understanding spice public spaces through narrative ... · 7. 1. introduction. the aim of this...

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UNDERSTANDING PUBLIC SPACES THROUGH NARRATIVE CONCEPT DESIGNEDITED BY TUULI MATTELMÄKI & KIRSIKKA VAAJAKALLIO

SPiCE

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CONTENTS1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Spice project

1.1.1 The approach: Narrative concept design

1.2 Stories in design

1.2.1 Stories and academic research

1.2.2 Stories and organizations

1.2.3 Storytelling as a communication tool

1.2.4 Stories support holistic thinking in business and design

1.2.5 Customer journey & service experience can be conceptualized through storytelling

1.2.6 Storytelling can enhance place identity

1.3 Narrative approach in Spice1.4 ŦŸƇƅƂ ŜżƇƌƆŶŴƃŸƆ

1.5 ŮƁŷŸƅƆƇŴƁŷżƁź ŴƁŷ ŷŸƆżźŵżƁź ƃƈŵſżŶ ƆƃŴŶŸƆ ƇŻƅƂƈźŻ ƆƂŶżƂſƂźƌ,ƆŶŸƁƂźƅŴƃŻƌ, ƆŶƅŸŸƁƊƅżƇżƁź ŴƁŷ Ů

2. ARTICLES 2.1 SPICING UP METRO STATIONS – urban sociological approach

2.2 APPLIED SCENOGRAPHY–on the role of the story and its revelation 2.3 SCRIPTWRITING PUBLIC SPACES – meanings, interpretations and identity 2.4 CREATIVE PROCESS IN DESIGN RESEARCH – Interventions in Public Space

3. DIALOG BETWEEN STORIES AND PROTOTYPES4. CONCLUSIONS 5. SCRIPTS BY TOMI LEINO

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1. INTRODUCTIONThe aim of this collection of essays is to introduce Spice project (1.9.2009 – 31.10.2011) and its approach for understanding public spaces through narrative concept design. It has been designed to work together with the tool box created during the project that illustrates the approach and methods through practical examples in the forms of method cards, customer journey booklet, and a set of visualised concept ideas.

We will first introduce the Spice project and the narrative approach as it was investigated and formulated during the project. Secondly, chapter two includes five essays on the approaches that were applied in the project. In chapter three storytelling methods in designing public spaces are presented, especially in the light of two case studies Otaniemi and Niittykumpu conducted during the project. Finally, in chapter four we will sum up the findings and propose some further considerations based on our experiences.

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1.1 SPICE PROJECT Spice-spiritualizing Space -project was a two year project initiated in 2009 by researchers from the Aalto University (School of Design and School of Motion Picture, Television and Production Design) and University of Helsinki (department of sociology). Besides the multidisciplinary research collaboration, the project was established in collaboration with TEKES, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, and five companies: KONE, Etteplan, Länsimetro, Cembrit, and Sito working within distinct business areas but sharing interests in new approaches for designing public spaces. Research was conducted through two case studies focusing on two local environments that will be influenced by the new western metroline in Espoo, Finland.

‘The study focuses on urban spaces and metro environments that offer experiential contexts. The main objective of the project is to study how storytelling can be applied in the designing of customer journeys in public spaces. The main objective of the project is to study how storytelling can be applied in the designing of customer journeys in public spaces. The customer journey is conceived as a story-like phenomenon, which includes features of spaces and services that establish a particular identity for the local setting in focus. One of the aims of the project is to clarify the notion of storytelling in a way that is fruitful in designing public environments. The project also aims to create alternative concepts that explore the aesthetic and imaginative experiences and the relationships between people and urban public spaces. ’ (Mattelmäki, Routarinne & Ylirisku 2011) There are various lines of research on storytelling but in Spice project the concept of storytelling was purposefully outlined flexible to start with.

During the course of experimenting with various ways on how to integrate storytelling or storytelling-inspired approaches in design, we gradually framed our view on storytelling approach in Spice. The understanding and framing was influenced by the multidisciplinary research team consisting of professionals from industrial design, scenography, screen writing and sociology. Special attention has been put on various applications and characteristics of storytelling. ‘Gabriel (2000) argues that ‘stories open valuable windows into emotional, political and symbolic lives in organisations’. (p. 3). Furthermore, stories can be said to be ‘part of the sense making process’ and that ‘the truth of the stories lies not in the facts, but in the meaning.’ These quotes form a relevant reference to how we understand storytelling: it is about meanings, lives and sense making. Our aim is to experiment with various ways on how to integrate storytelling or storytelling-inspired approaches in design. Since the research team consists of multidisciplinary professionals from design, scenography, screen writing and sociology the research combines approaches from all of these. We aim to experiment with various applications and characteristics of storytelling during the project. (Viña & Mattelmäki 2010 )

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1.1.1 THE APPROACH: NARRATIVE CONCEPT DESIGNThe Spice project looks into stories and storytelling approaches as a tool and strategy for designing public places, environments and services, focusing particularly in metro (i.e. metropolitan railway system) experiences. Helsinki metro system is currently expanding, and consequently influencing new environments. This provides a fruitful ground for research. As an example of similar context, metro stations in Berlin have specific characters of their own. Without reading written signs the traveller knows where he is at simply by the spirit and aesthetics of the environment. On the contrary, Helsinki metro stations carry a rather anonymous and neutral image. They are not designed according to the local spirit of the neighbourhood or reflecting meanings that could trigger people’s imagination and, at best help to create the mental map of the area. Therefore, one aim of the project was to explore storytelling approaches’ potential in creating unique public service environments, focusing on new metro line under construction and development in Finland.

According to Kevin Lynch (1981) the diversity and authenticity of a city emerges from narratives of history and personal memories. Thus, stories and storytelling can help to shape the quality of urban experiences while creating a sense of place. Furthermore, most of the metro areas are lacking a sense of “good life”, which could be transmitted and felt through other or supplementary services as well as aesthetic qualities such as sound, lightning, dynamic interactions and other potential design interventions. Storytelling as a design strategy can be utilised to spice up metro experiences. It can also help to map the quality of service touch points and refresh the total customer experience.

In the project the following question was addressed: How can one regenerate the public space that communicates, integrates and reflects the significance of local environment? Spice project started with a hypothesis that daily urban railway systems have not been recognised as an opportunity to create new uses and environments that support place identities. The objective of storytelling approaches thus, is to identify, strengthen and create a strong place identity in which inhabitants and travellers can relate to. It is also about urban branding, defining the spirit of a place, and building a better place to live. (Fleming 2007)

In terms of design process, Spice project can be considered through concept design. According to Keinonen et al (2003) concept design aims at exploring and recognizing opportunities and alternative solutions outside direct influence of production. The purpose of concept design ventures thus is to allow conditions for innovation. Keinonen and colleagues (ibid.) have identified five reasons for concept design in companies:

1) Become prepared to product development. Concept design is meant to shorten and direct the process itself. Alternative solutions are then considered, and one is chosen for creating a new product. Concept design is for producing solution alternatives for to be implemented to production. The four other reasons are further away from direct product development processes.2) Create radically new solutions. This reason aims at seeking potential innovations to be patented or

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documented to innovation/idea bank. In concept design ventures companies can also explore new networks and try new co-operations, which might lead to strategic business alliances.

3) Map the future (shared vision). Companies need to concretise, reflect and communicate potential possibilities for probing the alternative futures, for setting landmarks to future markets and for decision making. These kinds of concepts aim at answering questions such as how to pose questions and what questions to ask? Thus, concept process does not aim at achieving ready answers, but posing the right questions.

4) Enable creativity & cooperation (competence). In seeking innovation, the key words are flexibility, openness and free scope that do not necessarily have time to take place in normal product development process. Creativity and teamwork need to be enhanced. Concept design thus allows creative exploration including risk taking and rights to make mistakes.

5) Influence on expectations (expectation management). Car companies produce concept cars to be shown to customers. These cars are not produced to be sold to customers, but to create expectations and probe customer feedback. Innovative companies can envision how future can be like and the future scenarios can then Innovative companies can envision how future can be like and the future scenarios can then shape the future.

In addition to the reasons pointed out by Keinonen et al (ibid.), Gaver and Martin (2000) advocate for concept design in academic context in which alternatives are explored completely outside business pressures. They see that academic concept design can be even more explorative, more artistic and critical because it is not tight with companies’ objectives, and because academic context allows or is even expected to produce alternatives ideas that facilitate and provoke discussions and can then shape future solutions for in the markets. Closely following Gaver’s footsteps Simon Bowen (2009) states this PhD research approach in his website as “Showing people some ‘crazy ideas’ can help designers understand what people really need in a new gizmo, and producing new designs is how the designer develops this understanding.” Spice project thus aimed at exploring and creating a variety of alternative concepts. The objective of the concepts was not to be implemented to production but to serve as research approach and as communication platforms to trigger discussions and new potential insights for improving the everyday scene where our experiences take place.

STORYTELLING AS DESIGN STRATEGY As the starting points for experimenting with storytelling we had identified three reasons for considering stories in design. First, stories are gathered from users to inform and inspire design. Often, also interpretations of user data are communicated to design through narratives that leave openness for new interpretations (Mattelmäki et al 2010). Second, storytelling is used for prototyping services. It is used as means to formulate design drivers (Keinonen 2000) that facilitate the style and overall design of a service system. A story connects as a red thread various details together from architecture and environment

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design to communication, marketing and customer experience. The logical argument behind the solutions and their connections to the story is not always needed. It can partly remain to be read between the lines but nevertheless storytelling supports making sense of the complex systems. Third, storytelling supports creating and managing contexts in which experiences happen. It is a tool to differentiate from other similar services and to create and maintain an attraction, an experience that triggers imagination. It also focuses on emotionally loaded elements, such locality and how people are attached to it, i.e. ‘this is my home station’.

Drawing from the three points above, the following tasks was formulated to guide the research and concept design in Spice:

1) To gather stories about the local identity to influence design and storytelling, and furthermore, investigate the experiential aspects of public spaces as described by the local people to uncover the local identity.

2) To investigate what elements in public spaces can be influenced by storytelling and, what existing and potential design elements and their connections to the stories are? This task was approached from service design point-of-view that looks holistically different elements that create the service experience and service as a process and a system. It looks at architecture and functional issues such as way finding from metro users’ perspective.

3) To create and communicate concept ideas that reflects the local identity. We aim at solutions that inspire, that are of aesthetic quality and that support good life.

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1.2 STORIES IN DESIGNSANDRA VIÑA AND TUULI MATTELMÄKI

From time immemorial, humans beings have lived for and with myths, fairy tales and legends – communicated at first through an oral tradition as well as through images and, subsequently, through the written word. Through telling stories individuals create meaning in their lives and make sense of the world. People use them to understand themselves and communicate who they are. By sharing stories of personal experiences, individuals can better understand the conflicts of their daily live and find explanations for them (Fog et al 2005). Stories have moved from caves to campfires, to library floors to, become a “communication tool” embraced by corporate leaders, gurus of knowledge management, and now, practitioners of strategy and design(Sametz and Maydoney 2003). In sum, stories are part of what is means to be human, they are a natural way to share, communicate and understand different types of information and experiences.

1.2.1 Stories and academic researchThe relationship between academic research and storytelling has not been clear and it has been often positioned as opposed to science. According to Gabriel Yiannis (2000), who is the author of Storytelling in Organizations, storytelling was used as an explorative method by the folklorists, a marginal group of the scientific community during a period in the nineteenth century. By that time the majority of scientific communities preferred to focus on facts rather than stories. However, in the twentieth century academic researchers changed their attitudes and a wide group of scientific areas started to understand the advantage of using stories as an object of inquiry in scientific research. Cultural anthropology began to study ‘primitive’ societies to access and understand their cultures and their structure of value making. Stories and storytelling approaches were also used by psychoanalysts to dig into their patients unconscious, which was regarded almost as valuable as the stories presented by dreams. Similarly, history as the opponent to fiction, accepted the importance of personal narratives, anecdotes, and oral stories as an articulation and exchange of information. (Yiannis 2000) Today stories have generally been acknowledged as part of a sense making process, which can facilitate a research in situ, or in real context situations, without the requirement of validating facts behind claims and the truth about the tales. (ibid.)

Stories take form in various ways from universe and humankind’s place in it to little everyday stories about who we are and who the others are (Jensen 1999). The importance of stories lies on the narrative aspects of an episode in which others can relate to, and recognize and comprehend the situation in terms of emotions and experiences, the meaning. According to two well known

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books, Jensen’s “Dream Society” (1999) and Pine and Gilmore’s “Experience Economy” (1999), the drivers of the current industry are based on stories, experiences and emotions. Information can be conveyed in different ways, but it seems engaging and compelling to tell a story that explains facts in an attractive, inspiring and involving way, one which triggers the imagination and transmits meanings and values.

1.2.2 Stories and organizations In the words of Stephen Denning (2001, p xv), the author of book on the power of storytelling as a leadership and communication tool: “Storytelling is natural and easy, and entertaining and energizing. Stories help us to understand complexity. Stories can enhance or change perceptions. Stories are easy to remember, and engage with our feelings. Storytelling enables individuals to see themselves in a different light, and accordingly take decisions, and change their behaviours in accordance with these new perceptions, insights and identities”.

According to Gargiulo (2005) the majority of management literature on stories emphasis on characterizing stories as vehicles of communication. The communicative power of stories lies in their role as a tool for listening and reflecting. Stories help people to learn and discover new insights. In the book Storytelling: Branding in Practice, Fog and colleagues (2005) describe the way storytelling works as a complement to traditional management tools. For managers, storytelling is used to integrate company’s values, visions and culture within the organization. The aim is to identify those stories that better communicate the company’s core story and make sure that they will be repeated. Stories must be recognized, established and communicated on a continuous process if they are to get their message across in an appropriate way.

Communication within a companyFog et al (ibid.) state that there are two purposes for using storytelling as a management tool: first, to strengthen the culture, i.e. illustrating the company’s values so that employees can clearly comprehend; and second to demonstrate employees how they should perform in specific circumstances in order to support company values. In other words, using storytelling as a managing tool seems to turn complex and often abstract concepts into more concrete and understandable (Fog et al 2005). The following example from LEGO illustrates this point.

By the end of the 1990s LEGO Company experienced its first ever deficit since 1932, facing a loss of 134 million Euros. To change the direction, management decided to implement a new way of thinking in the company by revitalizing the organizational values and making them more relevant to each employee. Based on the Lego values, five core competencies were identified and expressed for the entire organisation. But only few of the employees understood what competencies such as Business Drive and Consumer & Brand Focus actually meant in daily practices. To overcome this challenge, management team decided to use stories as exemplary of employees’ day-to-day operations, and thus started a worldwide search for stories at all organizational levels. As a result they created a treasure chest of video shots showing through sound and images how challenges

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and conflicts have been solved in true LEGO-fashion. The treasure box named the LEGO Spirit was distributed on cd-room and through the Lego Company intranet as inspiration for all their employees. (Fog et al 2005, pp 134-137)

One of the Lego Spirit stories was based on Erik Bundgaard, known among his colleagues as “The Mayor of Legoland”. On his trip to England, he came across an old fashioned method of shinning and polishing church bells, an activity that evoked for him an idea how to overcome the problem of fading colours of the Lego bricks in outdoor Legoland parks. Through experimentation he discovered the formula to bring back the bright colours to all Lego models. This Lego Spirit story was called “Fading Colours”, which is used to explain what competency of Business Drive means in day-to-day operations and conveys a message to the employees how they should perform. (Fog et al 2005)

Another example of how storytelling supports management is from IBM. IBM has used storytelling in several contexts for sharing complex knowledge between employees. In USA, IBM has adopted a method for organizing valuable knowledge gained from finished projects. The stories are created by asking the employees to re-tell about the development of particular project. Then the anecdotes and experiences are represented in a theatrical way, videotaped, and studied for creating relevant and accessible material to the rest of the company. The result of this approach is a catalogue consisting of the best performed stories, which facilitates IBM to continuously improve its business and the brand from inside. The leader Knowledge Director, Dave Snowden from IBM says that storytelling is for them an internal organization tool to facilitate better performances. (Fog et al 2005)

Communication outside the organisation Besides utilising stories as means of communicating company values internally, storytelling is used to transmit company values to consumers. Fog (2005) states that companies must tell a story that beats a path to the heart of the consumer, hence a strong brand represents a story. Harley-Davidson for example represents the story of “freedom”, while Nike represents the “will to win”. In this way, storytelling becomes an effective tool for creating an entire brand concept, one that stays with people because it touches individuals’ emotions. However, for most companies storytelling remains an abstract concept with no real value (Fog et al 2005). The abstract understanding of storytelling must be turned into practical tools. It is not coincidence that an ancient tradition like storytelling is developing and taking shape in a new way – as means for building brands. (Fog et al 2005, Sametz and Maydoney 2003)

Today western economy is strongly driven by emotions and the constant search for “the good life”. Individuals have reached the peak of Maslow’s (1968; 1971) hierarchy of needs to the level of self-actualization characterized by the post-modern lifestyle. People pursuit symbols and images that reflect on their personality and values (Fog et al 2005). Choosing strong brands is one way to do this. For example, a pair of hiking boots from Timberland and a Kevlar jacket from the North Face is indicators of an “outdoorsy”, active type person. Kairos Future, an international research

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and consulting firm developed another denotation for the contemporary western generation in 2004, using the term “Generation C” to describe values of individualism, freedom for own choices, experiences over materialism, and time not money is limiting (Fernström 2005). In contrary purposes, people boycott companies that break down on their moral expectations.

Companies are confronting the challenge on how to build relevant and reliable values into their brands. According to Klaus Fog and colleagues (2005) this is where storytelling fits in. The authors state that when companies and brands convey through stories they help people to find their ways in today’s world, attempting to address individual’s emotions and give the means to communicate their values. The main finding here is that the brand story regularly becomes an equivalent with how people identify themselves as individuals; the product and service become the symbols that people bring into play for narrating the story of them. People also value objects with a past, such as Grandma’s old sofa, the first car, a stolen stone from Amazons, a piece of brick from the Berlin wall or the souvenir sculpture from first trip to Italy.

Story may be fictional or real. In a society characterised by fast consumption, stories make impressions and symbolise a slower, more sensitive way of relating to products and services. Stories evoke interest and give room for differentiation rather than describe yet another product. (Jensen 1999)

In sum, what unites and complement storytelling and branding is that both develop from the same starting point: they are about emotions and values. A strong brand builds on clearly defined values, while a good story communicates those values in an understandable language by everyone. A strong brand exists based on its emotional ties to the consumer or employee, while a good story speaks to emotions and bonds people together.

1.2.3 Storytelling as a communication toolThe anthropologist Keith Basso in his book Wisdom Sits in Places (1996) highlights the importance of ‘talk’ for not only passing on information about one’s culture but also for shaping one’s conceptions about the culture. He categorizes ‘talk’ in four main areas: myth, historical tale, saga, and gossip. The informal models of storytelling, oral narratives, posses the ability to establish enduring bonds between individuals and features of the environment. For example, during the gatherings around the campfire the tribe’s superior handed down the myths and legends surrounding their gods and ancestors. Simultaneously, knowledge and experience was exchanged along the generations. These stories helped to shape the identity of the community, gave it values and boundaries and helped to establish its reputation among rivalling tribes.

These old tribes transformed into new shapes in our modern world, but the essence reminds the same: stories and storytelling as facilitators to convey meanings and values. When referring to modern companies one can identify similar factors, the stories around it paint a picture of the company’s culture and values, heroes and enemies, good and bad points, both towards employees

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and customers. The following example from Fog et al (2005) describes the purpose of using an anecdote for explaining a point or for supporting an argument: “Remember the story of the security guard who refused his boss entry to his own company for not having valid ID?” Colleagues at the company shared this anecdote to support and emphasize the accurate operational security system of their working place (ibid.). Employees are encouraged and inspired by strong leaders who differentiate themselves by being good storytellers, good communicators and who empathize with others. These kinds of managers are respected and listen to by employees at the company. (ibid.)

Fog et al (2005) have categorized external communication into commercial and non-commercial. The content of commercial messages is controlled by the company sales department communicating what people want to hear but simultaneously loses the authenticity. On the other hand, non-commercial messages are communicated by third party in form of television news stories or in printed press. They can also be delivered by experts, opinion leaders or consumer groups which provide the company more credibility to the brand by the fact that the company is not communicating them (ibid.).

Storytelling through design -article (Sametz and Maydoney 2003) explains why storytelling has become a key word for many companies. Stories build relationships with the client, give a sense of confidence and convey a “togetherness” feeling to the personnel. When they work, stories can help to create relationship built on “involvement, participation, support and confidence”. (ibid.)

Fran Samalionis explains in his article “Can designers help deliver better services?” (2009) that various departments in a company are inclined to articulate own ‘dialect’. For example, the technical people speak about bytes, while the business division is probable to speak about ARPU’s (Average Revenue Per Use). (ibid.) This is when designers and storytelling approaches make a perfect match for translating company values into a common language. The role of the designer is crucial for articulating each division’s objectives in an explicit way between multidisciplinary teams. The ability of the designer is to build a coherent story that translates their values into a collective language of the consumer. The story must focus on the user and at the same time trigger employees’ imagination (Samalionis 2009; Hämäläinen & Lammi 2009). Samaliones (2009) suggests that good designers have the capacity for constructing good stories, which help to spread reasonable ideas to stakeholders in order to conduct partnership efficiently.

Terrence (2005) discusses in his book Strategic Use of Stories in Organizational Communication and Learning that companies need to develop a push-to-pull-to-push strategy. He defines the strategy as a tool to encourage employees to tell stories about the company and at the same time inspire other employees to elicit other types of stories about the organization. The aim at extracting stories is to correct the organization strategy, gain new insights and motivate people to share. The strategy is intended to take a unique shape within a company, including customized processes and tools to implement. Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, as an example, has created an occupation responsible for gathering stories from employees and customers. The company is bringing about a story culture through the “Story Master” position. The stories collected will be conducted to the personal

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channel and to a non-specific target of communication. In sum, by understanding the way people communicate, learn, and think through stories can be a critical success factor for today’s companies.

1.2.4 Stories support holistic thinking in business and designStorytelling and branding are inseparably connected with another essential factor of strategic communication: holistic thinking. Holistic thinking means that the company should consider all the aspects of the offering and try to project them to their clients and customers in an accurate and consistent way, one that supports company values. Fog et al (2005) state, that a company truly applies holistic thinking, when the narrative and values of the core story are shared and made visible in all the environments regardless of the context. Moreover, the holistic interpretation of experience economy or experience society is the combination of various contexts, personal, social, cultural, economic and ecological, with the various experiences spaces that people visit almost every day. (Thijssen et al 2007)

Consumers get information about a company from different sources: the Internet, newspapers, television commercials, through customer services at the store, over the telephone, or through friends and colleagues. They may also interact with the company’s products. All these contact points should deliver a consistent image of the company’s core story and branding concept. If these contact points do not present a coherent message, the brand becomes weak, losing control and integrity. (Fog at al 2005) Holistic thinking is understood as the total set of characteristics and attributes enclosed in big units and small details of company offerings to its stakeholders and consumers. Here the concept “experience” becomes an asset. It is used to appeal to different human needs and values from physical and mental to cultural and aesthetic ones. It has become an indicator to act and connect the product and service with the potential emotional value it has to offer. (Thijssen et al 2007)

Jordan’s (2000) approach to product design and user experience holds a wide perspective of its true essence. He argues that user and consumer satisfaction is created from different objective and subjective matters that surround the product and individual. Holistic approach around product and service offerings is delivery in terms of emotions, and represented in four types of pleasures: ideological, social, personal (Psycho) and physical (Jordan 2000). A strong story must consist of pleasurable elements that create meaning and triggers the imagination. The story must be visible in every contact points so that the image of the company becomes authentic, unique and reliable. An authentic story not only adds content and consistency to the whole process of experiencing the offering but also creates a social meaning of it. (Tarssanen & Kylänen 2007) In order to create a genuine and believable story is fundamental to design it well, paying attention to details. Pine and Gilmore (1999) referred to this as harmonization. To arrange well the story one must attach different elements of the entire offering by the realization of a clear and harmonized theme.

