TIME-S

Project idea

Space is one of the primary factors for guiding our movement, we usually encounter it either strolling on the street or surfing on the social media. In its traditional definition, the term flaneur, as it is developed by a French poet Charles Baudelaire, means that ‘a person who strolls or saunters in the city in order to experience it’. However, the term flaneur is now metaphorically correlated with a surfer of the internet, exploring cyberspace in search of virtual pleasures. In order to serve personal products through advertisement and social media content, algorithms process the socio-demographic characteristics of the person such as age, gender, ethnic group, religion, profession, education, marital status. Algorithms can therefore predict a cyberflaneur’s sauntering based on his or her own privite route with the inclusion of personalities, lifestyles, opinions, attitudes, interests and hobbies.
This project aims to understand how the definition of flaneur might change or integrate with the symbolic expression in the architectural context of the Times Square. Following Robert Venturi’s statement about the ‘Route 66’ in Las Vegas has a correlation with the Times Square in terms of smybolic bilboards. As Venturi et al. says:
Symbol dominates space. Architecture is not enough. Because the spatial relationships are made by symbols more than by forms, architecture in this landscape becomes symbol in space rather than form in space. Architecture defines very little: They big sign and the little building is the role of Route 66.
(Venturi et al, 1977, p. 13)

Project description

This project mainly investigates co-existence of the public and the privite space, which require a new definition of flaneur differing from Baudliare’s. Differentiating the way that people perceive the world by the technical developments shows a rapid leap as it has turned images into conrete objects available for each individual’s specific perception. So in fact, everything we experience is deformed by the degree of our perceptions. It is therefore possible to speak of not only a new definition or interpretation of flaneur but also his or her new perceptions of the world.
The project allows unused parts of the One Times Square building to be open for public and using its symbolic function with algorithms to contribute to each individual’s space. It also attempts to provide different routes for virtual flaneur to experience and initiate their uniqe journey. In conclusion, this project remains objective rathar than criticisizing the world of advertisements such as digital screens, social media or bilboards, but it also challenges the debate on how a creative work is categorised as digital (not real) or non-digital (real) in architecture

Technical information

As known, the One Times Square building was not used internally but its facade has been used as a display of bilboards to advertise products since 1930s. Currently the One Times Square building is not in use, the project suggests to work on it to apply modular structures to the building instead of bilboards and transform it into a bilboard-like structure. These modular structures are digital screens that work with algorithms, which are also used in social media and advirtesement content. These algorithms predict a person’s own privite route and his or her privite space. Predictions make visuals appear on the modular structures, thus these visuals altogether defines a person’s unique pritive space, which can be seen through technological gears. Besides its privite dimension, this building can also function as a public space.

Documentation

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