Unpleasant Design. Designing Out Unwanted Behaviour

Unpleasant Design is an aggregation of techniques and strategies in urban design where social control is an inherent property of objects and places. Unpleasant Design research recognizes the growing desire for controlled environments amongst different authorities but it also accounts for the way ifferent citizens react to it. Unpleasant Design is manifested in the form of “silent agents” which manage the behaviour of people without explicit presence of officials. Unpleasant Design is principally about the relationship of space, design and social interaction. Thus, it is not aimed at harming users of public space in general. Unpleasant Design usually discriminates against particular social groups in order to allow for another to exist. These groups are not always threatening our security, they are sometimes simply a minority or powerless (the teenagers, the poor, marginal groups). We continuously look for qualifiers for something to act as u unpleasant. Our data is an accumulation of field observations of deployed technologies; interviews with scholars and practitioners in the field of urban design. It also includes case studies of particular applications of Unpleasant Designs. Seeking to reveal power structures beyond surveillance and social control in designed interactions, we offer a critical perspective on emerging design patterns.

Space, people, networks

Selena Savic

In this thesis, I investigate wireless communication from an architectural perspective. I am using design prototypes to explore possibilities for interaction and designing with wirelessness in mind. The public primarily regards wireless networking technology as a technical infrastructure that should provide a seamless flow of information across a network of base stations, access points and mobile devices. From this perspective, wireless infrastructure is evaluated in terms of network availability and speed, and is continuously optimised. Researchers explored some other perspectives on wireless communication technology: they used computational spatial analysis to measure signal propagation in space. Some ethnographic studies explored its effect on the use of public space. Wireless connectivity was also explored through the philosophical framework of radical empiricism. All this points to the fact that wireless network infrastructure is a complex topic, spanning multiple fields of expertise and interest (engineering, architecture, urban studies but also sociology and philosophy). It is rarely explored from a plural perspective, as each study typically focuses on the one aspect within its expertise. I propose a more complex view of wireless connectivity, encompassing these different perspectives through an intellectual framework that is based on the notion of architecturality. Architecturality, a property common to all architecture but exceeding the limits of built artefacts, is a measure of the effect something has on the experience of space. Through the lens of the built environment, I expose the complex transactions that take place between networks, people and space. In order to evaluate architecturality of wireless communication signals, I conducted a series of practical design experiments, involving people and interactive installations, and using data gathered from mobile devices and wireless access points. The design of these experiments relies on the principles described by human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers as seamful design. Seamful design reveals underlying structures and relationships behind what appears as a utilitarian infrastructure. The design experiments contribute to the discussion on the use of design artefacts in practice-based research methodologies, thus challenging the different agents of knowledge production and the superiority of established research traditions. The insights gained from this complex examination of wireless networks are important for architectural design, as a way to account more adequately for signal propagation through buildings. The experience of internalising wireless networks in the process of design engenders a designerâs sensitivity towards the presence of wireless communications in space. This sensitivity, similar to the one we have for the distribution of natural and artificial lighting, will be needed in the ever more challenging design of the built environment. The sensible designer can account for, and envision, more dynamic environments that are able to accommodate change and information in completely new ways.

EPFL2015

Space, people, networks

Selena Savic

EPFL2015