Studies of emotions experienced in consumption moments have been addressed in the last decades, pointing out that the drivers of purchasing patterns are increasingly immaterial and influenced

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by emotions (Richins 1997). In the western society the demand is shifting toward products and services that provide people with unique experiences: offerings that appeal to people’s dreams and emotions, and add meaning to their pursuit of “the good life” (Fog 2005; Pine and Gilmore 1999). This holistic approach to business and design is pushing into extremes: the product itself (its content or utility value) will become secondary –the main purpose of the product is to embody whatever story is being sold, adding to it an experiential and unique feeling of its nature (Jensen 1999; Pine and Gilmore 1999). Storytelling is needed to establish a holistic attempt to engage users on an affective, physical, intellectual and spiritual level.

1.2.5 Customer journey & service experience can be conceptualized through storytellingService design primarily concentrates on the interactive or the visible aspects of the service. According to Parker and Heapy (2006) service design focuses on understanding how customers experience and use services in various contexts. According to Saco and Goncalves (2008) service design differs from the manufacturing logic; it has adopted own character and uses attributes of co-creation, cross-disciplinary collaboration and continuous reframing among others for maintaining and supporting change. Service design pioneer Birgit Mager from Köln International School of Design has influenced the following definition of service design (in Saco and Goncalves 2008), where service design is seen as:

• Aiming at creating services that are useful, usable, desirable, efficient and effective.• A human-centred approach that focuses on customer experience and the quality of service encounter as the key value for success.• A holistic approach that considers in an integrated way strategic, system, process, and touch-point design decision.• A systematic and iterative process that integrates user-oriented, team-based interdisciplinary approaches and methods in ever-learning cycles.

In other words, service design is based on an approach that puts the users of the service at the centre of the design process. The connection between user centred design approach and service design can be illustrated through the words of Satu Miettinen (2009, p 76): “The human-centred design process focuses not only on developing usable, functional and desirable services but also tries to create unique value propositions for the customer.”

Storytelling approach in user studiesAt all times people encounter and experience different services when visiting a shop, hotel, a theme park or simply when using the metro transportation. Each service and place has been designed to support people with a particular experience (Maher 2008). Tim Brown (2008), chief executive and president of IDEO (A design and innovation consulting firm), suggests that a great starting point for uncovering innovation is the use of design tools, such as observation and storytelling.

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In IDEO the first step is the motivational phase that looks for inspiration with customers in situ or in real situations, facing with real problems and questions. A vital step in designing services is the awareness of customer needs as it is gaining a complete understanding of customer interactions in service environments. User studies in service design facilitate information for regenerating the quality of services. Leaders have understood its importance; mapping current pit falls through user studies helps to develop the service in a more compelling and valuable way. Furthermore, customer understanding enhances identifying new alternatives for services. Hämäläinen and Lammi (2009) suggest that narrative approaches play a major role for representing, understanding, evaluating and collecting customer, service, and context related information. This comprehension comprises elements of customer behaviour which identifies the reasons, habits, and actions driving this behaviour (ibid).

According to Samalionis (2009) designers can better identify with users when connecting in their real-life situations. IDEO, the company where Samalionis also comes from, applies different methods to study individual’s hidden and specific needs. They support storytelling, which according to them expose more significant material than basic information. IDEO calls the storytelling technique Personal Archaeology. It is used to collect cues of an individual’s way of life, routines, values and the emotional drivers behind. Samalionis describes that “by asking someone to disinter the contents of their hand-bag or wallet, and talk us through the ‘artefacts’ found, people share with us their unique stories, built around not only ‘hard’ evidence such as recipients and bills, but also those objects they choose to spend their daily lives with” (ibid., p 126).

Creating user scenarios and customer journeysDesigners utilize a variety of methods when generating new services or product design concepts, among them are diverse scenario techniques and storytelling methods. A good example of strong relationship between storytelling, user studies and design is given in Erickson’s (1996) article ‘Design as Storytelling’, where he describes storytelling as an essential element of his way of designing – throughout the design process. Erickson has a wide range of stories that he has created during his time in design practice. He starts collecting stories from different people, and uses recycling technique, where he creates new stories from old ones. Furthermore, he builds stories from his own observations and experiences. He found that by using storytelling approaches in design helps team members to discuss and interpret the possible problems, needs and practices. The material collected from ethnographic research is later transformed into user scenarios or imaginary stories to support dialogue, to inform and to inspire design.

Scenarios are narratives that tell a story by describing one or more tasks in a specific environmental situation. They also include a description of a person using a product or experiencing a service. In user-centred design scenarios are often built based on the information gathered during user research. Scenarios are thus fictional descriptions of envisioned experiences based on user understanding combined with future orientation. The most common type of presentation is a cartoon-like usage scenario that maps out the user’s actions and experiences, typically in relation to

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the designed product or service. Special attention is paid to the user’s motives and the benefits the service provides. (E.g. Keinonen 2006, Hämäläinen and Lammi 2009)

Storytelling approaches help to describe a service journey, illustrating the service and its meaning for users. Service journeys model the service experiences as a process that include series of actions in time and place, the usage process as well as different touch points and service moments from the user’s perspective. Touch points are highly important parts of the journey since they help to describe the interface between an individual and the product or service. Creating a map from the current service facilitates companies to grasp on the actual experience of the touch points from the user’s point of view. It also helps to gain understanding of the interactions in order to determine those situations that need to be developed. The actual map of a service journey serves not only for analysis but also for adding and extracting contact moments or for prolonging existing interactions. (Hämäläinen and Lammi 2009)

Storytelling improves service offeringsUser experience and the overall satisfaction are among the issues at front line in service design. Gaining insights and gathering information from users by storytelling and methods like video recording, observation and interviews can help to identify the overall characteristics of users’ experiences. Service journeys, user narratives and other illustrative techniques can be applied for analysing and modelling existing service journeys or visualising envisioned experiences; For instance, by identifying their start and end points of the service journey provides opportunities for lengthening the offering. In addition, illustrations of customer (or service) journeys serve as a platform for discussion between designers and company representatives. Visually represented stories enable discussing and evaluating an abstract idea of a sequence process, the contact and interface of the service and customer at each touch point. A visual model helps companies to consider elements from big units to small details. (Hämäläinen and Lammi 2009)

Blueprinting is a method for modelling out the service journey by mapping out the processes that form the service. It separates the pitfalls and determines the sequences of the service journey. Blueprinting usually starts from mapping expected customer experience through improving the proposed offering and diminishing obstacles. Moreover, both customer activities and parallel activities can be mapped to show all interactions by and with customers. (Hollins 2009) Hollins (ibid.) has stated that it is unlikely that a successful service can be designed without employing a blueprint that describes both individuals’ actual and parallel activities.

Furthermore, Hollins proposes that the entire service experience process and service concept can be improved by examining the sensory qualities of the customer experience. The service journey has different stages that affect the customer experience: What does the customer see, hear, smell, touch or taste? Taking into consideration aesthetic and experiential elements in the space helps to improve the total service offering and user satisfaction (Hollins 2009). The analysis of the customer journey through storytelling approaches identifies and describes in small detail the various stages of interactions, experiences, and delivery of the service.

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1.2.6 Storytelling can enhance place identityThe cities of the 21st Century, public urban places in particular, play an important role in the social and cultural development of the city life and the identification of their inhabitants (Lawrence et. al 2003; Girardet 1999). The city as a living space is constituted not only by architecture and urban planning but also by its design, which tells more about the city’s identity (Beucker and Bruder 2004). According to Kevin Lynch (1981) the authenticity of a city emerges from narratives of history and personal memories. Thus, stories, storytelling and narratives can help to shape the quality of urban experiences while creating a sense of place. Gordon Cullen elaborates on the concept of “sense of place” in his book Townscape (1961). He points out how a characteristic visual expression contributes to giving a feeling of a sense of place and through this inspires people to be in a space. This feeling of spatial quality characterizes many old pedestrian cities and spaces. When all factors have the opportunity of working and harmonizing together, a feeling of physical and psychological well-being results: the feeling that a space is a completely pleasant place to be in. (Cullen 1961)

Storytelling for urban design intends to influence on the characteristics of the space. The narrative environments implemented within a city landscape can support the everyday human experiences. (Paulos and Jenkins 2004) Storytelling approaches intend to inspire the development of a site, creating a place identity, which is recognized and justified by its community. Kevin Lynch (1981) states that city design has to do with physical attributes, with interactions between humans, with administrative organizations, and with processes of change. City design thus helps to preserve a neighbourhood street, regenerate a public place, and improve lighting and planting among others.

Place identity and site development can be facilitated through storytellingStorytelling approaches can help researchers, designers, organizations and the public sector in gathering fragmentary impressions into the rich texture of people’s daily urban life. It, thus, can allow designers to create a partly real-life urban narrative. Using individuals’ stories enables researches to collect inspirational data about urban places and people. These stories can inspire citizens to consider their participation and pleasures they experience in the city in their everyday life environments. The stories will then suggest new roles and new experiences of urban places created by and for the community. Stories gathered from the community can reveal the existence of relevant information which can be translated in tangible forms for developing public sites, their identity and can also deliver a framework and plan for new services. (Lynch 1981; Paulos and Jenkins 2004; Thackara 2008)

Stories of people and places communicate place identity; strengthen a sense of community and plans according to residents’ activities, traditions and character. The revitalization approach taken by Smart Space team at IDEO was to search for the fundamental nature, the heart and essence of the neighbourhood from its inhabitants’ perspective. Interviews, focus-group activities, eating in local restaurants, historical research, taking pictures and videotaping the area were the material to study and interpreted into a local narrative and identity. The result of the project was a narration of experience encounters in a first visit, a week day, a Saturday night and a Sunday church day. The team envisioned a series of situations in the area, which helped the neighbourhood understand the

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range of design opportunities they can support. The ideas were conceptualized into storytelling moments considering what places would support those “moments”. They told a story about what the space could be, interpreting the expression of locals and designing according to their stories and lifestyle. Finally, the focus of the project was put on designing for time instead of designing for space. (Blum 2006) Collecting stories from people is like digging into the past to find reminiscences to inform and inspire design. Simultaneously the neighbourhood stories can be used for creating a rich milieu of everyday urban life. Storytelling may enable the visualization from reflections on urban life, its value, usage, and generate personal stories of each individual’s subjective views of the city. Kevin Lynch in his book “A theory of Good City Form “(1981) argues that it seems evident that community based urban design can reinforce a consistent image of the community by placing community based centres, developing the area and by adding differentiators of visual character. These visual elements enhance legibility and increase the possibility to create local groups and control.

Design Council in U.K. started a 10-year regional development programme to improve people’s lives using design. John Thackara, director of Doors of Perception carried out ‘Designs of the time’ (Dott), which involved a programme of community innovation projects that focused on public and community services, events and exhibitions. Thackara (2008, p 26) explains that Dott “put people at the centre of the redesign of public services and the role of the designer was to facilitate collaborative activity among larger groups of people”. The project was developed in five phases based on a methodology for co-designing solutions. The first phase, Diagnose, identified the nature of the opportunity. Designers familiarized with the neighbourhood understanding the general problem in its local environment. This phase used research techniques, such as the ones based on storytelling approaches including gathering anecdotes and stories from locals through interviews and observations.

The second phase, Co-discover, developed methods and tools that included anthropological and ethnographical techniques. According to Thackara the application of these techniques make sure that residents participated in the design process and ensured that designers understood the neighbourhood’s drivers and the connection to certain problems. The third phase was Co-design, where the insights gained in the first two phases informed the ideas. During this phase the locals were gathered and asked to design and test new ideas, once more this approach certified the community contribution and control over their neighbourhood. This set of phases facilitated from start to the end the voice of the community, who communicated relevant stories, their wishes and visions of the site. Encouraging citizens to participate in the revitalization of their areas can bring new design perspectives and can highly influence the image of their surroundings.

Design interventions as part of storytelling approachUnderstanding the selected community or neighbourhood, and including residents’ stories and insights is a participatory design approach that provides a better capacity for finding design opportunities. Brandt (2006) tells a nice story about her students who were involved in a project

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about improving an area in Copenhagen. They invented a design game approach to start a dialogues with the local people and to learn about local people’s likes and dislikes about the area. One of the reasons for playing design games is to organize a playful forum for negotiating and creating common understanding of processes and contents. Another reason is to exchange perspectives or enhancing creativity through representing and connecting surprising elements together.

In Brandt’s example, the students organized a booth at a public square and recruited people who passed by to participate to the game. The game consisted of 70 images from the region and a big dice with questions on each side such as 1) what would you like to see more or less in the region of Nordvest; 2) if you should advertise Nordvest with some of the images what would you choose; 3) what makes Nordvest something special; 4) what do you think about when you see these images; 5) where do you see qualities that characterize Nordvest; 6) what image is not from Nordvest? The pictures were organized as in memory game the pictures upside down. The player first opened ten cards, then threw the dice and answered the questions with the help of the pictures. The students also tried to deepen the dialogue by asking other questions. The aim of the game was to gather stories and spark discussion with the inhabitants about the region in a playful way.

Moreover, various design interventions can be created to test an idea and receive feedback from users. The Urban Probes approach by Paulos and Jenkins (2004) promote the use of direct interventions into the urban life. They explain that a design intervention must directly “intervene to alter and/or disrupt the usage, actions, or flow within the urban focus of attention” (ibid., p 4). They argue that tangible interventions help researcher to better relate to city objects, actions and spaces. Simultaneously design interventions facilitate a better comprehension of the nature of the city life for developing novel design ideas. (ibid.)

Once the intervention, object or service is modelled and placed into the real context designers must observe the reactions and interactions of people within the new environment. The phase 4, Co-develop, of the Dott project executed by John Thackara in England, consists of prototyping and conveying designers’ proposals and solutions through visualizations and in forms of evolving mock-ups. He explains that this stage “ensures that the community understands what is being suggested and enablers the designers to gain a sense of how people might respond to, understand and use aspects of the new product, environment or service” (Thackara 2008, 27)

Modelling an idea through a design intervention can be a memorable element in its own right. It can become part of the city and a landscape design that enhance place identity and thus, place creation. Stories can help to pay attention to a particular physical environment. People become aware of their surrounding through all their senses. The use of art and design can sharpen this awareness and make the landscape booming. Stories, tales, poems and the like increase the meaning of a place; and their implementation in the environment can also be considered to create the identity of a place. According to Tricia Austin (2007), who leads the Narrative environment program in Central Saint Martins College London, stories are a powerful element, which are implicit

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in daily environments, in objects, pictures, symbols, arrangements and in the usage of places.

History and local stories can describe the qualitative essence of the community and placeStorytelling can be used to obtain historical narratives of certain area and can enlighten which buildings and sites have been important in earlier years. The enjoyment of historic places has become more widespread. Lynch (1981) states that today this pleasure has become a common taste that whole urban areas are restored to previous forms, and not simply for tourists but on behalf of their inhabitants. According to Austin (2007) all surroundings speak and narrate a fundamental story that people can relate to and make a sense of place.

According to Fleming (2007) “placemaking” is equal in the view that every place has a story to tell. There is no place that is not remembered by the person who inhabited there. He points out that recalling those memories and refreshing them in the mind can be facilitated by the contribution of artists, designers, historians, folklorists, poets and storytellers.

Fleming suggests that in the near future the concept of sustainability will facilitate the understanding of a building. He proposes that if every building had the responsibility to tell its own story as well as to be memorable enough to inspire other stories (to recycle memory), communities would considerably reinforced the authenticity of their surroundings. For Fleming a second requirement of sustainable memory in building design is needed, which encourages the use of the artist’s and designer’s eye to tell the story of the building. For this, the requirement is strongly focused on the genuine content and context than merely decorative view. According to Fleming (2007) some hundred years old buildings were embellished with a rich narrative in mind. The work of teams of artists and artisans celebrated the meaning of the building, its uses, and the historical and cultural context of its creation. In the contemporary urban environment and in Spice project too, these thoughts offer insights to reflect upon.

In the book “The Art of Placemaking” (2007), Fleming questions the art of ‘placemaking’ today. His major concern is how to build the framework of mental associations into a sustainable narrative that enriches sites and helps make them memorable. He argues that it is the competence of the tangible environment and physical form to live on in the mind that is so fundamental to the art of ‘placemaking’. Fleming recommends designers to consider coming generations and leave marks for the imagination to reinterpret their meaning for their own time. . In United States of America inner-city neighbourhoods, previously disinvested and rejected, are being restored to good use. Protection can provide economic benefits, not solely as a tourist attraction, but by reducing costs. (Lynch 1981) Conserving the history through different ways has a tangible value for people now and in the future. The enjoyment and celebration of memory through collective associations should influence the way cities are designed and managed. The approach should emphasize the value of stories for place making.

Fleming (2007) discusses the idea of having multidisciplinary teams bringing together the cultural context, which provides the set of connections, and then work with communities to craft metaphors

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that the community confirms are part of the experience of a place. The aim would be to maintain continuity, both of the community itself and of the image of the history and of nature that is apprehended by its members. (ibid.) The concept of local identity and continuity can become a key idea in reshaping settlements (Lynch 1981). This idea connects back to the knowledge management and branding and to the possibilities of storytelling in urban place branding.

Summary * Stories and storytelling have functioned as carriers of values, identities and meanings throughout humanity. Stories are a natural way to share, communicate and understand different types of information and experiences. Narratives include elements to which others can relate to, and understand the meanings through their own experiences.

* When looking from the design management point of view storytelling is used to transmit company values to different stakeholders. Stories give room for differentiation and function as vehicles of communication. Storytelling is a powerful tool to strengthen a brand and identity both internally and externally. But stories must be identified, developed and communicated on a continuous process. This requires well organised story mechanisms to improve communication and learning.

* In user studies for design storytelling can be a starting point for uncovering innovation. Personal narratives paint a lively picture of priorities and behaviour. Furthermore, storytelling approaches help to describe processes such as service journeys, illustrating the service and its meaning for the user. These stories can then be applied for analysing and modelling the existing service journey and creating improved or radically new solutions.

* When storytelling is applied for urban design it aims to uncover patterns in time and space. The objective of storytelling approaches thus is to identify, strengthen and create a strong place identity in relation with the local community. It is about urban branding, defining the spirit of a place, but also as a place to live. Storytelling can be considered to analyze an area, make explicit directions for design, bond design connections and service, and examine the place in order to create a more humane scale environment, one that satisfies and identifies the community.

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References 1. Austin, T. (2007). This is a Narrative Environment. Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. University of the Arts London. 2. Beucker, N. and Bruder, R. (2004). The emotional townscape: designing amiable public places. Design and Emotion: the experience of everyday things. MacDonagh, D. (Ed.). London: Taylor & Francis.3. Blum, A. (2006). IDEO’s Urban Pre-Planning. Can its “Smart Space” practice shake up the lumbering world of infrastructure, zoning, and public process? Metropolis Magazine: New York, October issue.4. Brandt, E. (2006). Designing exploratory design games: a framework for participation in Participatory Design? In: Proceedings of the ninth conference on Participatory Design. New York, NY: ACM Press, 57–66.5. Brown, T. (2008). How the NHS is thinking differently. Innovation by design in public services. Emily Thomas (ed.), Design Council, November. 6. Cullen, G. (1961). Townscape. Architectural Press, London.7. Denning, S. (2001). The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations. Boston: Butterworth-Heinmemann. 8. Erickson, T. (1996). Design as storytelling. Interactions 3. New York, NY: ACM Press, 30-359. Fernström, G. (2005). Experiences are the way to the future travel and tourist industry. Fernia Consulting AB. Stockholm. 10. Fleming, R. L. (2007). The Art of Placemaking: Interpreting Community through Public Art and Urban Design. London: Merrel11. Fog K., Budtz C., Yakaboylu B. (2005). Storytelling: branding in practice. Berlin: Springer 2005.12. Fulford, R. (2000). The Triumph of Narrative: Storytelling in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Broadway Books.13. Girardet, H. (1999). Creating sustainable cities. Green books: United Kingdom.14. Hämäläinen, K. and Lammi, M., 2009. Service Design as a Tool Innovation Leadership. Miettinen, S. and Koivisto, M. (eds.) Designing Services with Innovative Methods. University of Art and Design Helsinki.15. Hollins, B. (2009). Service Blueprint. Design Journal. Design Council London.16. Jensen, R. (1999). The Dream Society. How the Coming Shift from Information to Imagination Will Transform Your Business. McGraw-Hill. New York.17. Jordan, P. (2000). Designing pleasurable products: an introduction to the new human factors. Taylor & Francis. London. 18. Keinonen, T. and Takala, R. (eds.) (2006). Product concept design: a review of the conceptual design of products in industry. Springer, London.19. Klein, N. (2000). No logo. Random House of Canada Limited. Toronto, Canada.20. Lawrence, D. Frank; Peter, O. Engelke; Thomas, L. Schmid. (2003). Health and Community Design. The impact of the built environment on physical activity. Washington DC : Island Press.21. Lynch, K. (1981). A Theory of Good City Form. MIT Press, England.22. Maffei, S; Mager, B. & Sangiorgi, D. (2005). Innovation through service design. From research and theory to a network of practise. A users’ driven perspective. Joining Forces. Sebtember 22-24,

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University of Art and Design, Helsinki.23. Mager, B. (2009). Service design as a tool innovation leadership. Miettinen, S. and Koivisto, M. (eds.) Designing Services with Innovative Methods. University of Art and Design Helsinki.24. Maher, L. (2008). How the NHS is thinking differently. Innovation by design in public services. Emily Thomas (ed.), Design Council, United Kingdom. 25. Maslow, A. H. (1968). Toward a psychology of being (2nd edition). Harper and row. New York.26. Maslow, A. H. (1971). Farther reaches of human nature. Viking. New York.27. Miettinen ,S. (2009. Designinig Services with Innovatives Methods. Miettinen, S. and Koivisto, M. (eds.) Designing Services with Innovative Methods. University of Art and Design Helsinki.28. Parker, S. & Heapy, J. (2006). The Journey to the Interface. How public service design can connect users to reform. London: Demos 29. Paulos, E. & Jenkins, T., 2005. Urban probes: encountering our emerging urban atmospheres. CHI ‘05: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, ACM, 341-350.30. Pine II, B. Joseph and Gilmore James H. (1999). The experience economy: work is theater & every business a stage. Harvard business school press.31. Richins, M. L. (1997). Measuring emotions in the consumption experience. Journal of consumer research, 24 (September), 127-146. Marketing Science Institute, United Kingdom.32. Samalionis, F., (2009). Can Designers help Deliver Better Services? Miettinen, S. and Koivisto, M. (eds.). Designing Services with Innovative Methods. University of Art and Design Helsinki.33. Sametz, R. and Maydoney, A. (2003). Storytelling Through Design. Design Management Journal. Boston, USA.34. Saco Roberto M. and Goncalves Alexis P. (2008). Service Design: An Appraisal. Design Management Review, Vol. 19 No.1. Boston, USA.35. Stevenson, D. (2003). D. Story Theatre Method: Strategic Story Telling in Business. Cornelia Press, United States of America.36. Strauss, S. (1996). The passionate fact: storytelling in natural history and cultural interpretation. Golden, Color: North American Press.37. Terrence, G. (2005). Strategic Use of Stories in Organizational Communication and Learning. Armonk, NY, USA.38. Thackara, J. (2008). How the NHS is thinking differently. Innovation by design in public services. Emily Thomas (eds.), Design Council, UK.39. Thijssen, T., Boswijk, A. and Peelen. (2007). Human experience and ubiquitous art – the concepts of experience society and experience landscape: defining the art and principles of human centred experience design. Kylänen, M. and Häkkinen, A. (eds.) Articles on Experiences 5: Arts and Experiences. Lapland Centre of Expertise for the Experience Industry. Rovaniemi, 178-199.40. Yiannis, G. (2000). Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions, And Fantasies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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1.3 Narrative approach in SpiceIn screenwriting and scenography stories are central tools for work. User-centred design and design in general make use of scenarios, where use situations of the equipment or service to be designed are told in the form of a narrative. In the Spice project, we have merged these features and made an effort to introduce narrative elements to the work done in workshops using a variety of different means in all of the different stages of the process. When designing a workshop, the narrative quality is constructed through the speech of the facilitator and other leaders, through interaction and the formulation of assignments and through elements of drama, such as suspense and surprise twists in the workshop process. The narrative work can be supported through means such as the use of role-play, character descriptions and the introduction of visual material or material that can be touched and felt.

