The perennial tussle between the right to free speech and the right to privacy has a spatial dimension of relevance to any designer. Architects, geographers and planners are acutely aware of the relationships between public and private spaces. Free speech roughly equates to the right of access to a place (eg a city square, the…More
Tag Archives: space
The Creosote Code
I asked a colleague if she was going to buy a new wafer-thin iPad. “Yes they are waafre-thin,” she echoed in pseudo French. “I never took you for a fan of Monty Python,” I said. “I’m not. Oh, is that where it comes from?” came the response, “We often say something is ‘waafre-thin’ in our…More
Silent night
Silence is close to noise in its effects. In his study of a Paris housing estate, the sociologist Jean- François Augoyard reports the experiences of people inside an elevator: “Dramatic evocations are set in gear on the basis of noises.” Noises invoke haunted castles, but “the most dramatic images arise with the halt of the…More