New places with new happy objects

”A most important achievement of feminism has been to establish that the experience of women is as important, relevant, and philosophically interesting as the experience of men. ”

-Virginia Held, ‘The Ethics of Care as Moral Theory’ in The Ethics of Care.

The square is already a space that architects pays much attention to, to design a square is a prestigious job and it’s often done in a normative way. The question is how architecture could make the public environment and the square a more inclusive environment for both women and other non-normative groups? I think it’s about challenging the idea of the square, creating more varies designs and developing new architectural options. Above all, we must change that the man’s body and men as a collective are the norm in the public space, if that can be done by architecture.

An answer could be to create new places where other forms of collective can take place. Throughout history, the public space has belonged to the man and still does in many ways, which is a heavy structure to breakdown, but perhaps a greater variety of programs in the public space, and new meeting places where more types of collective can be created as a way to include all kinds of bodies can be one way. If possible, with architectural work, we could create new physical environments with new happy objects, and sometimes turn around the situation of who is active, who is watching and who is absent.

 

Task 7- Isa Draiby

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The good breakdown

“the greatest happiness consists in the having those things which produce the greatest pleasure” (247). Happy objects could be described simply as those objects that affect us in the best way.

Those things we do not like we move away from. Awayness might help establish the edges of our horizon; in rejecting the proximity of certain objects, we define the places that we know we do not wish to go, the things we do not wish to have, touch, taste, hear, feel, see, those things we do not want to keep within reach.

-Sara Ahmed, ‘Happy Objects’, in The Promise of Happiness, 2010

In her text Happy Objects Sara Ahmed writes about whether different objects have affects us differently, something that is very evident in the public space where affects circulates, both the good and the bad ones.

 To interact with both objects and other people in the public space affect us a lot. We meet for practical reasons as well as for amusement, recreation or with a political agenda. It may be in a trade situation, during transportation, performance of sport, games, in protests or in conversations while having something to eat or drink. In these places many people share the same objects. The experience we have and how we are affected depends not only on the objects on the square, but also on our common view of who’s supposed to act how among these objects. An object that in a safe environment has a positive affect on a person may have the opposite affect on the same person in the public environment, depending on who is there or when it happens. The social norm once again plays an important role, both on our self-image and understanding of a group of people in relation these objects. The public space sets us in perspective to the society, it often make us self-conscious, constantly in situations that affects us in bad or good ways.

 The collective feeling and feeling of sympathy and being a part of a community can grow and circulate with good affect in the public space, and in that case it plays a important role in keeping a society together. Just having a coffee on a bench watching people passing by and be watched in return can have good affects on some people, to be recognized. For some others good affects comes by skating with friends, while reading a book sitting in the grass or maybe by feeding the birds, when you’re in a safe environment.

 Unfortunately everyone isn’t comfortable to participate in these activities. The square includes a lot of people but at the same time a lot of people don’t feel comfortable there, they get negative affects instead. It may be from the treatment of other people, prejudgment and expectations from other people, or social norms that changes your happy objects to unhappy objects when your not in a comfortably space.

 

Task 6- Isa Draiby

Happy and unhappy objects

“the greatest happiness consists in the having those things which produce the greatest pleasure” (247). Happy objects could be described simply as those objects that affect us in the best way.

Those things we do not like we move away from. Awayness might help establish the edges of our horizon; in rejecting the proximity of certain objects, we define the places that we know we do not wish to go, the things we do not wish to have, touch, taste, hear, feel, see, those things we do not want to keep within reach.

-Sara Ahmed, ‘Happy Objects’, in The Promise of Happiness, 2010

In her text Happy Objects Sara Ahmed writes about whether different objects have affects us differently, something that is very evident in the public space where affects circulates, both the good and the bad ones.