An important role in the Spice project has been played by methods of user-centred design departing from the notion that finding new solutions is based on an understanding of the user and the local context. As one of the starting points was a focus on experience, the results of user and field studies were intertwined with other sources and the personal mental impressions, experiences and stories of the researchers. Several narrative methods were applied to understanding the nature of the Otaniemi and Niittykumpu areas as well as that of the metro or underground environment. We wanted to collect authentic stories, opinions and viewpoints to form an understanding of the identity of the area, its services and service paths. The different methods and viewpoints were used with the aim of capturing the spectrum of personal and social experiences in both areas. The work methods can be roughly divided into five categories:

1) Observation and direct experience, recorded as service paths, photographs and videos. 2) Collecting stories and mental impressions through interviews and using visual material, self-documentation, literature and Internet sites.3) Prototyping among researchers and together with cooperation partners.4) Narrative prototyping that describes imaginary people and their relationship to the area highlighting elements of design. For example, a narrative similar to a screenplay for a movie was written guided or inspired by descriptions of both areas. In addition, character descriptions and short stories were produced that supported the narrative approach and the development of solutions.5) The narrative work was used to further develop the personal experiences and narrative prototypes and transform them into design elements and service ideas employing different three-dimensional and visual models.

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Experimenting with storytelling continued throughout the project for example by creating various narratives, combinations and summaries of stories gathered earlier. During collaborative prototyping sessions researchers worked with re-writing stories, i.e. taking the user stories and other materials as inspiration and creating short stories that took place e.g. at Otaniemi. The stories were further transformed into design and artistic language, emphasising characteristics and arrangements of stories in the space, the constitution of elements such as colours, forms, material, motion, illumination, interactions, sound, and so on (figure 1).

Figure 1: Mock-ups that experimented with concretising story inspired solutions.

Stories were thus transformed into design ideas through several workshops and individual reflections. Transforming the stories in a tangible and explicit way was accomplished in two- and three-dimensional means (see figure 1). The former was done through collage making: visual descriptions for outlining existing and potential design elements and their connections to local identity. The latter happened by composing various materials in the small-scale model of the station or other prototypes. These exercises helped to frame the focus of the study and recognise experiential opportunities of stories as a strategy in design.

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1.4 Metro CityscapesSANDRA VIÑA

This section points out the interrelation of design elements in metro environments such as usability, identity, public realm, service design and service quality. Images of metro environments are used to illustrate the topics considered, highlighting both large units and fine details. The work briefly describes the notion of legibility of place, mental image and imageability. An emphasis about metro design and the production of urban public places takes place attempting to define the current state of affairs of metro services. It continues with issues of place identity, coherence, essence and metro stations as landmarks. The work concludes with the connection of Spice project context to the total customer journey and service quality of metro environments.

1.4.1 The first metro cityscapesRapid transit railway, underground, metro or subway are the most common names for railway systems in urban areas with high capacity and frequency of fast transportation around the world. The first fast transit system built was the Metropolitan Railway in 1850 in United Kingdom. Later in 1890 City and South London Railway celebrated the first electric rapid transit railway and deep-level underground. This became the former “tube” of the world, Underground Electric Railways of London had become the most important operator. Urged to depend on commercial activity for attracting people to use the system, their standpoint was to make people identify themselves as “underground users”. (Watson & Bentley 2007)

The Underground of London is not only the start of an effective way of mobility in cities but also is one of the inspirations of our current project, Spice, the spiritualization of metro stations, their cityscapes, urban flows and public spaces. London’s Underground is novel for putting forward a sense of “us underground users”. There was a strong driver and belief behind the functionality of the railway system. How can one design for supporting a specific mental connection? How can one create the identity of place? How can one generate new experiences for motivating people to use railway systems?

The London Underground underwent exactly one hundred and one years ago what we are now facing in Spice project, the reborn and transformation of metro stations and metro cityscapes, the coexistence of experiential elements, the building of a consistent, readable cultural landscape rich in character and which identifies the neighborhood, and metro environment.

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According to Butina and Bentley (Watson & Bentley 2007) the tube of London had various challenging elements for achieving a uniform and identifiable design of London Underground:

1) Lack of coherence, legible landscape and historical inheritance, disintegrated and disengaged from the city, lack of usability, disorientation, and, massive and confusing amount of advertisements.2) Competition of other transit services such as buses, trams and pedestrian friendly routes, as well as ephemeral and unexpected happenings, pleasant sensorial qualities, and artistic surroundings. 3) Shift of values, from industrialization to connection to green environments and nature, insufficient fresh air and day light, augment of deathly smells, and a negative reputation of safety.

It seems that most of these challenging elements are still present in our everyday metro environments whether in America, Europe or Asia. In the following I will look at some of the concepts

LegibilityAccording to the famous urban planner and author Kevin Lynch (1960), legibility is essential in the city scenery because it is the visual quality of a space, which elements can be identified and organized into a well articulated, consistent design. He explains that legibility is not only a significant characteristic for the image and beauty of the city but it is central for structuring and identifying the environment. People make sense of places through the characteristics and arrangements of the tangible space, the constitution of elements such as colors, forms, material, motion, illumination, smell and sound. These compositions serve as signs for guidance, they help us to orient in space and in finding our way. The process of way finding is strongly connected to the environmental image, which Lynch has described the mental image of the external physical world that is apprehended in an individual. The image created is the result of a first perception and of previous experiences, and thus it is adopted to understand information and to conduct action (1960).

For example, my cue for finding my right way out at Kamppi metro station is the physical characteristic of the door. At one side, the frame of the exit door is black and grey with the name of the station and a red circle at the top. (picture 1) It is different in colour and form from the opposed exit door (picture 2). The first time I was there I did not know from which door to exit because I had not created a mental image of Kamppi district and the exit doors of Kamppi metro station. Nowadays it is fluent and coherent to orient myself in the space, I have the memories of my first journeys and the different cues at the exit doors guide me to find my right way out.

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Picture 1 & 2: Kamppi metro station. Helsinki, Finland.

Mental image and usabilityAnother example of the same nature, usability, visibility, legibility, illustrates an opposite experience of my journey to Kamppi. It was my first time in Vuosaari metro station when I took these pictures (pictures 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). I did not have a particular place B where to go in Vuosaari, I was more in an excursion, exploring the designed environment. Vuosaari metro station is the last stop; I was positively amazed by the amount of natural light, the construction of pureness, the coherence of the station. I thought I had arrived to heaven (picture 3 and 4). The positive impression started to decrease finding my way out; since the place was new to me I was looking for outstanding cues in the platform and exit doors, because the text signs didn’t tell me much (picture 6). Which way could be more interesting to exit from?

I discovered that both ends of the station were designed in exactly the same way. It was a mirror image, which is a common characteristic of metro station designs (pictures 3 and 4). I was totally confused; both entrance/exit doors looked the same. After walking out of the station, I saw couple of cues that could have helped people’s orientation. On one side, after exiting the station there was a small sign ‘Indoor swimming pool, Sports hall’ in Finnish and Swedish language (picture 7). These could have been expressed already inside the station, in form of textual signage (picture 5 and 6) and at the exit space in a more artistic way (picture 5). On the other side of the exit door there is a shopping centre which is the centre of Vuosaari (picture 8). Again, expressing essential places of the district in metro stations help people to create a mental picture and make sense of the environment in a first visit. It basically guides individuals and produces vivid signs, a coherence flow and image of the place.

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Picture 3 & 4: Looking left at arriving and looking right at arriving at Vuosaari metro station, Helsinki, Finland.

Picture 5 & 6: Platform door and environment, Helsinki, Finland.

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Picture 7 & 8: After existing Vuosaari metro station, the sign: Indoor swimming pool, Sports hall. At the end of Vuosaari shopping Centre. Opposite to exit in picture 7.

ImageabilityLynch’s (1960) cues of urban imagery and mental mapping are considered by Matthew Carmona and colleagues (Carmona et al. 2003). The first quality of urban cues is ‘Identity: an object’s distinction from other things, as a separable entity’ (ibid., p 89). Carmona and colleagues have also illustrated that a ‘workable’ environmental image involves the attributes of structure and meaning. ‘Structure: the object’s spatial relation to the observer and other objects’ in this case the door’s position, in opposite ways; and ‘Meaning: the object’s meaning, practical or emotional, for the observer’ (ibid., p 89), which is the door as a hole for getting out.

However, I find a more accurate concept for illustrating the example above, Imageability, introduced again by Kevin Lynch in 1960. He detached the notion of meaning from form, trying to make sense of imageability from a standpoint of tangible qualities affecting identity and structure in the mental image of a place. (Carmona et al. 2003; Lynch 1960) Lynch defines imageability as the ‘quality in a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer’ (Lynch 1960, p 9). That is a vivid design, powerful ordered and highly useful mental images of metro cityscapes by means of forms, colours, compositions, sounds and/or illumination.

Understanding the concept of imageability and how it is utilized, for example in metro environments is essential for outlining the potential of design elements, both large and small units important in storytelling. I distinguish two main functions in the light of imageability for designing metro cityscapes, one deals with designing clear differences and signs for way-finding, which has to do with accessibility and orientation; and the other as means for producing a vivid image of place, a legible cultural landscape rich in essence and spirit.

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1.4.2 Metro designI would like to refer and evaluate two metro stations. The example is illustrated, on the left (picture 9) Sörnäinen metro station in Helsinki and, on the right (picture 10) a photo of Konstanzer street metro station in Berlin. The perspective in both pictures is similar, taken from the platform and trying to illustrate the lightning, composition of colours and forms. Both stations were built in the same period, Konstanzer street metro station in 1978 and Sörnäinen metro station in 1984. Looking at these stations one can easily understand the terms of legibility, imageability, meaning and symbolism.

In my point of view, Sörnäinen metro station lacks a strong visual unification, it feels that its elements are disintegrated, the space breaks into four main elements: ceiling, two walls, and floor. A good opportunity here for bringing a sense of integration, openness and easiness is the removal of the hanging ceiling, which feels heavy and almost falling on one’s neck. On the right picture, Konstanzer street metro station is rich in image, distinctive in design qualities and connotes a strong second-order, connotative and meaning (Carmona et al. 2003; Eco 1968). According to Humberto Eco spaces have two orders, ‘first-order’ denotes the primary function, in this case the effective of rail transportation from place A to B. The second-order connotes a different ‘symbolic function’ (Carmona et al. 2003; Eco 1968) that is perceived through the affective dimension of the qualities of its elements, that is the use of orange, black, white, brown and yellow in a linear, horizontal and minimalistic way. It is the overall style and image that makes the space stand out and more special than Sörnäinen metro station. Konstanzer street metro station has a coherent unification of its elements; the wall merges smoothly into the ceiling creating a clear distinction between the waiting platform and the rail space.

Lightning on both spaces plays an important role for the senses and for the overall comprehension and structure of the space. On the right picture, the designer made use of the same smooth, round shape unification of the wall and ceiling for creating the lamps and lightscape. It is outstanding and unique making a coherent visual image of the space and design. The white-line lightning is almost invisible and serves the primary and secondary functions described by Eco. The light creates an invisible wall which tries to protect users from trespassing the security line, and on the other hand merges into the design form, the horizontal white line, also applied on walls, transforms into light. And of course, light illuminates the space above the rails as if they were lighting the wall of a gallery.

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Picture 9 & 10: Sörnäinen metro station. Helsinki, Finland on left and Konstanzer Strasse metro station, Berlin, Germany on right.

1.4.3 Production of urban public spacesThe famous French sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre influenced urban theory due to the importance he saw about the production of space. For him the social production of urban space is essential to the reproduction of society, and so of capitalism itself. He sees the space as a product governed by the regulation of industry and its relation to cities and social space. The urban space produced is a tool of thought and of action, which is also a means of control, domination and consequently power (Lefebvre 1991). I associate his argument of the production and consumption of the space into two types of metro stations, one rich in artistic value, architecture and the fine arts; and the other ruled by advertisements and capitalism.

According to John Walker and Sarah Chaplin (1997) visual culture is produced within society in which art, design and society are helpful for expression. Visual culture aims at communicating ideas, values, moral messages and stories. Its experience and cultural landscape resides in the pleasure as a means of transmission. Their starting point for analyzing visual culture is based on the assumption that it is created by humans’ needs and desires. These are crucial to production but they primarily serve in the consumption phase as the receivers and users of visual culture. That is, the production of the urban space and metro cityscapes are rarely produced by the community itself. Then, whose needs and desires are exposed? Is the visual culture and cultural landscape illustrating the needs and desires of the commuters, and the essence of the metro station neighbourhood? Or, as John Walker and colleague argue, are these needs artificially produced by big business in search of profits? (Walker & Chaplin 1997)

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As mentioned earlier, pleasure is essential for conveying enjoyable experiences, which seduces and influences people to look and listen to intended ideas (Walker & Chaplin 1997). Visual culture is also transmitted by symbols. I find a powerful relation for the interpretation of metro stations, symbolism as means of communicating values; art and design for creating these values visible and ‘pleasurable’; the metro corporation as the context of power and authority, and finally, the society and metro cityscapes as victims of industrialization. Currently, messages and persuasions are mainly apparent in advertisement and propaganda. For example, Sörnäinen metro station (picture 11) in Helsinki city is ruled by different types of advertisements: soaps, pills, lotions, cameras, etc. which are visible not only around the platform but also around the escalators.

Instead, Paul Stern Street (Paulsternstrasse) metro station (picture 12) in Berlin is lined with highly metaphorical and suggestive manner, providing specific objects with symbolic meanings. It is a narrative environment that tells a story, a notable and colourful mosaic forest. The values and moral messages are the art, design and craft exploring the aesthetic, affective, and imaginative experience of the public environment and relationship between man and cityscape. According to Tricia Austin, people relate and make sense of place through narrative environments (Austin 2007). Thus, in this example, the values and messages that both metro corporations illustrate to the commuters are totally different. One puts more effort in the artistic and imaginative value in the cultural landscape and imageablility of the station, and the other uses the space as commercial means.

Picture 11 & 12: Advertisements in Sörnäinen metro station, Helsinki, Finland on left and on right Narrative environment in Paul Stern Street metro station Berlin, Germany.

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Place identityOne of the main concepts in service design is interaction. The servicescape or environmental image of the service is the result of a two-way process between the observer and his physical surrounding. The coherence of the service image may originate in various ways. Usually people create the mental image of a place after the environment has been identified and organized. Storytelling approaches and narrative environments can help to create a pattern and place identity in which users can easily recognize and make sense of the environment.

The famous book Non-places (Augé 1995) by the anthropologist Marc Augé discusses the definitions of place and non-place. For him, a non-place is characterized by a space that cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or involved with identity. Place and non-place are contrasting polarities, where place is never completed erased, and non-place is by no means totally accomplished, their identities and relations are incessantly rephrased. His assumptions are based on the advance of supermodernity for producing non-places, which are real measure of our time such as rail and motorway routes, the ‘means of transport’ (aircraft, trains, metro and road vehicles), the airports and railway stations, hotel chains and large retail outlets. He draws attention to the distinction between space and place, the first related to ‘geometrical’ space, and the second to ‘anthropological space’ both in the sense of ‘existential’.

Coherence and essenceA good example of the notion of place-making dates back to 1909, when a new department of traffic, development and advertisement was initiated by Frank Pick, an American inclined to rich tradition of US corporate thinking. He was responsible for promoting the image of London Underground and for improving the quality of the service. He thought of bringing a positive place-identity by uniting these two. The key notion for the intention was holistic thinking: the company considers all the aspects of the offering and try to project them to their clients and customers in an accurate and consistent way, one that supports company values. (Fog & Yakaboylu 2005) Pick looked at the environment of the service and mapped in which way he could improve the place identity, and thus attract users. First, he ordered the Underground map to be redrawn in a far more legible way. This seems to made stations more accessible and easy to find, a matter of usability and mental mapping.

Second, different posters about the railway service and experience were implemented for bringing the stations a unique coherence and essence. All the stations had big spaces for Underground posters, which illustrated “The Way for All” and “The Popular Service Suits All Tastes” in various appealing graphics with particular characters. These posters were humorous and visually fascinating. Popular elements were also used to highlight the image of the service. Third, messages were delivered besides text also in the style of architecture and interior of stations. The designs associated with the values of the Underground, the themes promoted legibility, nature, modernity and the Underground as means to a life-enhancing experience, putting forward a view of the Underground as powerful, fast and future oriented in nature. The identity of the place was created through an extensive transcultural appeal by being presented and re-presented in ever-changing

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ways. Finally, works or art and exhibitions at the stations delivered new experiences, ephemeral and surprising happenings, pleasant sensorial qualities, and artistic surroundings. For example, an overground station was turn into the style of a willow-pattern plate. (Watson & Bentley 2007)

However, current Helsinki metro scapes seem to be dominated by a world of advertisements. Organized graphics of different kinds make metro spaces rather anonymous and static: a lack of place and identity. Despite of that, researching metro cityscapes I have encountered a rather amusing way for unfolding commercial ads. In the example bellow (picture 13 and 14) the application of advertisements is rather flexible, dynamic and in coherence with the environment. In picture 13 Jungfernheide station in Berlin illustrates a coherent association between the advertisement poster and the metro station. The colours and style of the poster fit well with the entire design of the stations because the same elements are used. Instead of breaking the identity of the station, the poster harmonized with the overall coherence and organization of the place.

Picture 14 is an example of collaboration between Helsinki railway system and the Helsinki’s national newspaper. The latter applied its ads on the wagons, a rather different surface and environment than the traditional use. Just to see these people’s expression makes me feels good and optimistic. It made the metro service to change its image, opening to new ideas and designs, committed to a distinctive style, confident and willing to use advertisements in a more artistic and experiential way.

Picture 13 & 14: Advertisement in Jungfernheide station, Berlin, Germany on left and on right temporary wagon advertisement, Helsinki railway system, Finland.

When studying metro stations from aesthetics points of view good solutions can be identified in many subway systems around the globe. However, the focus differs greatly: there are stations designed to have user-friendly and appealing architecture; or designs of standardized architecture and distinct interior designs of good quality; others are unique and fascinate designs by different architects, designers and artists. One can find impressive metro stations from previous socialist

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countries initially designed as ‘palaces for the people’ with valuable materials; some others are museum-like stations with remarkable collections of public art. Thus, metro environments with particular designs, sophisticated and delightful qualities stimulate thoughts and imaginations for daily commuters, as well as visitors. The high quality servicescapes at best can resemble respect and superior quality and therefore reduce confrontations and harmful consequences of crime. (Design Against Crime Research Centre)

Metro stations as landmarksLandmarks are physical elements in cities that may vary widely in scale, uniqueness and specialization. The image of metro stations is not only produced by the elements in the platform area and other interior places; it is also the overall design aspects of metro cityscapes. Designing for building up a coherence place-identity of a service offering can be achieved through the design and regeneration of architectural elements comprising the entire edifice. In the book The Art of Placemaking by Ronald Lee Fleming (2007) many examples about the regeneration of metro station are illustrated. One of them is the Bay Shore Station in Long Island New York which receives much attention from its art-based regeneration. The artist Buckley has created a personal approach focusing on the relationship between iconography and social reality. For Buckley understanding the area after extensive research resulted in deep knowledge of local character for re-designing the metro station building. The architectural design of the station is a landmark in the area; it harmonizes the ancient spirit of the canopy while also presents a symbolic description of Bay Shore, past and present.

1.4.4 Conclusions – It is about service design and service quality The study on metro stations and metro cityscapes has focused on design elements that create the environmental image and form of the service offering, the rapid transit railway system. The service quality of metro systems is usually evaluated from the customer point of view through design elements in the space; it considers the interaction with the environment and other people from large units to small details in it. To improve possible pitfalls in the service quality one can look into the relation of the total set of characteristics in the offering and how they influence people’s impressions and responses. Being aware of these elements when designing servicescapes, the environmental image of a service, can create or add value to the overall offering.

To sum up, I have found two key notions for enhancing the environmental image of metro environments:

1) Usability and way-finding has to do with visibility and how a person creates the mental image of a place. It deals with signs and cues for guidance, helping people in finding their way in and out of the station.

2) Identity and place-making relates to differentiation. Tangible and intangible qualities of the service affect identity and structure of the place by compositions of various items such as forms, sounds, lightning.

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To conclude, experiencing metro servicescapes deals with aesthetics and authenticity. They can become an indicator to act and connect the service with the potential emotional value it has to offer in addition to focusing on usable and functional elements.

