At the end of week 1 we were given the brief for part one: Observing/Participating. Our first task was to choose a social space to observe/participate and visit, We were to assign a few words from the list to this space to help us in our observations. We also were assigned a reading by Georges Perec which I found very helpful in how to approach documenting a space as well as a list of prompts to help us analyse the space.
Once I had chosen a space to document, Gloria Jeans cafe, I went and spent an hour there to make a list of observations. From this hour I was able to compile a long list of notes on what happened as I sat there. Using these notes I wrote a rough 100 words gravitational pull about the site and why I chose it.
The space I chose doesn’t have the most positive connection to me. I work here so I see everything going on behind the scenes and know the space in a way that customers usually wouldn’t, I know the in’s and out’s of the space and tend to see everything wrong with it. However the cafe is popular with plenty of returning customers so there must be something about it that draws people in, or why else would they be there? This is what I aim to explore, to try and view the space from a different perspective and discover the appeal for others. Working in the cafe was both an advantage and disadvantage to me. It was a disadvantage as I already had preconceived ideas about the place I was trying to document but an advantage as I was able to spend plenty of time there and there were some aspects of my documentation I already had noticed over time and was able to include.
In Tuesdays class after having done at least one site visit over the weekend, we looked at some examples of documentation and began to make an intuitive map about our chosen site.
Spatial Design 
Leave a comment