 To interact with both objects and other people in the public space affect us a lot. We meet for practical reasons as well as for amusement, recreation or with a political agenda. It may be in a trade situation, during transportation, performance of sport, games, in protests or in conversations while having something to eat or drink. In these places many people share the same objects. The experience we have and how we are affected depends not only on the objects on the square, but also on our common view of who’s supposed to act how among these objects. An object that in a safe environment has a positive affect on a person may have the opposite affect on the same person in the public environment, depending on who is there or when it happens. The social norm once again plays an important role, both on our self-image and understanding of a group of people in relation these objects. The public space sets us in perspective to the society, it often make us self-conscious, constantly in situations that affects us in bad or good ways.

The collective feeling and feeling of sympathy and being a part of a community can grow and circulate with good affect in the public space, and in that case it plays a important role in keeping a society together. Just having a coffee on a bench watching people passing by and be watched in return can have good affects on some people, to be recognized. For some others good affects comes by skating with friends, while reading a book sitting in the grass or maybe by feeding the birds, when you’re in a safe environment.

 Unfortunately everyone isn’t comfortable to participate in these activities. The square includes a lot of people but at the same time a lot of people don’t feel comfortable there, they get negative affects instead. It may be from the treatment of other people, prejudgment and expectations from other people, or social norms that changes your happy objects to unhappy objects when your not in a comfortably space.

 

Task 5- Isa Draiby

We meet at Queen Louise’s Bridge

There is not really much here, a bridge, with two walls, a few benches, a wide sidewalk a bike path. But Queen Louise’s Bridge is a public space full of life despite its simple design, with the function of connecting two districts in central Copenhagen over a lake. A lock where the city’s pulse is expressed in passing cyclists and pedestrians, but also a place where people are only and hang out in different ways.

In the spring I will put myself in the middle of the bridge, with a cheap with a great good falafel In the hand In good friends’ company and in the periphery of the conversation, watch the bikes pass between Nørrebro and Nørreport. Lean my back to the south wall of the bronze wall, warmed by the sun and look at people and feel a split euphoria that a new season starts. People will come and go but as long as the sun is shining, the wall and sidewalk will be filled with life and people who pass or just hang out and enjoy the feeling of being there people. Someone reads a book, someone drinks beer and smokes cigarettes, someone has attracted people to dance with a boombox and someone eats food or takes a coffee with a friend.

Then the ice will melt on the lake and the trees start to get leaves and at Queen Louise’s bridge you can notice just this, the seasons, the smells and the weather, while you’re in the wind while you’re surrounded by people in the middle of the city.

 

Task 4- Isa Draiby

Where the wall once stood

“The wall is fabricated from steel, wire mesh, concrete, even re-purposed Vietnam- era air force landing strips .
It makes use of high-tech surveillance systems—aerostat blimps, subterranean probes, and heat sensors. The concept of “national security” governs and militates construction and design of the wall as the success of the wall has been measured in the numbers of intercepted illegal crossings. I suggest that the wall, at such prices, should be thought of not only as security, but also as productive infrastructure—as the very backbone of a borderland ecosystem.”

-Ronald Rael, boundary line infrastructure

The wall Ronald Real is talking about is the border wall between Mexico and the United States. Infrastructures with only one purpose, to stop people from illegally cross the border.

Barriers between people have been built in all ages, but they have also been transformed over time into to new places. In several places, the city walls as an outer boundary of a city have with the city’s development and expansion, lost its purpose and been torn down and become part of the city. The square and public space have often played an important part in this process, as there are many examples of old fortification becoming parks and squares. The flexible nature of the public space allows it to be placed over another infrastructure as a new layer, and apply some of the qualities and topography of a fortification.

The former infrastructure thought as a border between people becomes through this process meeting places in the city. In Copenhagen, there is a good example of a transformation of a boarder. The old city wall and the moat go on the older map (fig.1) as a border around the city, consisting of a wall and moat. The modern map (Fig. 2) shows how most of the old fortification was torn down and exchanged for a residential area, and several parks and squares placed one after the other, which gives great quality to the densely populated inner city. Especially the parks are shaped after the moat and the topography of the fortification.

An example of a square located where the old fortress lay in Copenhagen is Israel’s space, with a park right beside it called Ørestadsparken (fig.3). In the park you can clearly see the shape of the old moat in the existing small lake, and parts of the earth slopes are still left in the existing topography, but for those who do not know the history, it’s just a lovely park with tall old trees and hilly landscape.