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References1. Augé, M. (1995). Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Verso, London – New York.2. Austin, T., (2007). This is a Narrative Environment. Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. University of the Arts London. 3. Carmona, M.; Heath, T.; Oc, T., and Tiesdell, S. (2003) Public Places Urban Spaces. Architectural Press: Great Britain.4. Design Against Crime Research Centre. Design methodology. Retrieved 06 30, 2010, from Design Against Crime Research Center: http://www.designagainstcrime.com/index.php?q=designmethodology 5. Eco, U. (1968). Function and Sign: Semiotics in Architecture, in The City and the Sign: An Introduction to Urban Semiotics, Gottdiener, M. and Lagopoulos, A. (eds), New York, Columbia University Press.6. Fleming, R. (2007). The Art of Placemaking: Interpreting Community through Public Art and Urban Design. Merrel: London.7. Fog K., Budtz C., Yakaboylu B., (2005). Storytelling: Branding in Practice. Springer: Berlin.8. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. Blackwell: Oxford, UK.9. Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the City. M.I.T. Press. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 10. Miettinen, S. (2009). Designinig Services with Innovatives Methods. Miettinen, S. and Koivisto, M. (eds.) Designing Services with Innovative Methods. University of Art and Design Helsinki.11. Thijssen, T.; Boswijk, A. and Peelen. (2007). Human experience and ubiquitous art the concepts of experience society and experience landscape: defining the art and principles of human centred experience design. Kylänen, M. and Häkkinen, A. (eds.) Articles on Experiences 5: Arts and Experiences. Lapland Centre of Expertise for the Experience Industry: Rovaniemi.12. Walker, Jo. and Chaplin, S. (1997). Visual Culture: An Introduction. Manchester University Press: United Kingdom.13. Watson, Georgia B, and Bentley, Ian. (2007). Identity by Design. Elsevier: Oxford United Kingdom.

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1.5 Understanding and designing public spacesthrough sociology, scenography, screenwriting and UCD

In this chapter we will describe the four approaches in more detail by discussing the relation between distinct professional fields (sociology, scenography, scriptwriting and user centred design) and storytelling and design. The first section presents sociological view on cities and discusses its opportunities to propose attributes that could drive design further or work as lens in evaluating design concepts. The second discusses emerging area of applied scenoraphy and what it could contribute to designing public spaces whereas the third looks into scriptwriting and its’ possible roles in design. The fourth...

The first section written by sociology Pasi Mäenpää, is a contribution to Spice project’s holistic endeavour from the perspective of urban sociology. It will begin by offering a framework to understand human behaviour in urban public spaces, such as metro stations. Then, the framework will be applied to the specific design task and to the efforts made in the Spice project. Mäenpää proposes three main principles; anonymity, unexpectedness and make-believe, that characterize sociality of modern urban public space and that can be utilised to better understand limits and opportunities of designing public spaces.

The second section is co-authored by two scenographers, Liisa Ikonen and Elina Lifländer, and presents authors personal reflections on scenography and its possible role for designing public spaces. They propose narrative approach in designing public spaces as way of evoking new images and associations in people’s mind rather than using stories to convey a certain message. When designing concepts, narrative approach demands sensitiveness to listen the place and oneself, its’ not just about revealing and promoting stories but it may be opposite by hiding them into fragments that evoke diverse interpretations. Moreover, they highlight storytelling as a “tool” that build bridges between distinct professions and guided collaboration forward during the project.

The third section is authored by scriptwriter Tomi Leino, who discusses how the scriptwriting can be used as the basis of emotional and interactive identity of public spaces. He also examines how the script can be based on the given meanings of the immediate surroundings and the context of the public space.

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The fourth section introduces issues of concern in the city space; the role of design as creators of public and private spaces and the passivity and action in public places. It touches upon the construction of public places as a matter of making and acting rather than a mere problem of definition. It comprises a practice approach based on experiments and interventions as vehicles for acquiring knowledge, understanding and testing concepts, and defining the research program through experiences, experiments, interventions and phenomena under concern. The use of exploratory interventions in design research support and fortify the creative practice of design and, simultaneously; it develops on notions in design research that would not be possible to recognize with only theoretical foundations.

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2. ARTICLES2.1 SPICING UP METRO STATIONS – urban sociological approach2.2 APPLIED SCENOGRAPHY–on the role of the story and its revelation2.3 SCRIPTWRITING PUBLIC SPACES – meanings, interpretations and identity2.4 CREATIVE PROCESS IN DESIGN RESEARCH – Interventions in Public Space

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2.1 SPICING UP METRO STATIONS – URBAN SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH PASI MÄENPÄÄ

To begin with, it is fair to say that while living in city one cannot avoid using public spaces. Further, this implies that it is impossible not to attend them as social scenes, though this is not purposeful or sometimes even reluctant. Urban public space is constitutively a social setting, and a peculiar one, with specific type of interaction among urban dwellers. It is also a historical phenomenon which means it varies in time depending on the social and societal circumstances. The following is an urban sociological analysis of public spaces of the modern (or late modern) city. There are three main principles characterizing sociality of modern urban public space. These are anonymity, unexpectedness and make-believe.

2.1.1 AU – anonymous urbaholicsThe contemporary city space as a social setting is characterized by simultaneous publicity and privacy. In streets and marketplaces everyone is seen by everyone else. However, you are able to wander around in your own thoughts, because a mutual respect for privacy predominates in city publicity. In the public streets of cities one can walk without acknowledging others. When I let others be, I may stay in my own privacy, in return. In the early childhood, we have all been taught not to address strangers, neither by voice nor even by pointing with finger. The social setting of urban public space is that of strangers and anonymous crowds.

Anonymity as alienation, people becoming strange to others and themselves as well, is certainly a main theme of urban discourse in social criticism. In Finland, there is a long tradition of suspicion of urbanity and the ways it breaks human dignity, when people become indifferent to each other. Further, the harmful effect of de-individuation, loosing empathy towards others in anonymous social settings has been identified and described by social psychology at least from 1950’s (see e.g. Hogg & Vaughan 1995). Nevertheless, it is the sunny side of the ‘Street of Indifference’, which has seldom been analyzed as a possible source of the joy, entertainment and particular togetherness characteristic of all public spaces. Indifference between anonymous people is not only dysfunctional – if it were, could it be even possible to have cities and urban lifestyle as we know?

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After Baudelaire’s poetic introduction of the flâneur in mid 19th century Paris, sociologist Georg Simmel from Berlin was one of the first to recognize the ways in which the modern metropolis is a huge community of anonymous urbanites. Simmel considered anonymity as one of the mentalities that city life generates. Further, Simmel thought that anonymity gives members of urban crowds freedom to adjust to the continuous flow of impulses in their own personal way. It was the reason why the gates of medieval German towns were provided with the text ‘Die Stadtluft macht Frei’. Simmel went even further arguing that, in addition to negative freedom, freedom of something, urbanity promotes positive freedom, freedom to something, as well. Great modern cities are places where one is allowed, even urged to, develop one’s own individuality and the ways to present it to others, and to oneself. For example, homosexuals growing up in small towns but coming out of the closet only after moving to Helsinki is a common story in Finland, which asserts Simmel’s finding. In modern urban lifestyle you are expected to be unique rather than just a part of the grey mass. Thus, we may conclude that anonymity of urban public space is a productive social force. But this not the whole story, yet.

It seems that freedom in the form of anonymity and privacy does not signify freedom of expression. On the contrary, in the liveliest street with swarming crowds, facial expressions of people are uniformly nonchalant, gestures unaffected and bodily movements highly predictable. Simmel thought of these manners also as symptoms of certain mentalities which urbanites are forced to compose (Simmel 1964/1903). But there is also scope for another kind of interpretation, more in the spirit of Erving Goffman’s (1966) analysis of city life: the indifferent and non-striking manners can be taken merely as masks proper to the social situation, not as stable mentalities.

In the urban environment people are bombarded with the abundance of signs of things which are there only to arouse interest and please them. Thus, it seems that in the mental economy of the shopper the income of the impulses is overflowing, but the mask of calm indifference that the public street-play requires as a rule prevents the natural outcome, i.e. the expressive behaviour. The contribution of my doctoral thesis (Mäenpää 2005) was that urban discourse had not taken seriously the remaining question: what happens behind the mute mask?

Based on the ethnographic work informed by a combination of urban sociological theory with theories of consumption my answer was following. What happens in this setting of manifold impulses is that the reactions of the urbanites turn in on themselves. Instead of expression, there are impressions with which to play in one’s imagination. The anonymity provided by the crowd gives freedom, and even pushes one to orient oneself to one’s inner world. Behind the silent mask there is a private world of the imagination. Simmel’s man of the metropolis and self-illusory, consuming hedonist, introduced by Colin Campbell’s (1987), merge into a hedonistically oriented urbanite who begins to fulfil him or herself upon entering into the playground of imaginary pleasures. The public city space is a social world of fantasizing individuals who share the spatial reality while having private inner worlds of dreams and private associations of images. They refrain from actual interaction, but use others and the signs they transmit for purposes of inner-directed pleasurable contemplation. This inclination is then what makes the world of modern consumerism go around. Consumption as shopping involves inner-directed fantasy of what one could and would purchase to complete, to improve and to transform one’s own self with.

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Thus, the conclusion of the principle one governing urban public space socially, that is anonymity, is that it separates us from each other to our own inner worlds, it makes us free from constraints of being a personal self, it restrains verbal or even bodily communication, and it makes our imagination prosper.

2.1.2 Urban scene – literally speakingThe second principle of urban sociality will be found if we examine deeper the effects of the first one. Anonymity is intertwined with the tendency of public performance. Urban public space is predominantly a place where everyone is potentially been seeing by everyone. That makes us all both spectators and actors, voyeurs and exhibitionists in a kind of two-way Panopticon. There is a long tradition of urban discourse to situate Shakespeare’s words “All the world’s a stage, and every man but an actor” to streets and squares of cities. (see e.g. Sennett 1977, 34–36; Shields 1992, 6–7). However, there is also a genre of paranoia of urban life – as if all the nonchalant fellow urbanites were actually monsters (see e.g. Edvard Munch’s paintings), aliens (classic scifi movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers) or mute killers (Night of the Living Dead).

Thus, anonymity does not merely shut down the faculty of human expressiveness in urban public space. Instead, it makes people to express they are not expressing, so to say. Let us think of an elevator as a social setting. When more and more people enter, there is less and less space. What people do in this situation is that they put more effort on expressing that they respect the territories of others. They perform intensively that they are not interested on their fellow men or women regardless of their bodily contact by standing still and turning their eyes to the walls, even up to the ceiling. This is what Goffman called civil inattention, and which I have termed reciprocal evasive action in order to emphasize the active bodily gesture it necessitates (Goffman 1967; Mäenpää 2005). People perform, act out indifference to others. Anonymity makes people avoid verbal communication but dramatizes non-verbal communication with which the social order is collectively maintained. The anonymous mask is not just mute, it is functionally mute.

The case of elevator reveals that what seems to be silent and not shared is actually loud and reciprocal. Another example, street café, shows that communication of the non-communicative is also pleasurable. Paris style café with chairs pointing to the street is a paradigmatic case of urbanity as a scene. Sitting down in those signifies participating to a public social event which I have termed street sociability, paraphrasing Simmel. Street sociability is entertaining of the sharing of public places with strangers, with whom one is in eye contact and with a bodily closeness that is discreetly played down, but without directly addressing them by voice. It is a particular public form of sociality, of being at once both interested and yet indifferent and anonymous. This type of sociability is found in every public space where people gather to enjoy city life. Whether it is conscious or not, urban dwellers are actors on the urban stage on everyday basis. This is what Richard Sennett (2000) has called the theatrum mundi (or teatro mundi) effect of city life. It is the presence and presentations of others that constructs the entertaining atmosphere of the place where the action is, as Goffman (1967) described public urban hubs. For him city was a dramaturgical stage where one’s task is to manage other people’s impressions of oneself.

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Lottery without a jackpotGoffman’s notion of city as the place where the action is leads to the third classic idea of urban sociality. It is the underlying nature of unexpectedness of the urban stage. Unexpectedness means either a feeling that anything can happen, as it did for Guy Debord (1994/1967) and for the artistic movement of Situationists, who pursued to brake the everyday urban life ordained by capitalism in the 1950’s and the 1960’s. To do this they invented ideas of the ‘derivé’ and the ‘possible rendez-vous’, drifting in the streets and encountering people and things in unpredictable ways. Or, unexpectedness means at least that something could happen, as it did for Goffman (1967), who saw it as the basic motivation for people to gather in urban public places. If it doesn’t happen to me, it may happen to somebody only ‘elbow away’ from me, Goffman wrote.

Unexpectedness, when approached positively, implies aleatoriness of urbanity. This signifies a kind of lottery of the street: something nice could happen to me, whether it means encountering a friend, an elegant but cheap pair of shoes, or an inspiring art exhibition. The serendipitous encounter requires a mass of people, mass of things, or mass of cultural supply in order to make one able to find it by chance, or at least with a feeling of being lucky. The aleatoriness involves romantic longing for something not yet precisely known but only desired, and then encountering of something which seems to fit to the fantasised image. This is what happens in shopping, for example, and it has its roots in the very urbanity itself. Shopping involves anticipating something which is not exactly foreseeable, and this paradox of expecting the unexpected is quite ordinarily solved in the everyday practise of shopping. A shopper wanders around seeking something he or she would like to buy. The purpose of wandering is to browse the mass of things in order to encounter the right one, as if it was made and offered just for me. Actually, the argument of my mine (Mäenpää 2005) is that shopping is a paradigmatic urban practice of modern cities, which should thus be taken as the main orientation of people to the urban public space of today.

Extended shoppingIn shopping all the three principles of urban sociality knit together. It is a practice which requires mental activity targeted to material things around which is provided by the social situation governed by anonymity. Anonymity as impersonality and indifference towards one’s environment sets modern urbanite free to wander in one’s own inner world focusing what one likes and dislikes. Further, as mentioned above, shopping involves pleasurable anticipation of a reward for encountering things one experiences positively. This implies a kind of lottery of the malls and department stores: browsing is like placing a bet for coming across something one desires.

The second urban principle, theatrum mundi, needs some explanation. My analysis of modern shopping (Mäenpää 2005) follows Sennett’s notion of historical transformation of public life from 18th to 20th century. As Sennett (1977) points out, urban theatrum mundi as presenting oneself has turned inwards. It is no longer an act for others as much as an act for oneself. Or to put it in Goffman’s (1972) terms, managing other people’s impressions of oneself is no longer the core of social behaviour in public encounters. Instead, it is the management of one’s own impressions that rules. While shopping, people do not focus on the presentation of themselves to others, but the question they act out is rather ‘how do I

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present myself to myself’. This is what makes modern consumer-urbanites tick: what to buy, to take in as a part of my identity, in order to reach for the ideal image of myself.

What happens in the action of shopping is anticipation of things which might turn out to be just what fits to one’s self – just what fulfils the vague idea one had when going to wander around in the city. Shopping is about opening up of the everyday ‘role’ of personal contacts, and projecting a new and idealised image of oneself, and then reaching for this image by representations which the world of goods carries. It is mimetic action: construction of pleasurable images of oneself and seeking things with which to realise the image to a new presentation of oneself. The conclusion is an aleatory-mimetic urbanite, a flâneur who wanders in city space using potential consumables, material or immaterial, as a source of inspiration to his or her imaginary of being oneself in a new way. Shopping is a paradigmatic urban practice, since it involves privacy and fantasy provided by the anonymous crowd as public social space which opens one up for new presentations of one’s self.

Playful practices of public spacesIf we have aleatory action and mimetic activity in our consumeristic city, what are we actually faced with? It is crucial to perceive that aleatoriness and make-believe are two faculties which are both characteristic of play and playfulness. Play is classically defined as free, separated, unproductive activity, which is governed by rules. Further, the result of play is always uncertain and mentally it is based on the logic of make-believe, which means that it is “accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality or of a free unreality, as against real life”. (Caillois 1961; 9–10) Aleatoriness and make-believe elevate urban shopping to a mental level above normal. Play is free activity standing quite consciously outside the realm of ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious’, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly (Huizinga 1984). Play is a self-purposeful (autotelic) and autonomous, imagined sphere in reality which aims at joyfulness and entertainment. It is an artificial world inside the world. Urban shopping meets all the criteria of play. It is not a play or game with strict rules and boundaries, but it clearly entails experiential playfulness.

If we approach modern urbanites, that means us, as homo ludens urbanus, what does it imply, then? First implication is, as said, that shopping is as a paradigmatic urban practice. This implies that shopping extends out of its borders of consuming material cultural artefacts to the sphere of immaterial world of inner experiences. The core of being a consumer, which we all inevitably are, is not about consuming, but about individual imagining facilitated by the social and cultural environment – at least from the point of view of our spatial being. Secondly, culture of consumption is not passive and silent but active and communicative. Urban people in public space may seem passive but inside their heads they are busy and vital. They do not talk to each other but they are inclined both to formulating and reading of cultural messages conveyed by consumables.

Thirdly, and this is what we need the framework of play to realize, communication through consumables constructs to a higher level of social meta-communication. According to Gregory Bateson (1978), in all the human play-forms there is always the meta-level. For example, saying that former PM Matti Vanhanen is like Lahnanen, a slimy fish, is a playful joke, but it also carries a critical message in the meta-

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level that is called a political satire. This is the way play, though it is non-productive by definition, actually produces something to ‘the real world’. At the meta-communicative level of our consumeristic city urban dwellers bring to the fore publicly their cultural likings and dislikings, their styles and tastes which are grown from their social positions both in the hierarchical dimension of social structure and in the horizontal dimension of the ways of life. They present and represent their styles to each other and read the styles of the others and the social positions behind the styles. By consuming they simultaneously both reproduce their positions in the social structure and work on it and rebuild it imaginarily and materially.

In the level of meta-communication the urban play of consumption reproduces social differences and distances. Above all it reproduces tolerance to these. This is the more significant meaning of ‘the melting pot’ of the metropolis in the level of social meta-communication: the function of the city as urban publicity is to tell us the story of the society that is both organised and in a constant but continuing and permanent process of reorganisation (see Geertz 2000/1973). It is a story consisting of multiple sub-stories. Urban people gathered in public space do not form actual community but socially it works like Victor Turner’s (1991/1977, 132, 177) communitas as a proto-structural activity. In the individual level the role of consumption is to produce continuity of social and cultural distances. To consume is to reproduce differences and likenesses for the public transaction. The mimetic relation of consumer to him or herself is about probing and applying meta-communicative roles that the world of consumables provides us with.

Fourthly, if people’s activity in public space takes the form of play, then it must have implications on their relationship to space. Unlike Debord and other situationists, I am not worried of the souls of the urbanites, so to say. My worry is that the physical essence of the city is endangered, and those who commit to impoverishing it are not just capitalists but consumers for whom the city as a façade for their mimetic imaginaries is sufficient. When the consumeristic practise of wandering around and constructing the relation of self and things dominates the urban experience, aesthetics and symbolism of the space are being played down. It is not people who are in a void of meaning and significance, as many of American urbanists have claimed (e.g. Arendt 2002; Sennett 1977). My argument is that it is the space and spatiality which has lost its cultural resonance.

We can deepen the analysis of playful consumer-urbanites relation to space with Roger Caillois’s (1961) and Walter Benjamin’s (1999) conceptualisations of mimesis as a major creative principle of culture: the mimetic faculty. They both share the same idea of the tendency to lose the difference between oneself and one’s environment in mimetic plays. Mimesis is a power that attracts and absorbs a human being to become a part of his or her surroundings. It is like positive claustrophobia: enjoying of as if the walls were falling over you and by cancelling the difference between you and your space. Instead of taking a relation to the space, in the mimetic play one is prone in a way to become a space oneself (Taussig 1993, 34). That is why the physical space itself is not as significant as its ability to support the mimetic consumer-urbanites’ aspiration to become what they imagine as if their environment. Following Benjamin, we could see this kind of habituation with the space corresponding to the relation that capitalism has developed for the modern individual with replicated and mass produced but still individualised articles. The sameness of shopping malls, fast-food restaurants, tourist resorts and cruisers is animated by the mimetic

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faculty in the similar way than the sameness of photographs and records that Benjamin wrote about.

Thus, the effect of playfulness of urban practices is diminishing of the significance of spatial qualities. Space is being weakened. City becomes like a façade of action, rather than a conditioner of it. There are no meaningful places bound to concrete, unique spaces anymore. Instead, there are meaningful places bound to certain pleasurable, mostly mental action. The result is space that has no qualities that would distinguish it from other spaces. This is the shopping mall. There is a saying telling it all: ‘If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen the(m)all.’ Therefore, the spatial problem of consumer society lies in the uniformity of urban public (or semi-public) space due to the extension of the space for shopping. It is a paradox that the diversification of consumables leads to the monoculture of spatial qualities.

2.1.3 Social space and Spice – how to apply?What should we think of the analysis of modern urban sociality from the point of view of the Spice project’s aims? There are four different ways to proceed. Firstly, we can use the analysis as an urban social condition that sets limits to what kind of urban public space can, and what cannot be done. Secondly, we may approach the urban social condition as something we expressly want to change by making people free of the social restraints of the gray, anonymous infrastructure that metro stations appear to us in everyday basis. Thirdly, we can approach the analysis as a context of discovering new ideas of vitalizing urban public spaces and the mental life of people using them. Finally, it is possible to use it as a framework for understanding and also evaluating ideas and concepts the project has produced – and will produce.

• Homo ludens urbanus as the human condition. If we follow the logic of the playful shopper rigorously, is there still a possibility to enrich and spiritualize public spaces? In other words, how deterministic is the practice of consumption concerning its spatial implications? There is, at least, one trait to follow here provided by the tradition of urban studies. The ancient Romans used to separate city – referring to Rome – as the physical form (urbs) from the city as community or society (civitas). It is a common idea that between these two there should be correspondence of some kind. Urbs ought to function as a mirror of civitas. However, this interconnectedness must not be approached as identification of citizens to their city space. The logic of the playful shopper is not about identifying with space but identifying with the image of one’s own self facilitated by consumables encountered in space. Urban shoppers do not project their selfhood on space, instead they project their selfhood on their presentational self in space. Space does not matter much, one’s own self does.

This is the logic we should respect when developing experiential spaces. It is self-oriented, and as such even narcissistic, but it is the form of existence we modern consumer-urbanites take in public space. The question remains, how to follow that logic and not fall into repeating the monotony of shopping mall? The answer lies somewhere in the idea of extended consumption. There is a lot of consumption that is not material. The Night of Arts urban happening is an example of cultural consumption which does not aim at purchasing – not even imaginative purchasing. It is based on mere sensory reception of art, added on

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with the mental activity of choosing what to incorporate to one’s selfhood in the process of elaborating one’s identity. What differentiates consumeristic experiencing of art and other cultural products from the classic contemplative reception is the question in person’s mind: is this for me? Conclusively, spatial planning is able to provide urban public space with meaningful qualities in theoretical terms, but only if it follows the consumeristic logic of regarding the world as if it is the matter of supplying something just for me, or not for me.

What could this mean concretely? Firstly, a single metro station should not make up a total art work, but rather be composed of series of varying experiences to choose those one likes – and dislikes – like in the Scandinavian smorgasbord. This is because one single thing cannot meet the consumeristic need for something being just for me because it is not based on one’s own choosing. The fact that diversity beats unidimensionality suggests we should favour minor experiential effects, instead of grandiose spectacles.

Secondly, the same applies to time. Modern people love novelties and live on changes. If qualities of space do not vary in time, they become non-qualities in the eyes of the daily users. In public space the spatial variety is emphasized due to people’s inclination to filter out most of the abundant stimuli they are faced with. In time, everything we habituate with tends to turn unnoticed and invisible to us. Thus, planning for a hundred years, though it would support sustainable development, would not do the trick as well as something which changes in time. However, it is also possible to produce space which is under process of transition all the time, done by the users of it, for example.

Thirdly, the produced spatial qualities do not have to be unique masterpieces. Instead, they should inspire and empower people to do their own work in our consumer society of mass production, which is the mental act of individualization of products as if they were made just for me. The notion leads to elaborate such planning ideas which are not strictly defined but rather open to various types of encountering and utilizing of it.

