BOTH PERSONAL AND PUBLIC

“Furniture to architecture, city to landscape, capturing such scales in a continuum. Various scales are interwoven.” Beton Hala Waterfront Centre, Sou Fujimoto 2012.

Dynamic social and cultural values together with the constant spread of new technologies are constantly redefining our concepts of society, privacy and the mediation between both. This consequently changes the character of public spaces needed in a city.  

The study “Your Place, My Place, or Our Public Space?: Privacy and Spaces in Mumbai” realized by the BMW Guggenheim Lab dealt exactly with this issue. With the intention of understanding where people go to find places of refuge and privacy in a city as dense and populated as Mumbai, where different families often share the same rooms at home, it was expected that people turn to the public sphere. One of their discoveries was that  “A sense of belongingness, security, ownership, seclusion, personalization of the space, accessibility, and freedom of expression were essential to fostering a sense of privacy in public space.” Moreover, when asked about what privacy meat for them, 800 respondents related it mainly to solitude (35%) and comfort (22%).

Another important aspect is that nowadays, public space is largely understood as a synonym for open spaces, such as parks or waterfronts as in the case of Mumbai. Consequently, every indoor space apart from people’s homes transforms them into consumerists before being allowed to stay in and use the space however controlled it might be. Here, it is not about being against commerce, which is a powerful urban catalyst, but the inversion of priorities. Rather than social iteration being instigated by the presence of commerce, what happens inside shopping malls, let commerce exist as a support for social activities.          

My project will introduce a different kind of public space for its citizens, one that will embrace different scales and degrees of privacy. It deals with the necessity of a public living room, what before the shopping mall phenomenon used to be comfortable street movie theaters, and nowadays could be spaces for discussing a project, co-working areas, classes open to the public, and so on. Instead of determining the programs, different space conditions will encourage whatever activities citizens feel the urge of engaging in in a non-regulated, non-consumerist place.