Barking from Without is part of the 2010 Cities Methodologies exhibition and conference organised by the UCL Urban Lab. The exhibition is taking place at the Slade Research Centre on Woburn Square from 5 to 7 May 2010.
Barking from Without is an interactive installation presenting material from an ongoing case study of the new Barking Town Square in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Part of a broader research project on design in the contemporary public realm, the case study is supported primarily by participant-observer methods that draw as much on ethnographic fieldwork as on Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. The research is presented in the form of an open dialogue which visitors are encouraged to join by leaving written comments.
All material from the installati0n is posted on Barking Assemblage under the category Barking from Without. If you would like to leave a comment, please email comment@barking-assemblage.org
Le plaisir de laisser la vaisselle trainer toute la nuit c’est que le lendemain matin elle nous réserve de sublimes et graisseux paysages.
Et en la laissant un peu plus longtemps (sans toutefois attirer les foudres des colocs), pour qu’elle trempe et réfléchisse, elle se fâche, tourbillonne, et devient bas fond sous-marin.
Durant les nuits d’été, le chant des merles noirs laisse place aux hurlements nocturnes des renards. Oui, les terribles hurlements des doux petits renards roux. Avant qu’ils ne viennent me réveiller en pleine nuit en “jouant” sous ma fenêtre, me laissant ainsi découvrir l’identité de ces spectres, j’avais cru en une chauve-souris géante. Sans blague. C’est à glacer le sang.
Pour ceux qui passent beaucoup de temps le long de la voie ferrée entre Rosemont et le Plateau, vous aurez sûrement déjà remarqué ses deux énormes cheminées de plus de 75m de haut. Inauguré en 1970 dans le but d’y incinérer des tonnes de déchets montréalais, l’incinérateur fut désaffecté en 1993. Les activités industrielles y sont maintenant complètement absentes, mais le bâtiment reste debout comme témoin impressionnant du patrimoine industriel de la ville.
Les photos présentées ici ont été retenues comme finalistes du concours Montreal Matters de l’Office National du Film du Canada en 2007.
Paper presented at the 2009 Anglo-American Conference of Historians “Cities” in London.
You can download the full paper with images here.
INTRODUCTION
What we will look at in the next twenty minutes is a study of three iconic projects in Toronto that were all planned and built between the years 1955 and 2005: City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square, the Eaton Centre, and Dundas Square. I argue that the three adjacent projects parallel a development in the design and representation of public space in the city starting with an idealised projection of the public realm and ending with its commodification and transformation into spectacle.
The research has focused primarily on the play between the official description of the projects by the authorities and their reception by the public as represented in the local and national media. The goal was to collect an “assembly” of participating voices in the dialogue surrounding the creation of each project and allow the argument to surface organically from the fragments. In parallel to this, each site was “read” through the theories of three different thinkers. City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square with Hannah Arendt, Eaton Centre with Jean Baudrillard and Dundas Square with Guy Debord. What I would like to present here are some of the themes that emerged during the process.