In all, taking the cultural character homo ludens urbanus seriously would imply planning the space strictly for the concrete social situation of using metro stations. In that respect, the perspective opposes abstract cultural approaches, such as branding of stations by using a famous architect or producing an urban landmark, for example. Further, it could even differ from more concrete branding, such as utilizing the themes found in the surroundings of the planned spot. As an alternative to branding, I have developed elsewhere an idea of cultural planning project in the level of city districts, which could be illuminating here (see Sundman 2000, 23-28; Mäenpää 2005, 328).

The idea was not to attach to the strengths of the target area (a new waterfront housing district), and then polish and crystallize them, as in branding. Instead, the idea was to formulate a rather general cultural tension which could be discussed and materialized expressly in this place. The two examples of the conceptual approach were gender and work. These two were elaborated to concrete concepts of Jätkäsaari, The Women’s city, and Kalasatama, The New Town for Labour. According to my suggestion, the two concepts would have been discussed and developed both in public and by researchers, professionals and other intellectuals and workers of the respective branch. The cultural process enlarged to civil society was meant to provide the basis for the actual urban planning with the aspiration to

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materialize immaterial culture to the spatiality of the city.This type of conceptual design is not applicable to the mission of the Spice project as such, because the scale of city districts is different than the scale of traffic station. However, two points could be taken. The first is the idea of approaching the city space culturally, signifying immateriality, not spatially and materially. The second is approaching the city as tensions, unsolved problems, even messy situations, rather than with problem-to-be-solved kind of thinking. This conclusion supports the dramaturgical approach the Spice project has utilized before (see e.g. the story or Aino below).

• Emancipation – critics of the everyday, carnival, liminality.It is also possible to consciously break the law of the dominating social order of the anonymous crowd of public space, or, alternatively, turn the order upside down. The former is what the Situationist movement attempted with the idea of fighting the stagnating and impoverishing influence that capitalism has on the everyday. The latter has a long tradition in human history, also in the history of the European urban culture, in the culture of carnival.

Carnival is a temporal social situation where the norms of the everyday are not valid anymore. The Finnish First of May is often considered as a carnival because it changes the ways people behave and the rules of traffic, for example, and it is true that there is some transgression found in the swarming crowds of urban vappu-happy people. However, it lacks the main aspect of carnival, which involves not only dismantling the order but re-establishing it again reversed. For one day, a beggar becomes king, and king is in the service of common people. That is the logic of carnival. Is carnivalistic transgression a fruitful approach to metro stations? Is it even possible?

In modern western world there are no real carnivals left anymore. Further, there is no point trying to establish one in traffic stations which are governed by the logic of safety and functionality. Instead, we could approach the idea of transgression with another concept, that of liminality developed by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep (1960). The latin word limen signifies a threshold. Thus, liminality refers to human existence between two states, the one s/he is coming from and the one s/he is about to enter. It is a space of time in-between, of being betwixt and between. It is also a state of being out of social order determining individual’s identity and place in space. Spaces of transport, like metro stations, are always spaces of transgression in the sense of liminality.

Turner (1991/1977) called a community of liminal people communitas, an unstructured and preliminary community where all the members are equal. Liminality implies a kind of free-floating social beings, much in the same way shoppers are freed from their personal being by the social order of urban anonymous crowd. This way, metro stations could overtake shopping malls as places where people are bound to open up to something new. In case of traffic station, liminal transgression should be considered more mildly as reproduction rather than emancipation. It is the space in time during the everyday, where people are not yet anywhere doing what they are to do. This makes metro stations places of being open to encounter the diversity of urban life, whether diversity signifies other people or sensory experiences provided by the design of the space.

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The perspective of emancipation elaborated by the concept of liminal transgression suggests that metro stations could become not just hot spots of transportation and motion, but hot spots of renewing and reproduction of the passengers and their sense of community, as well. The experience of a metro station could be more than just comfortable and entertaining. It could change people as individuals due to the capacity of the transient community born and ceased tens of times every day. To put it concretely, this could point to a performance, rather than to design of surface materials, for example, because performing arts possess the ability to temporal transgression of space and its sociality. The perspective of emancipation or critic needs to be applied having in mind that the effect a metro station is able to make to its users is a kind of flash in the otherwise gray course of the everyday. A metro station cannot and should not change people’s lives. Actually, what it could do is to deconstruct and reconstruct itself as a social, experienced space.

• Context of discoveryThe idea of meta-communication introduced above can be used as a window to look for innovative urban design. In urban public space people behave individualistically but simultaneously, either consciously or not, they take part in the collective appearance of a temporary community. If we take seriously the view of consumeristic city space as the place of meta-communication, we can approach our urban consumeristic everyday as a collective performance where everyone is spotting the places of oneself and of other members of urban society. In this cultural meta-story we can see the function of social cohesion, the collective need to rediscover and re-determine one’s belonging to the society. However, we can approach the functionality from at least two other perspectives, both stemming up from the separateness rather than the togetherness of modern urban citizens.

Firstly, the meta-story can be read from the point of view of social order. This is the Geertzian view derived from the Balinese cock fight institution (Geertz 2000/1973). According to him, the cock fight in Bali was a play with which tensions between tribes and clans were represented and then played down. Analogously, the urban public space of our cities today can be considered as collective representation of the differentiated society. Consumeristic public spaces tell us the story of the breaking up of the society as community, but, simultaneously, of the constitution of the society as a social order. However different and even antagonist people are regarding each other, they nonetheless stick to civilized manners and avoid open hostilities outside the realm of the playfield of shopping, although by shopping they first and foremost seek to separate themselves from their fellow citizens.

Secondly, and as an elaboration of the Geertzian view of social order towards stronger functionalistic thinking, we could approach the meta-play of city publicity as a kind of optimization of social diversity. The functionality of the urban play-form may be found in the way it reproduces the social distance and acceptance of it which the modern differentiated society presupposes. The Geertzian narrative can be reshaped to a question: how differentiated can a society be while still holding together? The consumeristic urban public life could be seen as an everyday answer to the question: just as differentiated enough to make us able to join in and share the same space still becoming interested of each other, being able to read each other culturally, and to tense up of each other. As Goffman (1983) put it, people have to be different than others but like them. As said, he saw city and urban life as a place ‘where

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the action is’ ‘an elbow away’. At the meta-level, ‘the action’ of the modern city means keeping others and otherness neither nearer nor farther than ‘an elbow away’. This social optimization is something the society needs in order to maximize the diversity of individuals while maintaining intelligibility and readability of the society as a community.

How to apply this abstract anthropological thinking to the reality of metro stations, then? What kind of applications could this meta-communicative social context generate? Let us first take a look at another view for making good use of the analysis of urban sociality, which opens up from the intensified inner world of the users of urban public space. If the practices of consumption are based on the vivid imagination – generated by the urban social setting of the anonymous crowd – we are faced with a huge capacity of creativity. The analysis signifies that while using public space people are mentally active but communicatively restrained, and thus in a state of spilling over their mental work to whatever they find interesting, which is utilized by retailers of consumables. The question is, how to utilize people’s imaginary power in the production of the experiential spatiality of a metro station?

One of the applied outcomes of my work on the public space of consumer city was an idea of leaving traces of oneself to public space for others to read as a form of civilizing public space was (Mäenpää 2005, 327). The argument was that consumeristic city space becomes too mono-functional and differentiated, as well as too ordered and undisturbed. Thus, city as a huge shopping mall drifts away from the major quality of the European city, which is mixed space. That is why urban space should not be marked only by some institution managing, guarding and polishing it, be it public or private, but it should be marked by its users, the citizens, as well. That is what it takes to make a space lively, comfortable, attractive and functional as a public space.

This is not a novel idea, as such, but something similar has been in the agenda of both activists and scholars of urban culture. Urban activists have contended with the authorities in the topics of graffiti culture and unofficial adverts plastered in walls in certain spots, for example. Urban researchers have termed these as urban epiphyte growing ‘organically’ on the surface of the solid and permanent urban structure. In the discourse of these phenomena, urban environment is seen as too planned and too structured for people to attach to, unless it is softened with a layer of something more humane. From the perspective of consumption we could argue, that people want, and they have a right to, be more than just consumers of city space. They want to be producers of it, as well.

Further, we can see that the idea of the users leaving traces or somehow marking the space they use lies in the centre of both the perspective of the communal meta-communication and that of the fantasizing individuals. By marking space people would extend the meta-communicative realm from a mere ‘instant performance’ of their identities that they do with their clothes, accessories, make up and so forth in everyday basis by just appearing in the space. They would have a prolonged presence in space with those they do not perhaps ever encounter. Respectively, those who read the marks of others would use them as objects and means of imagining and fantasizing of the people behind the objects of someone’s individual story. As an outcome, there would emerge mental activity directed at other people, at the fellow citizens, rather than towards the consumables. In a way, people would ‘consume’ other people, and in that sense there could emerge sociality, that would be more civilizing and enriching than what a shopping mall can

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ever be.In practice, a metro station could facilitate numerous types of marking the space. It could be actual or virtual. The marks could remain for just some seconds or for years. They could be thought as a kind of public micro blogs consciously delivering people’s status updates, or they could appear without doing anything else than walking and waiting for train. They could give information of local services and happenings, or they could make up an imaginative world of their own. In all, they could compose a warehouse, a museum and a theatre of people who share the space. As such, leaving traces of one’s presence would give meaning and value for a space we normally consider as given to us, rather than as made by me and others for us. This way a metro station could gain value as a collective owned property, which public spaces actually are, though individually created and experienced.

• Framework for understanding and evaluating. It is not an accident that Spice project focuses on spiritualizing of public spaces. Present playful orientation to urban life calls for joyful experiencing not only in malls and theme parks but also in other everyday public spaces. This is not to say that spicing up metro stations implies extending of mere consumerism or entertainment. Instead, the ideas, demos and prototypes project has produced so far present a full range of something one cannot find in commercial or perhaps in any other urban space today. However, it is important to understand that urban playfulness, which is grown from social order of modern urban public space and developed in the context of consumption, constitutes the mental basis of urbanites to orient to their environment. The aleatory-mimetic playfulness holds the demand for the supply of experiential spaces Spice-project tries to develop, so to say.

Thus, vitalization and spiritualization of metro stations can be seen as enriching and multiplying of the spatiality of the consumer society. We can think of consumption figuratively as a tip of the iceberg of the culture of playfulness. What the Spice-project aspires, is to spin the iceberg in order to make other tips, other dimensions of it become visible above the water-level. As the outcome, there are novel ways to encounter something new by chance (the aleatory) in a theatre-like relation to one’s self (mimesis) with the similar logic as in shopping but without individualistic material consumption. To conclude, let us take a look at some ideas, demos and prototypes the project has produced, so far, to see how they could be understood and evaluated in the framework of urban playful sociality and of meta-communication the playfulness supports.

In the Otaniemi case of the Spice project one of the main outcomes was a fictional story titled ‘Take your time’, written by script writer Tomi Leino. The key idea of the story was a missing person, Aino, and the traces of hers that her longing family members found, or at least thought they found in the local metro station, as well as the traces they started to leave of themselves. Obviously, the key idea in the story matches with the urban sociological idea of leaving traces to urban space, derived from the theoretical approach of meta-communication. The Story of Aino is fiction but it is informed and inspired by the data gathered amongst people living or working in Otaniemi, as well as by other historical and demographical data. It is a meta-story, a story of stories gathered. As kind of an archetypal story behind it, there is a story of Aino in Kalevala, the national epic of Finland.

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‘Take your time’ is a tragic story of a family first breaking apart due to divorce and then suffering from guilt and yearning when trying to restore the family reunion after mother’s death. Aino, the person who has got missing both actually and emotionally from her father and brother, is thought to be leaving signs to the Otaniemi metro station. The seekers begin to do the same. The metro station becomes a whiteboard of messages that has no other meaning than to facilitate the belief that Aino is alive and somehow present in the lives of the longing persons. For them, the metro station is turned to a kind of virtual dining table gathering the pieces of the broken family union back together in the emotional level.

The fictional story presents the possibility of a place to become extremely significant for especially intimate reasons, whereas the urban sociological analysis of meta-communication refers to public intercourse between people who are anonymous to each other. At first, this seems contradictive, but not necessarily. As said above, the aleatoriness of urbanity involves romantic longing, where the anonymity of the urban crowd provides a background on which hints of something personal and intimate stand out strongly carrying a promise of something or someone destined just for me. Further, the signs people convey with their clothing is often partly private, in the sense that the amount of people capable of reading them is limited. This holds true specifically concerning subcultures and urban tribes, regularly amongst the youth.

Thus, the case of Aino’s supposed signs – like cultural remains of her personality – in the space of metro station should not be approached as a fictional anomaly in the factual urbanity. Instead, the Aino-story advises us to see the potency of urban public spaces to communicate in many different public-private levels of depending on the cultural distance between the reader and the writer of the signs. In the public realm of media, the mixing of public and private is perceptively topical. The phenomena such as reality-TV and internet blogging both manifest and exploit the cultural tendency to enter the public realm by emphasizing one’s personality, instead of sheltering it, as would have been the case earlier. If we project this cultural change from media publicity to urban publicity, it seems natural to approach metro stations as places for showing one’s personality with its desires, emotions and aspirations.

Further, the Aino-story suggests that a metro station does not have to be the same for everyone. Universality is necessary to make the space functional and usable for all. However, it does not have to speak to all with the same language in order to be communicative in the sense of urban meta-communication. Then again, to put it reversely, it is not possible to be intimate for everyone in the public realm. Signs of Aino simply do not matter for most – at least not in the way they matter for her relatives. The key to balancing between public and private is in the openness of signing, and in the temporal transformation that the openness implies. What the Aino-story teaches us, is that leaving personal signs in public space has to be an ongoing process, not something permanent, as such.

Another approach to socio-spatial communication in the Spice project is provided by Jari-Pekka Kola’s critical design project. Critical design “is not trying to modify the world to suit humans as ‘normal’ design does, but the opposite, to change us to suit the world” (Kola 2011, 16). For critical design the socio-spatial order of a metro station, with separateness and passivity of passengers, is to be challenged. Here, communication refers to actual interaction between people who are sharing the space. The aim

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is to break the socio-spatial boundaries separating people and make them change their behaviour. To make a metro station experiential and meaningful to the users necessitates activating their mutual social interaction. The outcome of Kola’s work is a series of concepts using mirrors, videoing, surveillance cameras and screens to make people stir from their conventional way of being by oneself, though sharing the space.

Looked from the perspective of urban sociological analysis presented above, Kola’s approach seems to either miss the level of meta-communication between urban people or refuse its value. However, a third interpretation is possible, as well. The projections of passengers seen by themselves and/or by others can be thought as intensification of the meta-communicative presence of people. For example, Kola’s cheeky idea of using of surveillance system works for raising people’s awareness and interest on the space as urban infrastructure, as well as of the power structure controlling urban space. Together these represent a push factor for becoming more conscious on the otherwise invisible and mute sociality there exists even in a conventionally used metro station. It is doubtful, whether there emerges a community, even a virtual one, out of characters presenting together in a display there, but the point is that they represent the fabric of such in the spirit of Turner’s fleeting communitas, described above.

In practice, Kola’s work come close to the idea of leaving traces or signs of oneself in space, though his approach is theoretically and ideologically different, even opposite. What could be more personal sign than a picture of oneself? As such, mirroring or videoing people are like a performance enforced by the metro station facility, which it actually always is but in a milder and more conventional way. Further, it is noteworthy that in Kola’s critical design approach the everyday as conventionality is being emphasized and thus reasserted. His design works can be seen as amplifiers of the monotony and sameness of the life of a just another gloomy day in a metro station. Following the logic of transgressive carnival, the act of revealing and changing the social order governing metro stations implies affirming of it, as well. This is so because of becoming conscious of one’s own behaviour and of the common social setting. A change in passengers’ behaviour to more active implies conception of being passive in the first place. Following the same logic, metro stations are being conceived of as grey and monotonous non-places. Thus, it would probably turn out that there would be real transformation neither in the public social order governed by anonymity, nor in the metro stations as public spaces, through critical design. However, it is certain that there would emerge interventions to those permanencies occasionally through a kind of public performances the design works produce. Raising consciousness of the social formations would enrich passengers’ experiencing of metro stations, which is exactly what the Spice project aims at.

The approach of performance was more explicit in two examples in the demos of the workshop by the students of scenography presented to Spice project in 16th of November 2010. The first one was a greenhouse where people could put in small plants to grow. The second was an instant audible, a kind of proto-musical performance coming into the world during the short interval of metro trains. The greenhouse made passengers participants of the design of space, whereas the instant DJ transgressed the detached individuals to an audience sharing the hypnotic emergence of the curious underground musical born out of stations own sounds and rhythmics. Both of the examples remind that the nature of transgression of sociality is temporal. The profound and paradoxical challenge of making experiential

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spaces is how to make the everyday something that does not happen in the everyday basis? As a conclusion, it is important to realize that common to all the three design actions, the Aino-story, critical design approach and scenographical demos, is that they presuppose the grey, constant and passive reality of urban public space of metro stations in two senses. Firstly, it is taken as actual reality, although the concrete spaces they refer to have not been established, yet. Secondly, and this is crucial, they all utilize it as a factual reality on which their design actions are contrasted to. In this sense they get their meaning from the gloomy reality of a traffic station, not despite of it. Thus, from the perspective of urban sociological analysis, the direction of the design process is sound, because it aims to improve the functionality and meaningfulness of the existing socio-spatial reality.

The conclusion is that we should not try to alter the state of the socio-spatial reality of metro stations, but, rather, to utilize it as a source and a background for the possibility of minor and more private altered states. Design should aim at contingency taking place in space, instead of permanent structures or forms. Concerning people’s behaviour, we should not try to change it, as such, but rather to work for multiplying the repertoire of acting and interacting. We cannot change the story told of the ordinary everyday life of the metro stations, but we can tell it in ways which provide the story with more clues to spring up and go on.

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References 1. Arendt, Hannah (2002): Vita activa. Ihmisenä olemisen ehdot. Vastapaino, Tampere.2. Bateson, Gregory (1978): Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Granada Publishing, London.3. Benjamin, Walter (1999): The Arcades Project. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge.4. Caillois, Roger (1961): Man, Play and Games. The Free Press of Glencoe Inc., New York.5. Campbell, Colin (1987): The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.6. Debord, Guy (1994/1967): The Society of the Spectacle. Zone Books, New York.7. Geertz, Clifford (2000/1973): The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books, New York.8. Gennep, Arnold van (1960): The Rites of Passage. Phoenix Books, The University of Chicago Press.9. Goffman, Erving (1966): Behavior in Public Places. The Free Press, New York.10. Goffman, Erving (1967): The Interaction Ritual. Aldine, Chicago.11. Goffman, Erving (1972/1961): Fun in Games. Teoksessa Goffman: Encounters. Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. Penguin, Harmondsworth. 12. Goffman, Erving (1983): The Interaction Order. American Sociological Review, Vol. 48.13. Hogg, Michael & Graham Vaughan (1995): Social Psychology. An Introduction. Prentice Hall/Harester Wheatsheaf, London.14. Huizinga, Johan (1984/1938): Leikkivä ihminen. WSOY, Juva.15. Kola, Jari-Pekka (2011): Spectacular Place – Public Space, Storytelling and Critical Design. Master thesis at Aalto University School of Art and Design, Helsinki.16. Mäenpää, Pasi (2005): Narkissos kaupungissa. Tutkimus kuluttaja-kaupunkilaisesta ja julkisesta tilasta. Tammi, Helsinki.17. Sennett, Richard (1977): The Fall of Public Man. On the Social Psychology of Capita-lism. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.18. Sennett, Richard (2000): Reflections on the Public Realm. Teoksessa Bridge, Gary & Sophie Watson (eds.): A Companion to the City. Blackwell, Oxford.19. Simmel, Georg (1964/1903): The Metropolis and Mental Life. Teoksessa Wolff, Kurt H. (ed.): The Sociology of Georg Simmel. The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois.20. Shields, Rob (ed.) (1992): Lifestyle shopping. The Subject of Consumption. Routledge, London.21. Shields, Rob (2002): Henri Lefebvre, arkielämän filosofi. Yhdyskuntasuunnittelu 2002:3–4.22. Sundman, Mikael et al. (2000): Kantakaupungin uudet ranta-alueet, rakentamisen sosiaalisia ulottuvuuksia. Helsingin kaupunkisuunnitteluviraston julkaisuja 2000:1.23. Taussig, Michael (1993): Mimesis and Alterity. A Particular History of the Senses. Routledge. London.24. Turner, Victor (1977/1991): The Ritual Process. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.

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2.2 APPLIED SCENOGRAPHY– ON THE ROLE OF THE STORY AND ITS REVELATION

LIISA IKONEN & ELINA LIFLÄNDER

In this chapter, we examine how an interpretation in the form of a dialogue gave new light to a story and its possibilities in applied scenography from the point of view of two scenographers. Our aim was to understand how scenography could be applied to the design of public spaces as part of the Spice project that brought together various fields of science and art. Our previous work that had stretched the boundaries of our own field and those of theatre (e.g. Ikonen 2006; Lifländer 2008) made us ask what would happen to scenography if the boundaries of performing arts were broken. On the one hand, we wanted to know what scenography could give to the design of public spaces and, on the other hand, how scenography and our experiences would change if we introduced scenography to a new environment. We were not looking for an exhaustive answer. Our aim was to outline the phenomenon of applied scenography that is only just taking its form and to examine how it would manifest itself in the setting of the study. As the project progressed, it was interesting to see how working in a multidisciplinary group of researchers affected the development of our thinking.

The presence of scenographers in the Spice project was due to the fact that scenographic tradition combines story-based work and using space as a central way of expression. The group of urban sociologists, designers, scriptwriters and scenographers took the differing of their initial points of view into consideration and saw possible issues as creative conflicts that promoted the progress of the project. The presence of corporate partners also affected the work of the researchers slightly: the progress of the study was made as transparent as possible and the various phases were explained to partners in joint seminars throughout the project.

THE STARTING POINTS OF SCENOGRAPHIC QUESTIONS Applied scenography is a new and general concept which includes several different approaches. The fact that the study was part of the Spice project gave it a time and a place, and linked it to the storytelling theme. The point of view of this text focuses on the gradual development of our understanding and on how well the methods we used suited each other. In the background is our objective to understand the phenomenon we are studying by interpreting the relationship between the entire phenomenon and its constituents. Our experimental work often took place spontaneously and during a creative process. We were strongly aware of the intuition that drove our work forward and sometimes ignored the predefined research questions and objectives. It was these events that escaped the objective explanatory power that were in a central role in the formation of new information.

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In this text, we examine a case study that focused on the design process of the Otaniemi metro station (2010). By using an experimental approach, we tried to find answers to how local experiences and stories and the functionality of the station space could act as starting points for scenographic design and what kinds of qualities they would bring to the final results. In the spirit of phenomenology, we built the method for interpreting our work into a dialogue between scenographers; a discussion that was based on a shared professional point of view and a consequential shared pre-understanding. The dialogue that continued throughout the project and the close cooperation with the other researchers formed the foundation for both the progress of the study and the gradual development of our understanding. In the end, our shared understanding became one of the central driving forces of our research.

