Imagining New Spaces

Spending the last year and a half in Goldsmiths I have been amazed at how difficult it is to navigate …classrooms are all over the place, hallways are endless, doors lead to nowhere, signage and instructions are limited, entrances become exits.....

You can find a Goldsmiths Campus Map (which is a bit useless in itself)….but it is very difficult to find any printed version of the buildings' interiors. If one is in existence it is rarely distributed...


I propose to create a new Goldsmiths signage system for students, visitors, and teachers. It would be a system that is:
o Updated, modern, user friendly
o Interactive
o Highly visual and creative
o Simple for all ages
o Attractive and inviting

Starting with some proposals for the Main Building and, if successful, moving onto other buildings – eventually doing an improved ‘campus map’.

The first step would be to start doing an online survey to students and teachers; how can we (how would they) improve the current mapping system, what parts /classes/spaces do they find hard to navigate (or alternatively easy to find), are there any hidden/mysterious areas of the building (ie: secret hallways, rarely visited rooms)…..

Working as a team, which could be easily divided on a task-by-task basis, we would work with the current Goldsmiths mapping systems trying to improve it significantly.....

Tasks/Goals
o Creating our own everlasting space
o Interacting and embracing our environment
o Creating a welcoming, relaxed experience

Themes
o Levelling off Absence and Balance
o Loss, memory, imagination
o Exploring our setting by uncovering its hidden spaces (like Vikki’s intended scrum through Veronika’s flat:>)
o Creating intimacy and romance within a sterile environment
o Observation through displacement

Taking ideas from visual and installation artists like:



Maider Lopez (www.maiderlopez.com) and Laura Belém (www.laurabelem.com) who both work with creating engaging spaces and narrative that invite the viewer (or user) to reinvent their relation to their chosen environment.



We could also examine the ‘Audio Walks’ of artists like Janet Cardiff and study the new invention of IPOD city walks (www.podcityguides.com)