Abstract
Contemporary city planning frequently involves participation processes which are based on the ability to communicate about architectural and urban cultures. This raises the issue of whether and how all members of a diverse society can be empowered to address matters concerning urban quality and atmospheric values. Consciousness of a place develops intensively in adolescence, a period in which young people spend an increasing amount of time at school. Therefore, the influence of the school surroundings on the urban knowledge of young citizens is essential. This paper discusses the question which spatial image young adults produce of their school environment and how this knowledge can be improved through architectural education. The goal of this research project is to develop a set of transferable mapping strategies, which allow to collect urban knowledge and to communicate urban qualities among heterogeneous groups in educational settings. A case study set in Vienna focuses on a school with diverse student groups to test non-normative mapping methods for the visualisation of city images. These maps combine mind maps, artistic representation and narratives to challenge the relation of pupil, school and the city and to make everyday spatial knowledge visible and valuable.
Highlights
Today city space is understood as a construction process permanently redefined by the users rather than as a static construction; city planners need to understand and address the city users if they want to intervene in this process
In the final section of his book The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch (1960: p. 158) points out the importance of investigating the city images of different societal groups and how these images can be influenced by education: ‘[...] the image [of the city] is not solely the result of external characteristics but is a product of the observer as well
Taking a closer look at Kevin Lynch’s (1960) methods of communicating with citizens concerning their image of the city, a method mix of interviews and hand-drawn maps which was used to ask inhabitants and passers-by about their image of the city can be extracted
Summary
The influence of the school surroundings on the urban knowledge of young citizens has been discussed in recent studies (Coelen et al, 2015) The focus of this investigation is the question of how to communicate with young adults in educational settings with reference to the spatial and atmospheric qualities of their environment. The production of maps in the case study: Atlas of Invisible Spaces methodically focuses on explorative and artistic mapping strategies (Casey, 2006), following the idea that selfauthored maps raise the awareness for the environmental image This project traces how the discussion of urban phenomena with teenagers supports the articulation of their needs and enables emancipatory potentials for their appropriation of urban space. The case study produces a collection of maps to visualise relations between these main actors: young adults, the school and the urban environment
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