There were some preconceptions in the background of our dialogue that we were aware of. During the Spice project, we felt that we were representing two individual scenographers instead of the common field of scenography. This was especially obvious because we both had a similar attitude towards the main concept of the project, the story. We had a lot of experience of working in projects that had progressed without a script. During this project, the story represented an obstacle that might control and define our freedom and the progress of our work. Paradoxically, it was also the only familiar factor that connected the world of design to the tradition of our own field. Our way of understanding a story merged with our way of approaching a space. We had both worked outside conventional theatre environments and found public spaces and their functionality challenging in many ways. We also shared the view of seeing scenographic work and its artistic freedom as a contrast to hierarchical theatrical work. The starting point of our study was that the changes in scenography could be examined by analysing the changes that happen at an experiential level, in the relationship between the work and the creator. The theory behind this approach was the common phenomenological view where an experience is something that links the subject to the object (e.g. Perttula 2005, 13).

Next, we will describe our experimental work in the Otaniemi project: its experiential dimensions and the ideas that arose during it. We will present the reasoning behind our thoughts, our personal ways of using experiential methods and the differences in our points of view.

PHENOMENOLOGICAL AND RELATIONAL SCENOGRAPHY–TWO ATTEMPTS TO BE ADDRESSED BY A PLACEThe growing trend of space-bound and location-bound art reflects many current phenomena. The fact that performing arts are now present in alternative locations is a sign of an increasing awareness of the political nature of space. It also shows that we understand the narrative nature of space and the power of expression that addresses the body. The Spice project that focused on public spaces challenged us to listen to spaces and locality in a new way. We were faced with an environment that we had not chosen and that was unfamiliar to both of us: the Otaniemi area with its multiple actors and functions. Our work in the project took place during a phase when the aim was to examine how local stories could be formed into experience prototypes. Buchenau and Suri (2000, 424) find that experience prototypes are ways of illustrating the experiential, physical and contextual dimensions of design artefacts. In practice, this meant that the starting point of our scenographic work was not a script or a finished story, but a user survey completed by our fellow researchers, a resulting set of interview profiles and a brief summary of the special features of the area. The user profiles provided information about the age, sex

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and profession of the interviewees, as well as of their experiential relationship to Otaniemi. Based on the material, professor of dramaturgy Jukka Vieno had compiled a report of the opposites used to describe the special characteristics of the area. Otaniemi was portrayed using conceptual pairs such as masculine–feminine, brick walls–mansions, festivities–everyday life and so forth.

This summary made it possible for us to get a comprehensive picture of the area quickly. It also revealed how people in Otaniemi saw the atmosphere of the area, the needs for change and what they thought about the planned metro station. Otaniemi appeared to be a technology-centred, sports-minded and slightly desolate place where people wanted a more Central European marketplace atmosphere, more campus spirit and some softness to temper the masculine traditions of the students of technology and the masculine architecture. However, this background information was not sufficient on its own. Reaching the experiential level required seeing the area for ourselves. We began by examining and documenting the existing, eastern metro station spaces and the Otaniemi area. At the same time we were discovering our relationship to the story affecting our work in the background.

2.2.1 LIISA IKONEN: THE POINT OF VIEW OF A PHENOMENOLOGICAL SCENOGRAPHERWhen I perform location-bound work, I always begin by experiencing the spaces and locations personally and seeing how they open themselves up to me. The most important factor is freedom. However, freedom no longer means the same as independence, but freeing myself towards the shared work of art. (Ikonen 2006) In practice, this means listening: forming a listening relationship both to the work of art being formed and the community that is forming it. Here, the undertone of my thinking is inspired by philosopher Martin Heidegger’s thinking in his late period and especially the idea that art is always present in nature and the artist’s task is to make it visible or present itself. (Heidegger 1998, 74) Making art visible by listening and revealing requires a sensitivity to be exposed to all the factors that form the basis of the artwork in question. In the Spice project, this meant aiming at experiencing the Otaniemi area and taking into consideration the joint objectives, especially the story-based approach, of the research group. The listening attitude also pointed me in the way of the engaging dimensions of scenography, i.e. the interaction between space and user and their way of encountering each other and participating in each other. Choosing a multisensory approach was obvious to me, since listening is related to the comprehensive bodily encountering of people and spaces in phenomenology.

As I had distanced myself from theatrical work based on a script, my relationship to the story had evolved into a close relationship with language. I had outlined a scenographic method based on presence and observant writing and found a new, fascinating dimension of language. Writing had become a way of giving experience a form, but also a way of participating in the world of the artwork being formed. (Ikonen 2006) I aimed at describing my experiences in Otaniemi verbally, but I approached the story in a way that suited the Spice project at that point, as a story with a plot. Although we did not define how the concept of storytelling should be understood at the beginning of the project, the book Storytelling: marknadsföring i upplevelseindustrin by Swedish Lena Mossberg and Erik Nissen Johanssen (2007)

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was used as a guideline. I wrote five fictional stories that combined the profiles derived from the user survey and my own experiences of Otaniemi, its streets, beaches and kiosks. I wrote about the nature in Otaniemi, how it expressed itself and how diversity and different phenomena met there. The fictional stories and their characters were soon left in the background and the observing, experiencing and understanding that happened due to the writing process became more important. The story was like a platform that made the local phenomena of Otaniemi stand out.

Heidegger calls language that listens to being ‘saying’ (Sage). This is not representation, but a way of approaching being. In its original Greek meaning, this kind of saying is showing or letting something appear (Heidegger Pöggeler 1987, 279). A related term is Ereignis, an event where man and being appear together. In this case, language is not a tool, but the manifestation of the relationship between man and being. (Luoto & Backman 2006, 40–41.) In this type of saying, language is not related to any active ambition, but to allowing presence. Writing based on my observations and taking photographs both meant exposing myself to being addressed by the area. Listening to Otaniemi revealed qualities that were related to the nature relationship of individuals, the joy of spending time outdoors. The campus area and Alvar Aalto’s red brick architecture are surrounded by the sea, wooded nature and simple, hand-made bird boxes. Nature is present at the Espoo-based technology centre in various ways: On the one hand, the Teekkarikylä student housing area in Servinniemi is surrounded by overgrown beach landscapes, boats turned upside down for winter, round grills in back yards and twisting biking routes by the sea. However, the area is also home to well-kept green areas and wide grass fields striped by walking paths. The historical gardens and alleys of the Hagalund mansion form a contrast to the natural landscape and the forest areas. In order to get background information on the historical Otaniemi, various sources such as Vanha Hagalund by Eeva Eskola (1984) were used. In addition to the experiential approach, a factual approach was also used by getting to know the cultural history of the area and the traditions of technology students. A comprehensive picture was finally compiled using several sources and it was constantly seen in relation to the user survey performed at the beginning of the project. However, writing was the process that linked the phenomena that I found interesting to each other and enabled moving to the next phase: planning the prototypes.

Both my own interest in engaging scenography and the objective of the Spice project to develop services led me to ponder over the being of the station space and the functions that are related to it. A platform is a public space, but it provides room for private activities: leaving, arriving and waiting. Waiting on a platform is a specific way of being alone. It is often being alone by refusing contact, and it happens by being alone with others. A platform is also one kind of a non-space where passengers only spend time to get somewhere else. The basic situation of theatre is also related to this situation: people watch and are being watched. I outlined a space that would react to the presence of the user; an event related to arriving, leaving and waiting where the most important factor would be the change caused by encountering the space. The space happened by reacting to the presence of each user and thus telling a story of a Green Otaniemi. By reacting to movement, the space turned green when there were people or activities in the space. The green colour appeared, grew stronger and disappeared in relation to the moving people. Some of the reasons behind this solution were that the locals had expressed their hopes to preserve the nature in the area. They were also concerned that the beautiful nature would disappear.

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Pictures: Green Otaniemi. Miniature prototype of the station space and the green outdoor furniture. The prototype presents an interactive space that reacts to movement. Local nature is present in the content and the technology distinctive to the Otaniemi area in the implementation of the design. The green colour grows stronger as a reaction to the presence and movement of the users. The graphic leaves on the surrounding caeiling and wall surfaces begin to move when the noise level of the space increases. Movements can be seen as trails on the floor, which turns the platform area into a live painting. The space above the tracks enables scenic changes in the lighting of the space. In the prototype, light penetrates the glass walls and reveals the space behind them, enabling the changing events that divide the waiting time into periods. The space also includes bicycling-related images, such as different variations of the bicycle and the nostalgic bell, the signal used during encounters. In addition to the scenic upper space, the images are related to the design of the furniture, such as seats, trash bins and door symbols. The design was inspired by the tradition of practical jokes kept up by students of technology and the idea that nothing is necessarily what it appears to be. The participative element of the furniture, which combines elements of nature and technology in a playful way, is that they can be moved along rails on the ground. The plants integrated into the furniture tell users the story of a green Otaniemi in more ways than one, appealing to several senses simultaneously. Photographs: Liisa Ikonen.

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In its interactivity, the prominent greenness of the station space also communicated an ecological point of view. Based on my plan, I made one accurate miniature prototype. I also prepared a quick PowerPoint presentation so that the viewer could approach the colour-changing wall. Due to the presentation technology, the latter immediately revealed its incompleteness, but also enabled participating in the experience. My second plan that played with the contrasts in Otaniemi included green outdoor furniture formed like the cogs of a machine with integrated, living plants.

2.2.2 ELINA LIFLÄNDER: THE POINT OF VIEW OF A RELATIONAL SCENOGRAPHERI approach public space from the viewpoint of a relational concept of space, where the urban space is part of a constant process and in live interaction with the people in it (Massey 2005; Lefebvre 1991). If modern theatre and the scenography that takes place there were seen as a miniature society or a public space, it could easily be adapted to this concept of space. In this approach, scenography does not focus on walls, delimiting spaces and creating illusions as in architecture and scenographic tradition, but on intangible and more invisible issues, such as social tensions, the interaction between the actual space, the performers and the viewers, and directing the atmosphere and the routes of the viewers. After my stage experiments in 2007–2010 I began to call this immaterial method of staging that interacted with different parties simultaneously and developed during the process invisible staging. Later, I discovered that Italo Calvino (1993) had used a concept that combined the relational concept of space and invisible staging. He writes that invisible cities are an intricate metaphor that has offered him the best opportunities to describe the tension between geometrical rationality and the chaos of human life (Calvino 1999, 76). During the Spice project, I discovered a larger context for my previous stage experiments from the fields of urban planning and sociology. These fields also emphasize the fact that not all spaces can be entirely defined or planned in advance because shared public spaces often take their final form when people start using them. (e.g. Ridell, Kylmäläinen and Nyyssönen 2009; Lehtovuori 2002 and 2005).

After observing the station spaces of the eastern metro, I pondered over the things that made a station space or its environment rise above the mundane. How can the spirit or significance of the space be made visible in the new station facilities? I first approached storytelling using concepts that were familiar to me: postdramatic theatre (Hans-Thies Lehmann 1999, Finnish translation 2009) does not focus on a story or script, but on an idea, event, theme or space more typical for modern theatre. I also made use of the poetics of space which does not necessarily require words. The poetry can appear as a certain playfulness of thought, as spaciousness, as intensifying or as highlighting small observations. A whisper-like work of art can be much more emphatic and stimulate the imagination more than a massive, spectacular installation, not to mention eye-catching billboards that eliminate all need for imagination. Here, by searching for poetry I mean situations loaded with sensitivity and breaking preconceptions with unexpected acts and ways of thinking. Concrete examples could include using impossible images or absurd chains of thought as the starting point of a design in order to awaken people to see their everyday environment from a new perspective. Themes such as romance and closeness to nature were mentioned

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in the group projects of the Spice project as ideas that could be used to counterbalance the mundane nature of the station spaces. These themes sound quite far-fetched considering the current state of metro stations, but as is well known, people do always miss summer in winter, the city in the countryside and vice versa. This contrast creates a tensioned situation that follows the basic idea of drama and justifies bringing poetry of space to a metro station. The contrast could be approached using an idea such as ‘butterflies flying at a metro station’. It combines hardness and softness, nature and technology, and living and lifeless elements. The butterflies can be seen as symbolic or conceptual elements as in the saying ‘to have butterflies in the stomach’. Concretely, butterflies could be present as shapes on the floors, form elements or glowing groups of larvae in dark tunnels. From the point of view of performing art, the butterflies could also be seen metaphorically as the passengers who hurry along, coattails fluttering in the air. A short film could be made using this theme and showed in the metro cars or on the platform.

At this point, however, the idea was to stick to the objectives according to which the ideas would come from the interviews, stories or the identity of the location. The ideas were supposed to be justifiable and traceable so that the phases of the ideation process could be explained to the rest of the project group. Otherwise, they would remain separate from the research questions of the project. As I visited our research location, the development of ideas took a new turn: I was impressed by the hidden stories of the area that only became visible after freely wondering around and letting experiences open up to me. A small map retrieved from the internet in hand, I walked around Otaniemi on a warm spring day in May 2010, looking for the location of the future metro station. According to the map, the entrance of the station would be in the small Ainon aukio square right next to the TKK main building. I found the correct spot, but was amazed by the modest appearance of the square. It was more like a small green area or a passage way than a square. It was not even marked on the maps of the local information boards. Then, I also noticed how surprisingly masculine and technology-centred the names on the map were: Street names included Tekniikantie, Konemiehentie, Luolamiehentie and Puumiehenkuja (’Technology Road, Engineer Road, Caveman Road and Woodman Lane’). The only exception, Servin Maijan tie (‘Servin Maija’s Road’) named after a female figure, was next to Jämeräntaipale. Servin Maija turned out to have been a local pub-keeper and an important figure in the Teekkarikylä. Why was Ainon aukio square so modest? I stopped some locals to ask them about the square, knowing that I was standing right on the corner of it. None of the passers-by were aware of the square or its location. After doing some research later on, I found an answer in TKK’s electronic newspaper, the Polyteekkari:

On Aino’s day, Saturday 10 May 2008 at 1 p.m., the Ainon aukio square was inaugurated. It is the first area of the Otaniemi campus named after a woman if the cottage, road and lane named after Servin Maija are not taken into account. The TKK campus committee has named the square between the main building and the new Nano building Ainon aukio square. The name is a tribute to Aino Aalto, who affected the appearance of the campus area, and Aino Pekkarinen, the first woman to complete a doctorate degree at TKK. (Editor-in-chief of the Polyteekkari newspaper Johanna Mitjonen 2008, 6. Translated into English for this paper from the original Finnish text.)

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Issues essential to the Spice project seemed to be present in this piece of news. One of the aims of the project was to examine local stories so that they would not be buried by the new constructions, but become part of them so that the new would merge with the existing culture. In my opinion Aino Aalto, who was left in the shadow of Alvar Aalto, deserved her own monument for several reasons. But what would this monument be like? The mysterious square marked in some maps and invisible in others fascinated me. Through the students of technology my thoughts went to the vappu festivities and the annual crowd at the Helsinki market square when students put a student cap on the Havis Amanda statue. Had Amanda not experienced and seen everything already? The bronze surface would not endure the traditional cleaning ceremony for ever. In my mind, I began creating a sister figure for Amanda, a figure that could promote the birth of a new spring tradition or ritual in Otaniemi. This way not everyone would need to be in the same place at vappu, watching the cleaning operation of the over hundred-year-old daughter of the Baltic Sea. I wrote a short, symbolic story about this character. The story came to include some surrealism through the facts that the father of Havis Amanda was sculptor Ville Wallgren, but the mother was the sea making waves next to the market square. I added various sides of Aino to the story, from the mythological character to Aino Aalto, and finally the protagonist was more of a spirit being than a real person.

At this point, we began the interpreting and analysing discussion between scenographers and recorded the material for the first time. We focused on how we could present the routes and results of our independent observation paths to the rest of the research group either visually or through experiences. After our discussion it was clear that from the point of view of the project, it would be worth creating two different versions of Aino: one more concrete, public work of art that would enable new urban culture, and another more conceptual or fragmented version showing that a story can be brought to life in several ways. This felt like a meaningful starting point since I had for some time now been playing with the pairs intangible–concrete and invisible–visible during various idea development processes. At the prototype presentation of the entire Spice group I showed a sketch-like video of a woman figure by water made of the pieces of a mirror. The aim was that the woman would blend into her surroundings and seem mobile due to the light, water, reflections and movement of the passer-by. After this, using words and images, I illustrated a more intangible version of the same theme where only the spirit of the character or an echo of it moves on the walls of the station space in the form of light, disappearing and then revealing itself again. My intention was to link the outside and inside of the station to each other so that the echo of the Aino character would glide onto the platform area and into the metro tunnels in the form of light. I presented the more concrete version and the intangible version to the Spice group as ambiguous and sketch-like and tried to emphasize how they appealed to multiple senses by combining video material, light and sound. The elements that reflected light represented the mysteriousness of the Aino character and the revelation of the Ainon aukio square: depending on the angle and the time of day, the reflective elements would always look different.

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Pictures: Aino – Miniature prototype of the public sculpture and a series of photographs of the moving lights in the station space.Photographs: Elina Lifländer

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2.2.3 INTERPRETATION USING APPLIED SCENOGRAPHYUsing a dialogue as one of the methods of interpretation was possible since we had both participated in applied work in our own projects. We aimed at experiential knowledge that allows the presence of the interpreter and reveals itself during the study, changes and develops and is also linked to scenographic tradition. Although our primary goal was to understand how scenography changes, we were also interested in how the new information could be applied. This kind of information is never absolute, but more like a hint that always requires the researcher to think independently in order to be able to apply it. Although the dialogue that we had created to interpret our research penetrated our entire work, it culminated in three recorded discussions that took place at important turning points during which we consciously tried to reflect on each other’s experiences. Performing the interpretation together helped us to separate the world of the research object from our own experience worlds and individual works. It helped us to find something on a more general level, but in a way that was always in relation to the experiential origin of our work.

Simultaneously with our interpretation work, we were also discussing the project with the other researchers. The discussion was coloured by terminology differences and the lack of a common jargon, but also by the insights due to our different ways of thinking and gradually developing shared opinions. For instance the concepts used in design emphasized target-orientedness and aiming at an expected result more than the scenographic way of thinking that we had adopted. As the study progressed, we grew aware of the importance of introducing the language of our own field of art. Different ways of thinking could only meet if we had the courage to speak freely using experiential and often associative language and use the terminology used in scenography. The designers and scriptwriters also tried to find ways to settle in the new situation. During the study, the viewpoint of critical design, which questions the traditions of design, and the dramaturgical approach to sociology offered a fertile link to scenography. Being surrounded by new concepts helped us to understand scenography and its changes better because it made us see many self-explanatory issues in a new light. For instance the experience prototypes developed in design meant various ways of making plans shareable and the opportunity to test their functionality and receive feedback. Due to the fact that the use of the word ‘prototype’ is not established in theatrical work, the confusion caused by the unfamiliar concept made us pay more attention to how we presented incomplete or immaterial stages of our work. This made us ponder over how we could present conceptual ideas visually when they do not exist without a relationship to a real situation, location and real people. We also made observations of how different prototypes addressed the recipient. The sketch-like Green Otaniemi PowerPoint presentation and the reflections of light in the Aino installation activated the recipients and their imagination. In contrast, the seemingly complete miniature prototypes that showed every detail left the recipients in a more passive observer role. This observation was interesting both from the point of view of the Spice project and scenography in general. It evoked the question of how various prototypes, drafts and models guide the recipient’s observations and experiences of objects that do not exist yet.

The aim of building the design work of the Spice project on storytelling also evoked many questions. We had consciously examined our preconceptions regarding stories and chosen to set stories and writing

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stories as the basis of our work. According to Hans-Georg Gadamer (2004, 39), holding back prejudices always has the logical structure of a question. Without knowing where our new questioning approach would lead us, we soon noticed that we were focusing on hiding the story instead of revealing it. Without agreeing on this method, we soon noticed that we were presenting the prototypes of Green Otaniemi and Aino without emphasizing the stories behind them. The emphasis was on the atmosphere of the experiences. The more we talked about our plans, the less we mentioned the stories that had been their starting point. We let light and space speak for us. As our interpretation work progressed, we increasingly thought about the role the story had in the process. The fact that the participative dimension was emphasized in the prototype of Green Otaniemi and the immaterial side of Aino made us ask who was telling the story or in whom was the story happening. In our plans, the story was not a tale with a plot and illustrations. It was an event that did not leave the recipients the role of a passive reader, but invited them to give the story a meaning.

As we approached our observation from the point of view of a relational concept of space and phenomenological listening, we finally suggested that the story should be released from its role as the starting point of our work. Our artistic work should be created as freely as possible based on various observations and experiences, and it should also be possible to approach the concept of story freely and from several directions. The fact that the idea of the immaterial Aino figure was born before writing the story proved that art that listens to locality and is created based on it can be formed in an open and wordless process. However, this does not mean that it does not have a story to tell. Although our point of view regarding the use of ready stories developed in this direction, storytelling was an essential, driving force in the Spice project, and it built bridges between various fields.

During our interpretation work, the story increasingly began to seem like an event that required listening instead of writing. Henri Lefebvre’s concept of lived space, which is already being transferred from ideas to practice by architects and urban planners, suited our developing, shared view well. Architect Panu Lehtovuori defends the freedom of urban planning and undefined locations as follows:

Planning recedes into the background and becomes an enabling power instead of a dominant power. When something is not planned, there is a freedom to make the space your own. A freedom to give meanings. --It seems as if one way of challenging the artificial reality of “strong” urban planning that follows visual logic and is fixed by maps and statistics is to take seriously the process of producing a space, a time-bound, multidimensional, partly unforeseen interactive situation, lived reality. (Lehtovuori 2002, 83. Translated into English for this paper from the original Finnish text.)

In order to test our views, we organised a course titled Julkinen tila ja lavastamisen raja-alueet (‘Public space and the borderlands of scenography’) at the School of Art and Design Department of Motion Picture, Television and Production Design. The aim of the course was to create experiential demonstrations of alternative station spaces and/or events held in station spaces during a two-week period. The discussions held during the course had a greater influence on the development of our ideas on applied scenography than we had predicted. Students especially wanted to discuss the freedom of expression in public spaces and the ownership of public spaces: to whom do public spaces belong? We

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also examined how using a story as the basis for planning can optimally make you feel that a public space reflects the identity of the locals. However, the discussions also revealed that stories written in advance aiming at creating experiences can seem fabricated and forcefully added-on, which sends the message of underestimating the imagination of people and their ability to find their own interpretations. In their comments, students emphasized the importance of freedom in creating art. They compared planning based on storytelling to the modern toy industry where the way of playing is often predefined. After the course, we began to analyse the aim of the Spice project, creating more experiential public spaces, at a conceptual level. Combining the concept to public space and publicity had led to associations to the experience industry during the course, so in the end we suggested the use of an alternative concept, addressing. Being addressed is personal and always related to an actual event. It is also linked to interpreting. According to Gadamer (2004, 38), understanding begins when something addresses us. Moreover, addressing always involves two parties and as an event it refers to a shared encounter and interaction. This observation was combined with the views of critical design and sociology according to which locality and its stories are more visible in the relationships between people than in structures. Theatre no longer straightforwardly means a fixed building or an activity in a certain place, and therefore a story does not need to be a complete tale either. For instance Terike Haapoja (http://www. terikehaapoja.net) mentions the urban, mobile performances of the Reality Research Center and finds that theatre is more of a space for thinking that parses reality than a physical location. Since scenography had gone beyond its traditional setting, it was possible to approach the story more openly as poetry that creates something new. This approach leaves the final interpretation to the person experiencing the work of art. However, the dimension that addresses viewers and guides their interpretation is included in the tradition of storytelling. Even the Ancient Greek term poiesis separated performing from imitation and referred to making and creating something new.

