly in the works of Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable. The first walk explores a region of the county previously unknown to me, via the Icknield Way path. The second is a circular walk, which retraces a region of the county that I knew well approximately thirty years ago. The third walk explores an area of the county I know only through depictions in historic works of landscape art. The research is presented through a body of large-format photographs and creative writing, which examine how the entanglements of my sensory experience, subjective framing of landscape and social history, and my memories – combined fleetingly while walking the Suffolk countryside – are shaped by the photographic practice and/or find expression through it
“The clown with the white face and the little black hat!” Art as the monochrome horror icon
Full text linkAbstract: “He thinks what he is doing is funny because he’s laughing. But I know it’s not funny because they’re all dead”. (Terrifier 2) Art the Clown has cemented himself in contemporary popular culture through the extraordinary trajectory and love for Damian Leone’s Terrifier franchise. The significance of the clown as an archetype can be expressed through both his costume and make-up (Bala, 2013). This paper will therefore explore the visual aesthetic of Art the Clown with a particular emphasis on his clothing choices and the construction of his identity. It will discuss the origins of the vengeful clown beginning in the 19th century, which rose from the ashes of the tradition of the harlequinade (McConnell-Stott, 2012). Art’s visual aesthetic has changed dramatically since his first appearance in the short film The 9th Circle (2008). His look has been steadily curated and developed, and this progression is clearly apparent through the examination of Art in films such as All Hallows Eve (2013), continuing to be refined in his most recent appearance in Terrifier 3 (2024). This transgressive figure of Art the Clown is a welcome addition to the modern horror genre, an antithesis to the established evil clowns of the twentieth century such as Pennywise from Stephen King’s IT or the Joker from the Batman franchise. Art specifically constructs his identity as threatening. This subversion of the clown through his clothing choices and presentation of self makes for a visually striking and unnerving villain. He actively exaggerates his expression through the combination of simple monochromatic make-up, prosthetics and garment choices. Uncanny and unsettling yet ultimately mesmerising, this paper argues that Art the Clown’s self-expression is identified through his clothing and make-up. This is an integral part of the examination of the phenomenon that is the Terrifier franchise
The spaceship Ziggurat and the ripped concrete: Digging in the internet for the ruins of the Birmingham Central Library
No full textThis practice-based research project excavates the debris of the Birmingham Central Library out of and through the internet, adopting an essayistic approach that combines images, objects, text and performance alongside archaeological and archival methods in order to reimagine the site as a regenerative pirate spaceship and to reclaim Brutalist architecture as an alien other (or xeno). The ongoing physical and ideological destruction of Britain’s Brutalist legacy erases any trace of the utopian ambitions imbued within the fabric of such buildings. In an era increasingly defined by post-progressive politics and ideological austerity, I argue that a willingness to speculate on radical alternatives to the way we preserve Brutalism is needed now more than ever if we are to resist what the collective Laboria Cuboniks (2015) refers to as “these puritanical politics of shame—which fetishise oppression as if it were a blessing”. Art historical practices typically regard Brutalism as an architectural vernacular; however, this approach fails to acknowledge that Brutalism was originally conceived of as a methodology (Highmore, 2017). As a result, there exists a gap in knowledge in the way contemporary documentary practices – applied as a performative action – can engage with sites such as the Birmingham Central Library, not as relics of the past but as speculative devices for the future. The idea of virtual and physical worlds being separate entities is becoming indistinct and the question of which space is ‘more real’ is increasingly blurred. By applying a materialist reading of the Internet as a Heterotopic space, this research responds to Owen Hatherley’s provocation in Militant Modernism (2009) - “what would it mean to look for the future’s remnants?” The Internet becomes an archaeological site within which to excavate the remains of a building that is no longer visible in the ‘real’ world. Brutalism – once the embodiment of technological progress – is (re)located and (re)experienced within the virtual, combining Media Archaeology (Parikka, Ernst) with OOO/New Materialisms (Bryant, Morton, Barad) to reimagine the Birmingham Central Library as a narrative device through which to challenge hegemonic structures, examining the possibilities for re-radicalising spatial practice and revealing a multi-temporal experience of place. By re-appropriating web-based platforms and technologies, this project offers an alternative documentary vocabulary, exploring how the archaeological possibilities of cyberspace allow us to re-imagine our relationship to sites that have been lost or forgotten and questioning how the distortion and dislocation of Brutalism, experienced via these new technologies, impacts our ability to speculate on the ‘other/xeno’ political and narrative possibilities of place. The research focuses around three phases of production (Phase 1: Deconstruction, Phase 2: Haunting and Phase 3: Reconstruction), drawing on projects completed during the course of this research including Conc(re)te for the REFORM Design Biennale, Common Ground at the New Art Gallery Walsall and By The City for Plan8t as part of a residency in Changsha, China