Israel’s place is an old marketplace where farmers have come and sold their vegetables. The square recently was redesigned and 2 market halls was built with exclusive products and food and the outside space is programmed for sports activities surrounded by stairs where you can drink your coffee bought in the market hall, and watch other people. The square and the park are surrounded by an exclusive residential area with trendy cafes and shops, the site has with the expansion of the city, been given an exclusive location, which characterizes it. People gather here for delight rather than for political reasons.

At last the citation of Wittig Einstein that Ronald Real begins his text with:

“But when one draws a boundary it may be for various kinds of reasons. If i surround an area with a fence or a line or otherwise, the purpose may be to prevent someone from getting in or out; but may also be part of a game and the players be supposed, say, to jump over the boundary; or it may
show where the property of one man ends and that of another begins; and so on. So if i draw a boundary line that is not yet to say what i am drawing it for.”

-Wittig Enstein

 

Task 3- Isa Draiby

Animal Highway’s Caring

“Since even the helpful emotions can often become misguided or worse—as when excessive empathy with others leads to a wrongful degree of self-denial or when benevolent concern crosses over into controlling domination—we need an ethics of care, not just care itself.”

The caring for animal highway is actual the caring for the relationship between people and animals. The premise of caring for the relationship is people and animals are equal to each other and they all have the right to choose freely. Certainly, we can get involved in each other’s lives, but the intervention should not affect anyone in this system. The animal highway is actually a paradox. We should put down our “creator” attitude and stand on a more objective perspective to maintain this so-called animal highway. This is not only caring for the structure and components of animal highway, but also creating an ecological corridor for people and animals to live in harmony with each other.

The establishment of an ecological corridor can be based on the “Internet of Things” concept that we often refer to now, that means people, animals, ecological corridors and many other elements are all in a large internet of things. Any change in either party is immediately signaled to the information processing center, accordingly allowing the rest of the parties to respond. For example, usually the animal highway stays the same level as the normal highway, so people, animals and nature could have some intervention and communication with each other. When a car enters, the ecological corridor will transmit information to the base station and the base station will give an instruction to lift the normal highway slowly after completing the information processing. After the car passing through the highway, the base station will receive the signal again and give another instruction to let the highway back to the normal level.

In this way, we can better protect animals, not only protect their most basic right to life, but also protect their right to choose something freely just like us. This is also the most efficient way to protect animals.

Minye

Animal Highway’s Failure

Infrastructure becomes most evident at the moment of failure, but failure here is not just about the destruction or collapse of infrastructure, it can also mean that the connections between the various components of an infrastructure are broken. In terms of animal highway, infrastructure’s failure here means the destruction of whole systems consisting of animals, people, transportation, highway, and bridge. These originally conflicting or unrelated individuals have a close relationship with each other due to the animal highway. Therefore, bridge which is the animal highway, is becoming the most important part of the entire system, since all components of the entire system are designed to run around the bridge. Once there is a problem happened with any of those aspects such as design, construction, use, or maintenance, the entire system will face a collapse. Therefore, infrastructure is vulnerable to breakdown and negative entropy.

There is no doubt that, human also play a dominant role in the entire animal highway system because of the system components are designed, built, used, and maintained by people. Therefore, changes in human behavior will largely affect the stability of the entire system. To some extent, animals may also cause a certain degree of impact on the entire system. Although in theory, human has the authorization and ability to control the various components of the system, but it is difficult to control the animal’s ideas. Human can only design and build animal highway based on what human think of animal preferences and living habits. Once the animal highway collapses or be destroyed, the relationship between human and animals may become conflict and tension again. Therefore, in the design process, we must consider the reasons that may cause animal failure, and try to avoid their appearance.

Certainly, these reasons which may cause the failure of animal highway are probably false, since animal highway is an unequal control that people impose on animals. We are born equal to animals, so in fact, we have no right to plan a way for animals’ immigration. They have the freedom to choose their roads just the same as us, so maybe who really need the animal highway is us. Animal highway itself is a kind of failure.