After outlining a style of free and poetically addressing storytelling, we began to analyse the values behind public art and design. The question had become topical after the ecological message present in the prototype of Green Otaniemi. We understood that storytelling-based planning inevitably makes the artist aware of the values affecting the project and guides the project’s value choices. In theatre or performing arts, the scenography is aimed at people who voluntarily participate in the show, but in a public space the story is targeted at everyone. Therefore the ethos of the public space, the moral atmosphere, consists of encounters and of a group of people who happen to be in the space at a certain time. Ethically fair space planning should be able to respect different cultures and their encounters. In our opinion, this is possible by placing the local nature of the space and relational events before performing. Researcher and visual arts critic Mika Hannula (2003, 48) has written about the ethical interaction related to our research attitude as being-with. Being-with is an alternative for being defined by subordination (being-for). Our experimental work in the Otaniemi project gave us a personal experience of how being-with and being exposed to encounters enable interactive planning unlike subordinating your work to communicating a one-way message. Lived and performed space began to seem like opposite concepts in our discussions. This also made us pay attention to how differently a public space and a stage address their recipients. The difference can be compared to performance artist Terike Haapoja’s (http://www.terikehaapoja.net) way of comparing the ways in which a stage and an installation address the recipients: ”The essential question is whether the experience of the situation is

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communicated through identifying with the performer or does the space or the situation address the recipient directly.” An unforeseen encounter in a public space addresses the recipient similarly to an installation, but more directly. In a public space, the recipient is not an outside observer, but part of the event. The space gets its final form and meaning when the user is present.

During the Spice project, we realized that modern urban planning has understood the importance of user-based design and that it tries to add surprise elements and unpredictable elements to public spaces in addition to functionality. As far as we can see, the possibilities offered by scenography are related to the freedom of expression and to demolishing the models that control planning. In the end, our conception of the freedom of planning was crystallised in the word anarchy, an-arkhe, without government (Uusi sivistyssanakirja 1980). It means both giving up a predefined starting point and being freed from a predefined goal. Work that creates something new is also, to some extent, opposing the mainstream. In our discussions, the concept was linked to modern theatre that challenges boundaries and to its possibilities without any of the usual negative connotations; art’s ability to create something that does not seem possible in everyday life.

It is in the nature of stories to evolve and change with time. In the end, applying scenography is part of the storytelling process. Scenography is formed from the unlimited encounter of actor and location and from participating in local events. It is only truly accomplished when the user or recipient becomes part of a shared event. If the artistic freedom required by scenographic work is provided, scenography can bring stories to public spaces. These stories come to life as comprehensive atmospheres formed by combinations of space, colour, light and sound. This kind of scenography addresses recipients as individuals belonging to a lived space, not as a uniform mass of people. The idea is not to communicate predefined meanings to people, but to create images and associations: expand the story with various metaphors and symbols in order to help the recipient make his or her own interpretations.

Scenographic tradition includes many factors that may be of assistance in designing public spaces that address people. Scenographers are used to working with space in the focus and discovering the possibilities that its story hides. Moreover, scenography also entails an understanding of the nature of the work of art and the work process through theatre and performing arts. In possible future applications, scenography will have a role beside other fields. In such cases, practical issues concerning multidisciplinary cooperation that were not in the scope of this study will need to be solved. Nonetheless, the prerequisites for various forms of cooperation do exist. Scenographers are used to working in social and changing environments that require improvisation and to combining various forms of discourse. Being a scenographer does not entail specialising in one material or a certain method. Scenographers work with the world that we live in–the world where experiences are born.

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Anttila, Pirkko. 1998 (1996). Tutkimisen taito ja tiedonhankinta. 2. painos. Helsinki: Akatiimi.

Aristoteles. 1977 (1967). Runousoppi. Suom. Pentti Saarikoski. Keuruu: Otava.

Bachelard, Gaston. 2003 (1957). Tilan poetiikka. Suom. Tarja Roinila. Helsinki: Edita Prima.

Calvino, Italo. 1999 (1993). Kuusi muistioita seuraavalle vuosituhannelle. Suom. Elina Suolahti. Helsinki:

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Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2004. Hermeneutiikka. Ymmärtäminen tieteissä ja filosofiassa. Suom. Ismo

Nikander. Tampere: Vastapaino.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1979. Truth and method / Hans-Georg Gadamer. Translated by William Glen

Doepel. London: Sheed and Ward.

Goffman, Erwin. 1959. The Presentation of self in everyday life. Anchor Books. New York: Doubleday.

Hannula, Mika, Suoranta, Juha ja Vadén, Tere. Otsikko uusiksi, Taiteellisen tutkimuksen suuntaviivat.

Tampere: Niin & näin -lehden filosofinen julkaisusarja.

Heidegger, Martin. 1991 (1959) Silleenjättäminen. Suom. R. Kupiainen. Filosofisia tutkimuksia

Tampereen yliopistosta Vol. XIX. Tampere: Tampereen yliopiston jäljennepalvelu.

Heidegger, Martin. 1998 (1935/36). Taideteoksen alkuperä. Suom. H. Sivenius. 3. painos. Helsinki: Kyriiri.

Heidegger, Martin.1996 (1954). Olio. Suom. R. Kupiainen. niin & näin, 4, 54–60.

Heidegger, Martin. 2003 (1954). Rakentaa asua ajatella. Suom. V. Jaaksi. niin & näin, 3, 53–59.

Ikonen, Liisa. 2006. Dialogista skenografiaa, vaihtoehtoisen työprosessin fenomenologista tulkintaa.

Helsinki: Taideteollinen korkeakoulu.

Kantonen, Lea (toim.) 2010. Ankaraa ja myötätuntoista kuuntelua. Dialogista kirjoitusta

paikkasidonnaisesta taiteesta. Helsinki: Kuvataideakatemia.

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2.3 SCRIPTWRITING PUBLIC SPACES – meanings, interpretations and identity

TOMI LEINO

Through the history of mankind stories have been told and rituals exercised to make the complex identity of an individual more understandable and to explain the overall existence of a human-being. One powerful form of a story is drama. It is an art form that interacts strongly with emotions using visual and auditive means. Dramaturgy is a theory of the structure of a drama, its impact and form (e.g. Leino 2003, p 104). According to Aristotle drama aims at real pleasure that can be born only through pity and fear (Aristotle, 1994, p 41). Film scripts use the means of drama and dramaturgy to reach the same goals. The objective of this chapter is to discuss how the Screenwriting can be used as the basis of emotional and interactive identity of public spaces. I’m also examining how the script can be based on the given meanings of the immediate surroundings and the context of the public space.

As a starting point, I consider Screenwriting not as a literature but instead the instrumental purpose of Screenwriting is emphasized. This is mainly due to the Spice-project context in which others than film professionals do other parts of the production process. An essential part of this reflection is to examine how the basic concepts of the Screenwriting and storytelling can be used in order to screenwrite public spaces and make the idea of the script understandable to people who are not related to the field of film production. In the following, I will first introduce my research background to open up the basic concepts. I will then continue uncovering the experimental Spice case that is divided into two phases, namely searching the theme and Screenwriting a public space.

2.3.1 Background The importance of screenwriting has been under discussion among the historians. Some of them have wanted to downplay the significance of screenwriting in the film production process, others tried to make it and the screenwriters as visible as possible (Maras 2009, pp 28-29). Also the film script has been problematic in the sense of whether it is an independent work of art or just a useful tool during a production process. Regardless of these discussions, nowadays the script has an important role both in the perspective of production process but also in the perspective of the content. Screenwriting plays an essential part of the multibillion-film industry.

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From this point of view it is surprising that Screenwriting has been poorly used in any other area except the ones that has a close relation to movies, for example game industry. But can Screenwriting be applied anywhere where you want to affect peoples’ feelings, to have them feel compassion and feel that they are related to something important?

The discussion in this chapter relates to Spice project during which I wrote two scripts concerning two upcoming metro stations Otaniemi and Niittykumpu. As the key components of this reflection are the scripts ‘Take your time’ that is placed in Otaniemi and the interviews I conducted to form a background to this particular script. As a starting point I set ground to my research interest and approach through literature by focusing on concepts such as meaning, identity, interpretation, interaction, theme, time, place, action and dramaturgy that serve as connections between my background and the Spice-project theme and context.

2.3.2 About a scriptScript is a structural form, which tells the idea of the story. It is a notation to record images, thoughts and affects (Maras 2009, p 125). In other words, the script opens up the visual and auditive ideas, the motivation of the characters, and raises emotions in spectators. The script can also been seen as a blueprint that serves as a plan to a production process and for film workers (Maras 2009, p 117). In many so called ‘how to’ – books, script is defined from the point of view of telling the structure of the movie that has the Aristotelian beginning, middle and the end. Both, the structure and the content are created to a script by a Screenwriter.

For a Screenwriter a reason for the writing comes from the concept of a theme that is an argument he/she wants to tell to other people. A true theme is a one clear and precise sentence that expresses the story’s irreducible meaning (McKee 1997, pp 114-115). From the Screenwriter’s perspective it is the ‘truth’ which is crystallized from observing the surrounding world. In a movie the theme comes visible in the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. The overall objective of the movie can be found from the theme despite of the fact that the theme itself has an abstract nature. Hence, the theme provides the perspective for approaching the dramaturgical structure and content. Moreover, the theme is important not only to the Screenwriter to keep him focused but for the film production process as well. It helps everybody linked to the production process keep in track.

Telling a storyUsually, narrative films tell stories; they contains events that have causal events happening in certain time and place (Bordwell 1986, p 44). The sense of a time is developed when the events follow one another, whereas telling is born when one is acting in time and space. The sense of a running time can be manipulated by editing and by crosscutting separate plots, in other words, the time of a movie differs from the time of a reality. Experiencing time is not objective but a subjective experience. For example when we are experiencing something frightening and scary, time feels longer than objective time (Grodal 1997, p 141). Shaping the sense of time gives for a filmmaker a

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strong instrument to manipulate the spectator. Film telling controls the order and the length of the presentation of events (Bordwell 1985, p 74). The spectators on their side interpret the images and searches meanings from them and from their relation with other images.

A scene is the place where the action happens and containing a time and a place. The scene doesn’t limit to what we see, but instead in the minds of a spectator the space of a scene continues outside a single shot. How the space of a scene is experienced can be influenced, for example, by sonic space or the way separate shots are composed and edited. In addition, certain framing or leaving empty space to particular parts of a single shot can direct spectators thinking into a relevant direction (Bordwell1985, p 120). Furthermore, the lightning plays an important role in creating the space of a scene.

A subjective camera takes the position of a spectator; its view looks like seeing through the eyes of the spectator. Researchers disagree whether the subjective camera creates a stronger feeling of identification in the spectators or not. In fact, film director Francois Truffaut has said that identification is born, not when the spectator looks with the main character, but when the main character looks at the spectator (Bordwell 1986, p 197).

Screenwriting and identityAccording to Harisalo (2008, p 45) it is humane that people try to create emotion-based meanings to organizations without even noticing it. Meanings are based on a subjective experience of the surrounding reality (Hatch 2006, p 15). While creating meanings to e.g. organization, one creates simultaneously meanings to ones’ own life. On one hand, an individual wants to belong to a group whose values and action he can identify with. On the other hand, these values and actions develop in an intense interaction with other members of the group. Even the plain presence of others effect to our behaviour (Pennington 2002, p 50); it is a question of interaction in which the experiences and interpretations are in a constant state of change.

Spice-project explored if a story can be created and told concentrating on a location and its identity. One can rightfully question whether it is possible to find from separate single meanings one unique ‘truth’ or even a story that sums up all the different meanings given to a certain public space. In other words, when searching and mapping the different meanings of public spaces Screenwriter should be able to translate the gained information to a form of a script.

Meaningful environments such as our living or working contexts shape our identities. Peoples have a need to give an understandable form and order to their surroundings - it is as important and real as our biological needs (Geertz 1973, p 140). Such order deals with physical landmarks and symbolic meanings. Things around us evoke memories and particular behavioural routines (Hatch 2006, p 239). Identity relates also to processes in which we as human beings grow up from one stage to another (Turner 2007, pp 96-97). Thus, identity is something that we can recognize in ourselves and what we feel we are. But it also has a future perspective; it is partly something what we want to become.

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As mentioned earlier, part of experimenting with storytelling in Spice-project was to create a script of a location and its identity. In the following, I will discuss how it was done by focusing on the Otaniemi case and the ’Take your time’ script I created. I will first describe the search of the theme and then continue illustrating the script itself.

Searching and finding the themeIn line with the design researchers’ user-centred starting point in Spice-project I wanted to lay the foundations to the script through the experiences and meanings of the present or former inhabitants, workers and other people involved to the immediate surroundings of the future Otaniemi metro station. In order to accomplish this aim four semi-structured thematic interviews were made complemented with material collected and created by the other researchers in the project.

I have divided my interpretations in the following stages: the experiences and the meanings they give to these experiences – interpretation – theme – script. I followed this structure when considering how to write meaningful and also interactive entity of a public space. One has to be able to read and interpret the material of interviewed not only from the perspective of a creation of experiences and of a creation of identification in a lingual content, but also from the perspective of the interpretations of the present i.e. what the interviewed takes in or leaves out from his stories. (Hyvärinen & Löyttyniemi 2005, p 196)

In my interpretation I began from the view that people reflect their identity from the meaningful public spaces in the same way as they reflect their identity from the meaningful organizations and search who they are and who they want to be (Hatch 2006, pp 335-336). Thus, I tried to seek shared meanings that they all can identify with. The findings can be summarized with the following four categories: 1) Nature i.e. forest and sea; 2) Community; 3) Caring; and 4) Aesthetics i.e. architecture, colours and shapes. Based on my interpretation it seemed that the interviewees wanted to break the image, perhaps over positivistic image, of Otaniemi. Similar interpretations were done by the other researchers working in the Spice-project.

As a reflection of these findings I chose two approaches to the script:

1) Positivistic worldview against the emotion (mysticism / aesthetics) 2) The importance of time and place at the metro station

Working with the themeOnce the preliminary directions were discovered I tried to find a single theme that all the interviewed and hopefully also all the other people of the immediate surroundings of the Otaniemi metro station could identify with. The main purpose in using the theme is to awake the feelings of compassion and identification amongst all the future users of the Otaniemi metro station. I use the theme as a dramaturgical lens in structuralizing the actual script. It helps to open up the script and to figure out the special aspects of the metro station.

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It was obvious that Otaniemi district was very intense area where different forces were in an invisible conflict. On one hand the positivistic world view came from the engineers (though they tried hard to break the image), the workers of the big office buildings at Keilaniemi situated just beside Otaniemi. On the other hand the students who, although studying to become engineers and perhaps the future workers of Keilaniemi, wanted to talk about community, caring and nature. Little by little it started to look like a family who has problems in seeing things from the perspective of the close relative. Finally, I connected these two worldviews and tried to look at the results from the angle of a metro station. As an outcome the theme for the background of the script ‘Take your time’ grew into ‘Stop time, forget yourself and discover yourself’.

2.3.3 Screenwriting the Otaniemi metro stationIn the process of writing the script I wanted to examine how the theme could be made visible through the script of a public space, and more importantly, how a public space could be interesting, meaningful and emotional entity to its’ users. As a Screenwriter, I was interested in how the time and the space correlate with each other in the metro station and how they become concrete in the users of metro. It can be thought that the linear time stops for a while before the metro train arrives to the station. Normally that moment makes the user of the metro passive, but the user could also enter sideways in the middle of a busy day.

The user is in a stage of anonymity at the metro station; one is free from different roles. Hence, one could say that the metro station gives an opportunity to change perspective for a moment and forget oneself. Perspectives may change, for example from an adult’s to a child’s and from a woman’s to a man’s – and vice versa. During a metro journey, also the status of a person often changes. One may transform for example from a parent to engineer. From this perspective staying at the metro station is about a fleeting moment without a status. It is also about moving towards the next stage of the journey. One is at the state of liminality, in-between, a circumstance that allows the change. “The neophyte in liminality must be a tabula rasa, a blank slate, on which is inscribed the knowledge and wisdom of the group, in those respects that pertain to the new status” (Turner 2007, p 103).

Liminality at a metro station is about changing to multiple directions. This could be interactive activity: space affects the user; the user affects both the space and also the stories created to these spaces. The metro is a wonderful setting for using the film narrative because there is an opportunity to change the passive spectator (user) to active attendant in the story. According to film director Andrei Tarkovski, to co-ordinate human-being with ones’ boundless environment, to compare the essence of human-being to the crowds passing oneself, and to proportion oneself to the whole world; is the whole idea of the art of the cinema (Tarkovski 1988, p 93). Metro station as a space and as a stopper of the flow of the time enables writing a story or stories. The signs of characters of fictional drama challenge the user to take part. And maybe on the side, it allures the user to a personal change.

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The point of view of the user is emphasized when Screenwriting a public space. From the perspective of film telling it is a question of subjectivity. I consider the user of a metro station in this sense as a subjective camera, whose route in time and space and perceptions create the final movie. As mentioned above, he is at the same time a spectator, whose experiences of the visual and auditive elements of ‘the movie’ are only those he has time to experience. Everything else he must try to fulfil later in his mind or by coming again to the metro station. The metro station and the user are in a constant interaction. The user tries to make the story complete.

• The script ’Take your time’My approach to the script was very structural. I divided the metro area in different sections from two different perspectives. For a person who is coming to the metro station area it is first the upper platform area, then the escalator and then the actual platform area. And for the person who gets off the metro, the areas go vice versa. And because it is always so that the person uses the same particular escalator, the idea of crosscutting paths became the basic structure of the script. Take your time – script is cross-cutting four stories of different persons. Below are the four stories in a form of a synopsis: Aino is Jouko’s daughter, Harri’s sister and Uolevi’s aunt. She vanished at the age of 22, and family members feel guilty. At Otaniemi district, where all the family members live, work and study, it starts to appear mysterious signs, which resemble Aino’s art.

Jouko, Harri and Uolevi start looking for a lost contact with Aino unaware of each other. They are hoping that the lost connection could be found and together with Aino they could start over again. They feel that Aino will be found when the lost contact is reborn and Aino begins to trust them again. In this hope they leave signs of themselves, parts of their own research and burgeoning art, hoping that Aino would complement these signs.

It is possible that Aino is dead, and Jouko, Harri and Uolevi are looking unknowingly the lost contact with each other. On the other hand, who left the first sign? Or, secondly, is Aino something that they lack as individuals?

The above story helps the user to challenge his way of thinking as well as his relationship with the environment and other people. The space of metro prompts the user to use a minute for something foreign. The space incites to change and helps to see something familiar in a strange and perhaps useful for the user in personal life.

Throughout the metro district passes the paths of Jouko’s, eternal logician, Harri’s, the student innovator, and yet Uolevi’s, the path of a child-like art and technology. All of these paths and the whole metro district, however, are dominated by Aino, the strong-willed, feminine, nature loving character filled with sense of community. When entering the metro station the metro user dives into the story of the synopsis. Being active means that the fictional Jouko, Harri and Uolevi get help from the metro users – users supplement their signs. Some of their signs may have been suddenly

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removed or changed places – this way obstacles are created and thus a dramatic tension presented to the space.

2.3.4 Reflections: adapting Screenwriting in designing public spaces In this chapter I have considered how to script write public spaces. I have searched the building blocks to the writing from the people related to the immediate surroundings of a particular public space, namely Otaniemi. I have examined what basic concepts can be used and noticed such as the importance of the theme that comes from the people themselves and the importance of time, space and action – just to name a few.

The Otaniemi experiment suggests that script writing a public space is a question of Screenwriting a meta-story. What I mean by meta-story is a story that is not visible in all its parts but is still recognizable and affecting. Meta-story is a concept of a modern era. People have a definite urge to being related to the important communities and they do that through symbols and stories. The dramaturgy of film telling is a powerful tool to tell stories and at best, the adapted Screenwriting could offer to the fractured post modern world the sense of meaning and togetherness.

In my adaptation of Screenwriting the user plays an important role and many roles simultaneously. The user is the spectator and at the same times an active character and from the point of view of a production watches the story as a subjective camera. This is particularly relevant when considering script writing public spaces: Concepts for public spaces can be made on the basis of a script but we should remember that it is just a part of the whole process. The final planning and execution of such public spaces is done by different professionals, such as architects and designers, just to name a few. The form and content of an adaptation script should be thoroughly thought over. It is not supposed to be read by other professionals of a film production but it is to be interpreted by professionals from other fields. This novel application area will influence to what an adaptation script should look like. I believe that the experiments done in the Spice-project show the need to research and to develop the adaptation scripts and the foundations to these scripts further.

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References1. Aristoteles. 1997. Runousoppi. Helsinki: Kustannusyhtiö Otava.2. Bordwell, D. 1985. Narration in the Fiction Film. United States of America: The University of Wisconsin Press.3. Bordwell, D. & Thompson, K. 1986. Film Art – An Introduction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 4. Denzin. N,K & Lincoln, Y. 1998. Introduction: Entering the Field of Qualitative Research. In a publication Denzin, N K. & Lincoln Y.(ed.) Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials. Thousand Oaks: Sage. 1 -34.5. Field , S. 1994. Screenplay. New York: Dell Publishing.6. Gadamer,H-G. 2004. Hermeneutiikka – Ymmärtäminen tieteissä ja filosofiassa. Tampere: Vastapaino.7. Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic 8. Books,Inc., Publishers.9. Grodall, T. 1997. Moving Pictures – A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings, and Cognition. Oxford: Clarendon Press.10. Harisalo, R. 2008. Organisaatioteoriat. Tampere: Tampere University Press.11. Hatch, M J. 2005. Organization Theory – modern, symbolic and postmodern perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press.12. Hunter, L. 1993. Screenwriting 434. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group.13. Hyvärinen, M. & Löyttyniemi, V. 2005. Kerronnallinen haastattelu. In a publication Ruusuvuori, J. & Tiittula L. (ed.). Haastattelu – Tutkimus, tilanne ja vuorovaikutus. Tampere: Vastapaino, 196. 14. Leino, T. 2003. Sanoista eläviä kuvia. Helsinki: Otava.15. Maras, S. 2009. Screenwriting – History, Theory and Practise. London & New York: Wallflower Press.16. McKee, R. 1997. Story – Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Sreenwriting. New York: ReganBooks.17. Pennington, D. 2002. The Social Psychology of Behaviour in Small Groups. New York: Psychology Press.18. Tarkovski, A. 1998. Vangittu aika. Helsinki: WSOY.19. Turner, V. 2007. The Ritual Process – Structure and Anti-Structure. New Brunswick and London: AldineTransaction.20. URL: http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_28.html?page=32#2220 (read 20.1.2011)

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2.4 CREATIVE PROCESS IN DESIGN RESEARCH – Interventions in Public SpaceSANDRA VIÑA

Design research makes use of artefacts and assemblies as methods and tools for the inquiry of a subject of matter. Design experiments aim at, besides gaining knowledge about the experiment and confirming the research scheme, looking into the relation between the research program and experiments in gaining new knowledge. (Binder & Redström 2006) Design interventions were also one approach utilised in the Spice-project to facilitate dialogue between the design researchers and the people living, working and passing by the area of Niittykumpu, one of the neighbourhoods becoming influenced by the new metro station.

