The importance of Art in Urban Design

The title of the thesis is ”The collaborative use of Public Art and Urban Design in infrastructural projects to enhance culture in the public realm”. So I better Stara… manos a la obra…

Yesterday (26^th June 2008) when I presented in the review, I started saying why I think it is important using Public Art as a tool for Urban Design. And why so, it will be more important to talk about the timeline of the Urban Design process, how and when include art, or the artist in the process.

LEGIBILITY OF THE URBAN CONTEXT in all its complexity.

Makes people be aware of their surrounding circumstances. Invite them to reflection. Critical contribution to society. Refresh people’s life from their tedious routines. (they have things to talk about! It’s amazing to hear a boring person talk about something that has happen to them in the street and you realize that YES they have gestures!)

· Physical

· Social

· Cultural

· Political

· Economical

VITALITY:

The capacity of art to be an attraction to the public, to create vibrant spaces, and experiences.

· Economical: Art generate value of the land. This relates to gentrification. It becomes an economic attraction.

· Social: The capacity of art to create vibrant spaces and memorable experiences (of any kind, and in either way; being the cause or the consequence).

MEMORY:

It is a tool that creates a collective memory, or talks about it. Memory can be the cause or the consequence of the art. The individual memory might be most difficult to detect, to register, to evaluate but it is no doubt an important and interesting element. How art (and the city) affects the everyday reality…

It can also be use to map, identify, find the historical interest in the district. It could be a good tool for Preservation of the District, not only in physical terms, but also in a more narrative sense, as a good storyteller of the district, as a good “measurement” of memory.

IDENTITY:

Art can gather broad communities together. Can create a cultural space where people come together to look at issues in different ways.

It helps create a dialogue along the process.

“Art is a potent tool of communication, and communication can cross all sorts of boundaries” (Tom Finkelpearl)

“Cualquier obra de arte importante puede considerarse como un acontecimiento histórico o como una esforzada solución de algún problema. Es irrelevante ahora si el acontecimiento fue original o convencional, accidental o voluntario, torpe o hábil. La cuestión importante es que cualquier solución señala la existencia de algún problema para el que han existido otras soluciones, y que es muy probable que se inventen otras soluciones para este mismo problema. Conforme las soluciones se acumulan, el problema se modifica. De todas maneras, la cadena de soluciones revela el problema”

G.Kubler “La configuración del tiempo. Observaciones sobre la historia de las cosas, Madrid, Nerea, 1988 (ed.orig. 1962). P91

“Any important artwork can be considered as an historical event or like a challenged solution to a problem. It is irrelevant now if the event was original or conventional, accidental o volunteer, clumsy or agile. The question is that any solution indicates the existence of any problem for which there has been other solutions, and it is very probable that other solution will be invented for the same problem. But while solutions accumulate, problems change. Anyway, the chain of solutions revealed the problem.”

(Sorry for the bad translation)