Minye

What do animals think about the animal highway?

“We call a thing good which contributes to the preservation of our being, and we call a thing evil if it is an obstacle to the preservation of our being: that is to say, a thing is called by us good or evil as it increases or diminishes, helps or restrains, our power of action”, said by Spinoza.

From the perspective of human being, there is no doubt that the animal high way acts as a so called ‘good’ infrastructure, since it effectively reduces the risk of traffic accidents on the highway due to the presence of wild animals. “To be affected “in a good way” thus involves an orientation toward something as being good. (…) we might say that happiness is an orientation toward the objects we come into contact with.” As a matter of fact, animal high way is also a way to increase the communication between animals and human being to a certain extent. Before the animal highway has been established, there was only conflicts between animals and human, as a result of the competition for limited land with each other. However, the emergence of animal highway effectively resolves this conflict. In addition, through some special ideas designed by architectural means, there might be interaction and communication happened between animals and human.

But for animals, the action that human only followed with their own will and force animals to keep contact with them after depriving animals of their territory is good or not? Perhaps the animals don’t want to interact with human, keeping distance or staying away is the best protection for them. Of course, anyway, I do not deny that animal highway is the most basic and effective means of protecting the living rights of animals. But what we should know is that what we need to protect is not just the life of animals.

Minye

 

A love letter to the animal highway

Dear bridge,

I don’t know how to express my love to you, because there are no words could show how deeply I love you. You’ve already become a part of my life, although you are too late to come into my life, I still thank people to built you for me, for my family and for all of my companions.

Before you come into my life, I really really hate people, since they destroyed my hometown and separated my wife and I forever when we immigrated last year. I miss my wife so much everyday and hope to see her again even if only once. I think maybe god heard my prayer, so he brought you to my life. Now, the thing what I most favorite to do is staying at one side of you under the sunset and watching my children running across from another side, laughing and playing.

I guess if my wife could be here, she would love you as much as me, since we don’t need to feel panic anymore when we immigrate. There is a most famous sentence, which said “The most distant way in the world is not the way from birth to the end. It is in our love; we are keeping between the distance.” Because of you, many deer like me no longer have to suffer from lovesickness. Although people often say love is selfish, and they don’t want share their lover with anyone else, I want show you and share you with all of my friends and my family members. It’s just like a child got something really nice and special for him/her, so he/she wants to show it for everyone who pass by. I don’t know what’s your thought to me, but I really thank you and really really love you.

Minye

Who is the animal highway built for?

“In Foucault’s soliloquy, “the road” as a collective equipment of power in extremis holds urban subjects as prisoners of its signifying regime, defining who will be legal and who will be illegal. The first function of the road, he states, is to ensure a profit or a surplus of production, which it accomplishes by staging a dangerous face-off between two characters. The second function of the road is to produce maximum demand in response to the surplus of production.”

Animal highway as a kind of special road system is essentially a form of domination of animals. Besides, before animals have the right to know or get used to this highway, humans have built this for animals without authorization, which human beings act as the regime subject, defining the prescribed activity routes for those animals who is able to move freely here before. It contains a relationship between people and animals, but apparently the relationship is not equal to each other. People always dominate, while animals as vulnerable groups can only accept. Although the original intention of building animal high way is that people would like to do their best to help more animals survive and the emergence of animal high way has indeed saved the lives of many wild animals. However, for animals, the animal high way is only a necessary compensation method from human who requisitioned and developed the living area belongs to animals. As for whether the animal high way is accepted by the animals, we don’t know yet. But still, I do not deny that it is the most basic and effective means of protecting the living rights of animals.

Animal highway, also can be called as ecological corridor, consists of animals, people, transportations, highway and bridges. Every two parts of them can have interactions to each other. Therefore animal highway can be not only a simple infrastructure to save animals’ lives, but also a new way to let people and animals get close to each other. At the stage, people are not the dominator for animals anymore, but they are friends to each other.

Minye