PERCEPTUAL DIMENSIONS

CHAPTER 5 ,PUBLIC PLACES-URBAN SPACES

Matthew Carmona, Tim Heath, Taner Oc, Steve Tiesdell

Anila Rose Cherian . . 7 s9 B.Arch

Environmental perception
We affect the environment and are affected by it.
For this interaction to happen we must ‘perceive’ i.e. be stimulated by sight, sound,
smell or touch.
It involves gathering, organizing and making sense of the environment.

Sensation and perception

 Vision
 Hearing
 Smell
 Touch
These sensory stimuli are perceived and apprecitiated as an interconnected whole. It
provides a cumulative effect.

Dimensions of perception
 Cognition: thinking about, organizing, making sense of the environment
 Affective : our feelings, which influence perception of environment and perception
that influences feelings
 Interpretative : meaning / association derived from environment. We rely on memory
for points of comparison with newly experienced stimuli
 Evaluative : incorporates values and preferences and the determination of ‘good or
‘bad’
 sight

touch
sound taste

smell
Perception is not only biological, but a social and cultural learnt process as well. It
depends of factors like gender, age, ethnicity, lifestyle, length of residence in an area,
and on physical, social and cultural environment in which a person lives and was
raised.

Workable environmental images requires three attributes:

Identity. Structure. Meaning

Kevin Lynch’s image of the city is based on the concept of mental mapping;
Imageability

Lynch separated meaning from form and explored imageability in terms of physical
qualities relating to identity and structure. He derived 5 key physical elements through
mental mapping / cognitive exercises in observers.
 Paths
 Edges
 Districts
 Nodes
 Landmarks
landmark node path

edge
district
BEYOND THE IMAGE OF A CITY
Areas of criticism in Lynch’s findings and methods.
 Observer variation
 Legibility and imageability
 Meaning and symbolism
Conclusion drawn was that social and emotional meanings attached to, or evoked by
the elements of the urban environment were at least as important than the structural and
physical aspects of peoples imagery.

ENVIRONMENTAL MEANING AND SYMBOLISM

Sign – signification, signifier, signified
 Iconic signs – direct similarity with object
 Indexical signs – material relationship with object
 Symbolic signs – arbitrary relationship with object
Semiotics involves the layering of meanings
First order sign / primary function – denotation
Second order sign / secondary function – connotation

Buildings in an environment are a symbol in itself. Modernists sought to escape from

symbolizing buildings. They designed to express internal functions.
Post modern style arose to have multiple meanings.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF PLACE

‘Sense of place’- can be understood in terms of ‘genius loci’ , Latin concept that people
experience something beyond the physical or sensory properties of places and can feel an
attachment to a spirit of a place.(Jackson, 1994 p.157)
Eg.Paris, Disney Land, Las Vegas, New York

Phenomenology: while meanings are rooted in their physical settings and activities, they
are not a property of them, but of human interactions and experiences. Thus what ‘the
environment’ represents is a function of our own subjective construction of it.
‘place’ – ‘belonging’

Territoriality and personalization

 ‘inside’-’outside’ of a ‘place’
 Individual identity is associated with personalization and putting a distinctive stamp on
ones environment. It is a ‘unique address’
 Place = space in image of man Occasion = time in image of man
 Successful places have animation and vitality. They offer what people want in an
attractive and safe environment.
 Key attributes : comfort and image, access and linkage, uses and activity, and sociability
(Project for Public Space (1999))
Placelessness
“There is no there, there” ,Gertrude Stein
Negative concept-tends to signify absence or loss of meaning
Casual eradication of distinctive places and making of standardized landscapes.
Factors contributing to placelessness
 Globalization : world is interconnected , central decision making,
two scenarios - convergence where sameness emerges and divergence where disparate
elements maintain cultural and spatial distinctiveness
 Mass culture : homogenisation, destroying local cultures
 Loss of (attachment) to territory : no care for environment when there is no sense of
belonging. ‘Existential outsideness’

‘Invented’ places
Manufacturing of differences- invention or reinvention of places.
Places ‘imagineered’ to create uniqueness to attract attention and visitors and in turn make
money.
Invented places are the fiction of architects, authors, artists, designers, imagineers eg. Disney
Land, shopping malls

This concept raises issues like Superficiality, other-directedness, lacking authenticity

Superficiality : depthlessness, undermining the real/unique identity of a place.
Architectural ‘fetishism’

Other-directedness – created from without rather than within : outside

inventions, rather than autonomous expressions of local culture,meanings and
associations. ‘Economic space’ invades ‘lived space’.

Lacking authenticity : critics regard explicit copies/ references from past in urban
context as ‘false’ and ‘lacking authenticity’
Public cannot distinguish what is real and what is not (Huxtable, The unreal America)

Criticism of invented places provokes the question: why

shouldn’t urban design produce places that people like and
enjoy?
Although urban design as a process invents or reinvents places with authenticity or
lack of it, it is the people who make places and give them meaning
It is the peoples perceptions that are important.
THANK YOU