PUBLICATIONS
01. CONTINUAL FUSION – BLURRING LINES BETWEEN DIVERGENT PERSPECTIVES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PLACE: AN URBAN REGENERATION SCENARIO FOR LONDON’S LOWER LEA VALLEY.
Abstract: Although cosmopolitanism implies global and universal notions, encompassing diverse, multiple readings of the urban fabric, it is essential to cultivate the specificities of place, especially during significant changes. Paradoxically, following Paul Ricoeur, we need to explore how participation in modern, universal civilization also involves surfacing rich, inherent sources for our interpretive thinking.
This research documents a unique approach to urban design education where divergent perspectives amalgamate with emergent urban configurations for London's Lower Lea Valley. The process emphasizes critical reconstruction of the context of place while converging on the multiplicities of a comprehensive regeneration. Understanding complex urban situations involves dialogically modeling a discursive, categorical structure through a rationale that seeks synthesis through comparison and contrast of divergent constructions while forming mutual connections between varying facets. Diverse and distinct historiographies, contextual and social patterns, religious and cultural manifestations, geographical and socioeconomic phenomena, technological and physical constraints, sustainable and conservational issues, as well as connectivity to global, cosmopolitan concerns and cross-pollinated to reveal new, syncretistic rereadings of urban space. The process hermeneutically reveals a richly textured fabric and creates significant narratives and themes upon which to graft corresponding solutions. It advocates productive interchange and rapprochement between divergent perspectives during the constructive processes of our life-world.
Anz, C. and Lewis, D. (2005). Continual Fusion - Blurring Lines Between Divergent Perspectives in the Development of Place: An Urban Regeneration Scenario for London’s Lower Lea Valley. In D. Ellison and I. Woodward, (Ed.), Sites of Cosmopolitanism 2005 Conference (Citizenship,Aesthetics, Culture) Proceedings, Griffith Univeristy Center for Public Culture and Ideas (pp. 183 - 191). Brisbane, Australia: Griffith Univeristy and CPCI.
02. APPLICATIONS OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR INCREASED PARTICIPATORY INTERACTION IN URBAN DESIGN AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT SCENARIOS.
Abstract: Beyond simply an extension of the individual drawing hand, digital technologies are becoming an inherent part of the contemporary design processes in other ways. The synthesis and co-application of varying technologies on conjunction, from data collection devices to CAD modeling programs, promotes increased participatory and communicative action in the interchange of ideas as well as providing greater ease in crosschecking between a multitude of divergent modes of thought and forces playing upon urban design and community development.
This research documents a unique, experimental approach for upper level urban design and architectural education implemented as a case-study and design scenario where normally divergent or conflicting points of view become linking factors which build emergent urban configurations. Our pedagogical approach promoted a critical reconstruction of community and place in a comprehensive regeneration scheme for London’s Lower Lea Valley while attempting to converge multiple urban conditions and modes through the dialogic application of both analog and digital technologies. The process involved heuristically dividing varying facets of urban design into differing, even conflicting categories, using the computer analogously as a collective round-table to bring them back together. In essence, combining digital technologies to cultivate effective cross-pollination of ideas and modes through communicative and participatory interaction.
Since the technologies at hand aid in data collection and the synthesis of information, both quantitative and qualitative factors can be more easily and collectively identified, analyzed, and then used in subsequent design configurations. It fosters the not fully realized potential to collectively overlay or montage complex patterns and thoughts seamlessly and to then merge with a multitude of corresponding design configurations simultaneously. Fieldwork, analysis, web publications, preliminary hand sketches, interviews and presentations, photography and imagery, material and product research, consultant work, GIS data sets as well as working CAD and digital 3D models can be merged and synthesized into a single database and finalized scheme, readily accessible and presentable to all participants, including those outside the immediate design setting. Collected work was then easily converted to transfer exchange formats for correspondence with others, as in this case international groups of architects in London that can now perform spatial analyses and assess the actual applicability, thus increasing potential understanding of real-world scenarios.
The work produced fascinating and successful outcomes with distinct amplifications in complexity and management of diverse issues, while also generating significant narratives and themes for fostering creative and integrative solutions. As a model for community and social development, this approach advocates the use of digital technologies as a common means for the effective, communicative interchange of knowledge and thus rapprochement between divergent modes of thought, promoting productive action with “others” during design processes.
Anz, C. and Lewis, D. (2005-06). Applications of Digital Technologies for Increased Participatory
Interaction in Urban Design and Community Development Scenarios. In Journal of the Design
Communication Association - Pixel-Pencil Progression, 2005-06 International Conference Proceedings
(pp. 195-208). Bozeman, Montana: DCA & Montana State University.