Uh oh...
I'm having what you might call a 'hiccup'. It's been an odd week. I crashed my car which wrote Tuesday off (amongst other things), and Wednesday I gave my Territories presentation. Possibly the worst presentation of my life I might add- I hadn't practiced and the allotted five minutes ran into fifteen. Shit. Now I have a cold. And all I seem capable of doing is sitting in bed thinking myself into holes.
This is going to be another one of those trail-of-thought honesty rants. Advance apologies.
The feedback from my (dire) presentation made me realise a few things: a) Urban chintz and decoration has been done to death. And better than I could ever do it, by him, him and these guys. b) Villages already exist in London (well, I already knew this but have been resisting it) so what point am I trying to make by blending these aesthetics? c) I'm looking too big, I need to design for something/someone specific. d) I need to establish a user.
and aside from all of this,
I STILL CAN'T GET FLIPPING MAPS OUT OF MY HEAD.
What is it exactly I'm trying to achieve here? What am I originally interested in about villages?
- Engagement with your environment and how it shapes your identity, and the ties we form with the physical landscape.
- British identity and nostalgia- why is it so wrapped up in the image of the countryside?
- Collective memory- stories and events exclusive to a community that help make it unique.
The other day I found this:
It's a map of Deptford and New Cross from 1840. As it turns out, most of it was still fields back then. A village overspill of London, if you like. It made me realise- on a deeper level- the history and human-ness that is all around and yet completely invisible to me. I realised also, that any sense of belonging to a place comes from familiarity, and the memories that bind themselves to the physicality of the world around you.
I have already discovered that happiness and contentment within your environment comes from familiarity, and the nostalgia of lost memories. I conducted a small survey (and by small, I mean 20 people or so) a couple of weeks ago, and the results showed that a person will almost always remember being happier in the place they grew up- the place where all the relationships are already formed. Reminiscent nostalgia.
Some other research I've found particularly interesting is the overwhelming tendency for the elderly to retire to the countryside. The inherent nostalgia of the place beckons even those that have never set foot outside a city before. And according to the reading I've been doing on various retirement forums, a lot of the time the new environment- away from familiar sights and relationships, friends and families- can result in some unhappy twilight years.
So. With all this in mind, I've been thinking there could be a lot of potential in talking to London's elderly population. Why are so many inclined to leave? What are the perks or problems of being retired in the city? What has changed? All of these could open fantastic potential avenues for design, but essentially, I just want to hear their stories. If community life is entangled in memory, then can't I somehow borrow somebody else's? What if I could make these stories and memories tangible?
So then I started thinking- how can you make a memory physical?
Here is a map of my childhood memories. Not the memories themselves per cé, but the locations I find them enveloped in. It in no way represents geographical accuracy, but it means familiarity: locations functioning as thought-anchors for my reminiscences. I find this concept of psycho-geography fascinating.
What if I could make maps of nostalgia. Telling tales about London from the people who've grown old here. Could this somehow work to transfer reminiscent affection from its origin to a new user, to help nurture a sense of familiarity, and thus community and contentment?
My head hurts. And this is a big tangent. Is this wrong? I don't know... but I'm still retaining my core themes: Environment and familiarity, nostalgia and romance. It's just not quite Villages any more is it?