Through three cases, this paper explores the function of experiments for obtaining and processing experiences, new knowledge, and inspirational material that can drive design research and concept design further. It also looks into the role of design practitioner and researcher in exploratory design research and especially in designing, conducting and analysing design interventions.

2.4.1 Site specific design interventions Site-specific design interventions were implemented for understanding and envisioning future dynamics and scenarios in the public environment that can help to identify local qualities, place making as well as social and cultural sites. In addition, it may reveal potential desires of users and the functions and relation of sites, objects, environment and activities. Site-specific design interventions mean here temporary events in which two or more individuals participate for an ongoing program or concern of common interest. Public sites for design interventions are constituted by public institutions, public transportations and public places including streets, boulevards, piazzas, parks, and so on. Public sites are considered as places of potential opportunities to experiment and intervene with alternatives concepts for the construction and activation of the publics, for imagining new scenarios, for enhancing the experience and participation of people in everyday cityscapes, and above all for supporting the creative practice as a way to develop new working models.

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The approach highlights the relationship between design research, creative process and the formulation of concepts. The creative practice and process of making and remaking design interventions leads to the development of methods, concepts, design thinking, and, to the (re)definition of one’s profession. The creative practice is conducted through reflections, conceptualization, contributions and upgraded experience and knowledge of the particular phenomenon and program of research. It starts in one’s experience and knowledge as a generator of exploratory interventions, followed by a state of reflection and developing methods, linking empiria to theories and, it ends in naming and reframing the phenomena for contributing and starting a new loop of research. Each state of the research process spiral calls for the expertise of the researcher and practitioner of design. This research process spiral represents the working model within this study.

2.4.2 Application context: public spaces The concept of the city as an architectural entity has showed through history the dominance of big-scale architecture that can be defined in terms of urban planning, traffic flows and infrastructure in a general sense. In contrast, small size architecture can be defined in terms of everyday life experiences, perspectives from a humane-scale size in which interactions within places and other people take place. Within this work, city environments of humane-scale size are discussed as stage for design interventions. The work looks at the city as a platform for experimenting and exploring; creating empirical cases for design and academic research.

In 1970’s Lefebvre (1991) noticed that one of the major problems in the construction of the public space of cities is the passivity of people most directly implicated, the users of urban space. However, since the 70s various groups of people had started to appropriate the public space, and express their views on the city environment; e.g. groups such as guerrilla gardening, street art, and yarn bombing just to name a few. One can state that, the passivity of people and the lack of expressiveness can be due to the current set of regulations and restrictions, and obsolete and conservative rather than progressive and practical approach on the construction of places. The openness of the city and the appropriation of the public is challenging because people regard the public more as a private space owned by the city not its citizens. Thus, the public space is often perceived as a space of rules and control. Design interventions in public places can be regarded as one of activating the citizens to take part in understanding and developing their daily environments.

In the history there has been several activists in the area of urbanism such as The Situationist International that was a group of international revolutionaries founded in 1957 in Europe. The term “situationists” refers to a person, or persons who engage in the construction of “situations” both in theoretical and practical terms. (The Situationist International Text Library) Another group was called Unitary Urbanism that was established during 1953-56 in France. It was not a doctrine of urbanism but a critique of urbanism; it was the central concern of Situationist International. They envisioned a terrain of experience for the social space of cities of the future, aiming at constructing

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the streets of real life, the scenary of daydreams, and new ways for constructing the publics (Unitary Urbanism).

Recently, many cities have understood that opening up to new ways of doing and creating city places are highly beneficial for understanding the potential of new strategies, businesses, approaches, concepts and collaboration. Taking new actions through design, experiments and interventions, public sites can better stage socio-cultural experiences, participative and empathic acts and, unexpected situations to city dwellers that can strengthen and open up new participatory approaches.

Vidler’s (2001) vision of the city calls for design alternatives that retain the dense and vital mix of uses critical to urban life. Reconsidering the ways of making and envisioning the city calls for an active, creative and interventionist approach in which actions, tryouts and interventions can help to gain new knowledge and experiences in and for real city sites. It also attempts to comprehend if and how visions and models can be applied in the larger system. Moreover, experimental and practice based approach intends to rethink the city set, its mechanism and the overall value of the diverse city. It can be, thus, regarded as means for potential situations and scenarios in the public domain and for building collaboration between citizens, private and public entities, and for activating public sites.

2.4.3 Three interventions related to Spice-projectThe study of situations and interactions produced by the interventions are discussed through three interventions; Canvass, Animato and, Niittykumpu. The first intervention was Canvass, one day experiment held in the District of Kamppi, Helsinki, in 2009. The second intervention, Animato was accomplished in the city of Turku, Finland in 2010. The intervention was built in three sites during a four-day city art festival. Finally, Niittykumpu intervention took place inside Niittytori shopping mall in the district of Niittykumpu, Espoo, Finland and lasted for three days in November 2010. Although only the last experiment was directly linked with the Spice-project, all the three interventions were related to the themes, design interest and focus on public sites.

During each intervention the researcher was present, sometimes being active and empathizing with people; and, another times invisible and reflective. Regardless of the researcher’s changing roles, each intervention was documented with still and video images, and video recorded interviews.

The process of designing and studying experiments and interventionsThe interplay of physical qualities, activity and contextual environment of the design intervention determine the use, quality and value of the experiment for besides the researcher and designer also for the people experiencing the situation and other partners involved in the construction of the event. The appropriate and beneficial experience of the situation establishes the role and advantage of the intervention in design research. From definition to the action plan of each aspect

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requires a process of planning, the creative practice of design, together with an understanding of the entire context of concern, and, the objective of the study.

Figure 1 below illustrates three aspects understanding and studying the role of experiments and interventions in the context of activating public sites: physical qualities, contextual environment and activity for designing. Inhabitants and users of the city play the major role; they are the basis for understanding experiences and situations during the interventions and their relation to design practice. The figure, thus, helps to look into the relation between user-object-designer in the perspective of useful and experiential sites for the construction of the city form.

The first aspect of interventions is the physical qualities, it touches upon design elements: materials, form, colours and dimensions among others. It relates to aesthetic, associations and functionality of the artefact. It comprises the spatial and artifactual design dimensions that can influence on people’s recognition, attraction, curiosity and experience of the intervention. Second factor is the contextual environment of design interventions, which has to do with the local, social and cultural dimension of the environment; site, area and community. It helps to define and design the content of the intervention, looking into subjects and issues of concern that can be supported with associations of the physical qualities. Each intervention is looked through the lens of contextual environment and its relation to experience, learning, tools, participation and communication of local issues. Finally, designing the activity must be anticipated in the intervention space. It deals with interactions and communication between different entities on the intervention site. The physical qualities and contextual environment play an important role for defining what activity is suggested and expected to occur during the intervention.

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Each intervention, Canvass, Animato and, Niittykumpu are analyzed through the dimensions of these three aspects. The description and analysis are illustrated in the following sections, in order to show how the production of new knowledge and experiences are gained and, how notions of design practice are brought out.

Canvass interventionThe first design intervention, Canvass, facilitated the comprehension of issues that observations and concepts on the public space would have not provided me. The idea for the intervention started to take shape inspired by people’s opinions and feelings toward the great amount of dark time during the Finnish winter. The Canvass intervention consisted of introducing bright light spots for public sites. Light therapy is known to have major effects on human wellbeing, e.g. intense light increases activity and reduces winter depression. The design intervention tried to provide and rehearse an idea to winter-induced problems in the citizens’ daily environment and provoke discussion on the meaning of light. It shed light on new understandings about people’s behaviours in public environments, their motivation, participation and engagement toward the site and their relation to the physical qualities of the intervention.

Figure 4: Canvass intervention from outside and inside. Helsinki, Finland, 2009

The physical qualities of Canvass consisted of two white tents, stools, books and two bright light lamps inside the tent (Picture 1). The use of bright lights was the main factor of attraction, lacking other visible hints for inviting people into the intervention space. The bright lights in the materiality of lamps arose interest and attracted people to the site but, at the same time, they gave a feeling of coldness, sharpness and contrast that made the interior atmosphere too bright and assertive for attending. The amount of light, contrasting to the dark winter atmosphere, together with the construction of a private space due to the inward feature may have been annoying and frightening for some people. It produced a feeling of being in an intimate space, and the central spot in a public site.

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The physical qualities of Canvass can be break down into two main elements, the external aesthetics that relate to recognition and welcoming; and, the interior experience dealing with space, circulation and artifacts in it. The recognition of Canvass intervention was successful and, to a certain extent, attracted people, made them wonder and curious about it. However, the physical qualities, the visual and spatial elements did not provide sufficient clues and functions for appropriating the experiments and for engaging with the intervention. The design of a suggested activity to users was not well-thought or anticipated in Canvass intervention. The nature of Canvass focused on introducing an idea based on an intangible element, light, instead of considering and providing rich artifactual materiality and objects for interaction and appropriation.

Animato interventionThe second design intervention, Animato, started by focusing on the weak factors not articulated in the design of Canvass, such as clues for engagement, functional objects for appropriation, spatial dimensions for accessibility, and appropriate circulation flow. The main objective of Animato was to investigate how the physical qualities work within the context provided about the City of Turku, and which anticipated activity and dynamics. Animato aimed at inspiring inhabitants to express and envision their experiences about the city, calling for creativity, playfulness, reflection and dialogue between artifacts, content and inhabitants.

Figure 5: Animato intervention in Turku, Finland, 2010.

The physical qualities of Animato consisted of three stands of magnetic walls tangible tools for expression. Implementing three-dimensional stands instead of singular walls originated from the idea of opening up the linear structure of the city form, and for intervening in a visible way. The spatial arrangements of the stands in the public space created an open environment, accessible and with rich circulation flow that enabled people to walk around discovering contents and appropriating the intervention site. The tools provided on the walls were markers and three types of magnetic elements; words, geometrical shapes, and representative images such as people and things. The artifactual elements emphasized physical and functional qualities together with aesthetic form. The use of magnetic words generated poetical and inspirational content, some related to the city environment and others to the experiences of life. The benefit of utilizing

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magnetic words on the boards was the attraction and engagement of people who are familiar with them. Magnetic words are highly playful, enjoyable and easy to use.

Both, geometrical and representative shapes were made on black cardboard, which brought contrast between the light gray metal surface of the boards and the shapes. The representative magnetic figures were not much utilized as expected; they rather functioned as triggers of attraction and curiosity, building on the aesthetic and motivational aspects of the site. However, some of them were combined with words for expressing matters of concern, ideas and inspiring content. They were attractive, contrasting, usable and over all elements for appropriation, action and participation. Markers were also part of the physical elements which worked as vehicles for producing content related to the questions phrased on the boards about the environment of Turku city. They gave an open medium for expressing and participating.

The contextual environment of Animato consisted of the city space where the intervention was positioned; the center of Turku, the Aura river, and the role of inhabitants among others. The contextual content, rich and familiar to city inhabitants together with the physical characteristics, was the attraction for people to participate and create content. It motivated to communicate, discuss and express their concerns, experiences, and wishes of their city space. The themes about the city of Turku functioned as provocateurs for dialogue and learning in which people commented on others’ concerns. It created a silent and highly textual communication between subjects and inhabitants.

The actions occurred during the Animato intervention were driven by the tools and objects placed on boards. Those provoked exchange of opinions; people wrote and created content on boards, which other people commented. The boards were facing outdoors rather than indoors making the space accessible and approachable. People approached the intervention carefully, with ease and at their own tempo. The role of the designer/researcher was invisible. She focused on documenting, observing and reflecting on the interactions and situations produced by the experiment.

Niittykumpu interventionThe third design intervention, Niittykumpu, built on experiences gained from the two previous interventions. It was implemented in the context of Spice-project, thus aiming at collecting material for understanding the identity of the area, and thus obtains inspirational material for design of future metro stations. The design intervention took place inside Niittytori, the only shopping mall in the area. The physical qualities consisted on the same stands, tools and objects used in Animato which can , in that term, be considered as a pilot for Niittykumpu.

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Figure 6: Niittykumpu intervention in Espoo, Finland, 2010.

There were some changes in the material, for instance, representative images such as people and things were diminished and new figures were created for looking into issues possible related to the identity of the area. Magnetic words were selected and utilized only on one board for obtaining key words that can be used as inspiration for digging into themes about the area. However, their use was not fruitful because people did not find many words that could accurately describe their neighbourhood. Markers were highly utilized and important for adding direct content on the stand walls.

The geometrical shapes and representative images were used by the designer for filling up white boards with symbolic and aesthetically pleasant shapes and clues on neighbourhoods and cityscapes. They were attractive and welcomed people to the intervention. Figures with animals and brands were created and utilized as symbols that could represent the area. For example, one inhabitant selected the images of Ford, Ikea and Finlandia Vodka to illustrate that the district of Niittykumpu is bland and middle-class area, lacking any wonderful characteristic that would have inhabitants excited over new features. It also illustrated the lack of profile in the area, services and characteristics that would make for a strong identity and experience. Thus, the physical qualities strongly related to the contextual environment and the activities on site.

The concept idea of Niittykumpu intervention was rooted in the context of Niittykumpu’s district and its transformation; the coming metro station, new residential areas will be built, and services and public environment developed. Also, the material collected had to provide Spice project designers sufficient and varied material to make sense of the area of Niittykumpu for creating alternative concepts.

In the case of Niittykumpu intervention, three active researchers were the main drivers of actions. The spatial dimensions, the tools and the contextual information on boards provided a playground space for researchers and inhabitants to discuss about issues and visions of the area. The researchers took people around the boards, where questions and provocations about Niittykumpu were placed;

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they served as initiators for discussions, appropriation of the space.

2.4.4 Reflections: The role of experiments and interventions in design researchThe aspects for designing and studying design interventions (figure 2) have partly guided the research work. It has helped to concentrate on specific design issues for providing an active and purposeful experiment to people and public sites. However, the experiences gained during the first intervention, Canvass, served for developing the following interventions among other things. Canvass intervention was planned in a hectic schedule and with a low budget but it was highly influential for setting up my overall research program. The research approach in this work comprises an attitude where making, acting and engaging plays an important role as figure 1 shows. Also, the need to assemble an experiment and intervene in a real public site was the driver for starting to understand the role of design interventions in urban public places; the interplay between objects and people, the importance of design qualities to motivate, activate and encourage participation, and also the position of design practice in design research.

The main difference between Canvass and Animato resides in the relation between the physical qualities, activity and the role of the researcher. On one hand, Canvass lacked appropriate objects to engage with and attract people to appropriate the site. On the other hand, the physical arrangement of the space, enclosed and private, produced feelings of uncertainty, lost, and uneasiness. People were curious and inhibited at the same time about the site intervention. However, the role of the designer/researcher was strongly presence and active, inviting people to discuss and find out what was the space about. Canvass intervention function as a tool for communicating ideas. The designer presents an idea in form of experiment and receives feedback from possible users and other ideas during the intervention. In addition, Canvass was a vehicle for me in understanding the foundations of the research program, and the double role as a designer and researcher.

Whereas in Animato, the role of the designer/researcher was invisible, letting the artefacts, spatial arrangement and contextual information to drive the activity of inhabitants. The intervention design was mastered for producing varied types of tools and sites easy to appropriate, understand, and experience. The spatial arrangement was outward and public, facing the outside and making the material visible and open. It motivated people to participate, communicate and learn from other inhabitants’ opinions and wishes. Animato mediated the interactions through the relation between artefacts, textual and symbolic information.

Animato focused on developing physical qualities of the intervention for engaging the public in the construction of public sites in which actions, participation and communication were crucial for understanding the role of situations, experiments and interventions. In comparison to Canvass, Animato shed light to a new area of study, which closely relates to the creative practice of design

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and its relation to use and peoples’ understanding of public sites. Animato functioned as a tool for building dialogue between people through provocations about their everyday environment.

Lessons learnt from previous experiments facilitated the design of Niittykumpu intervention. It merged aspects from both, Canvass and Animato and harmonized the three aspects of interventions, physical qualities, contextual environment and activity. Niittykumpu included the active role of the researcher for interviewing, interacting and collecting data. It also made use of appropriate tools for creating an inspiring and motivating site for users; and finally, it followed the inviting and welcoming space through the spatial arrangement of the stands. Niittykumpu intervention functioned as an artifact and open space that drives ideas, opinions and inspirational material about a neighborhood. It also created an event in which designers and researcher could empathize and co-create with users.

The creative practice of experiments and interventions has served to understand their role in design research. As shown in this chapter, experiments and interventions have functioned in various ways: as a tool to communicate ideas; for building textual and verbal dialogue; for facilitating ideas, opinions, and inspirational material as well as for empathizing with inhabitants. They have also served as facilitators of creating places; and, as a process to drive the research work. Design interventions have shed light their function as supporters of communication in and about public places; and, as an approach for reinventing the city image.

Creative practice as a tool for processing and understandingThe three interventions, Canvass, Animato and Niittykumpu are a series of creative and learning processes that tackle specific goals. However, looking into the learning process of experiments and intervention for producing knowledge in design research is a matter of making sense of the entire material. So far, the study of the three intervention cases has opened up the role of the designer/researcher; the sense of public and private space; and, the notions of dialogical space and, place making.

The Role of Designer/ResearcherThe same person, designer and researcher, created the interventions. What is interesting to note is the weight of control of the designer before the experiment takes place as the master for planning and producing the experiment; and, the role of the researcher during and after the intervention. In the first case, Canvas, the designer focused on the concept and content of the experiment but lacked on selecting interesting material qualities for implementing and representing the idea. In addition, the designer was actively involved in the intervention, as she is presenting the concept idea and needs feedback. When the experiment is on site, and the intervention takes place factors such as appropriation, attraction and engagement arise in the mind of the researcher. Only after the intervention occurred, the researcher goes through own experiences and material collected such as videos and photographs to make sense of the situations. After studying carefully the material various preliminary findings originated: issues about private and inhibited spaces; place making; and dialogical space. These will be briefly developed in the following sections.

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In the design of the second and third intervention, Animato and Nittykumpu, the role of the designer was also important before the intervention having bigger responsibility than in the first case, Canvass. The designer’s role was essential for achieving the expected outcomes of the research aim of both interventions and thus, more emphasis was placed on the material qualities and the construction of the place. In the case of Animato, the researcher was present during and after the intervention, in constant study of interactions, situations and, functions between artefacts-users-location designed previously by the designer. In contrast, the role of both researcher/designer was active during Niittykumpu intervention. She acted as a facilitator/researcher to activate the site for gathering material about the area; and simultaneously, as a facilitator/designer for making sense of the contextual data about Niittykumpu area for imagining new ideas and alternative concept designs. The first and third cases share the idea of utilizing the design researcher as a driver of actions and inquiry. The role of the designer/researcher come into play at different levels of the research process, he concentrates on specific activities required by the intention of the study.

Public and Private Space The notion of public and private space originates from own experiences lived throughout the intervention sites and from video observations of interactions during the experiments. The first intervention, Canvass, highlights the notion of private space from the relation between inward space and people’s responses. The white room formed by tents conveyed a feeling of being closed, owned, and private, making people not to fully engage with the site. In addition, the presence of the designer made also the space to be ruled and intimate.

The contrary was found from the video analysis of Animato intervention. The characteristics of the site were public by nature, open, visible and accessible producing a site to discover, circulate and appropriate in one’s self-determination. As the role of the researcher was invisible, people realized that the site is meant for the public and not as a specific type of inquiry ruled by a resemble of a private entity. Moreover, the contextual information was built on themes about the local environment, calling for public opinions and actions.

In the third intervention, the construction of a semi-public space was driven by the local information provided to residents on boards, and by the role of the researcher who was empathizing with people. On one hand the content was visible, public and calling for inhabitants opinions and desires; and on the other hand, the site was lined by three researchers who were actively engaging people to participate. The study of the interventions also highlights that people in public places are not interested in conversing with other people. Individuals in public space encircle a private space, intimate enough for rejecting other people.

The creation of public and private spaces in the city can be formed by the physical arrangement of objects and by the presence/absence of people. Room-like places give a feeling of privacy because they are associated with private entities such as kiosks and advertisement campaigns among others. People also make sense of private spaces to be owned and ruled by an entity/person and, their role

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as inhabitants in the public space can be transformed as possible customers. People feel inhibited in the presence of other people that might be the possessor of the artefact. On the contrary, making sites public also relate to the physical arrangement and qualities of the space. Content of public concern helps interventions and places to become appropriated, collective, and therefore public.

Dialogical spaceThe main function of the three intervention cases deal with communication. The dialogical space occurred in the first experiment when a design idea was presented for acquiring feedback from the public and possible users. It facilitated verbal communication through the material qualities and the role of the designer as a host.

In the second intervention case the communication happened on two levels. First, the interaction between artefact-human, in which people produced random and inspirational material. Second, the interplay between artefacts, local information and humans expressed content on local concerns and desires. It formed a dialogical space in which tools facilitated inhabitants to discuss and built on other people’s comments about the local context. Thus, this type of dialogical space, intellectual and emotional by nature, was based on textual and symbolic information, a reflective and reciprocity type of exchange.The third type of dialogical space is again built from the two previous interventions. It is a synthesis of communication between the experiment, objects and contextual information with the role of the active researcher as facilitator of participation and dialogue.

A dialogical space is created by tools and facilitators that drive interaction and communication. There are various types of dialogical exchanges and perspectives; artefacts-humans, human-artefact-human, and human-human. The levels of communication are textual, symbolic and verbal mediated through the artefact and designer/researcher

Place makingThe notion of place making within the intervention cases is break down through the three aspects of design interventions: physical qualities, contextual environment, and activity. A place is physically created in the public space by its distinctive aesthetic character, and by marking physical limits within a space. For example, the experiments have temporally changed the experience of the public space, from an everyday environment to a particular and unique delineation based on its materiality.

The notion of place making also happens through the dialogical space described previously. It relates to the contextual environment. A design intervention helps to communicate about existing places nearby and distant; also to envision future scenarios. It enables people to remember optimal places and experiences lived before. It also allows people to think about places and situations that do not exist but are imagined and dreamed.

A place is created by the actions and presence of people. Their dynamics in specific places of

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the city are identified as sites of use and purposes that bring out sociable environments and appropriation of the space. Humans also relate to public places in terms of actions and dynamics that can evolve there, making sites recognized and utilized.

The notion of place making is undertaken from three points of view. First, a place is created by the transformation of space through physical distinctiveness and material delineation. Second, the notion of place making also originates from subjects, images and thoughts about places that are enabled by the content and situation of a space created. It can be verbal, textual and/or symbolic. And third, activities and interactions by people in a space create a dynamic site; recognizable by people involved in the situation and also by others.

2.4.5 ConclusionsThe paper demonstrated how the use of experiments and interventions may serve as tools for gaining understanding about one’s practice and new knowledge about notions and functions. Experiments and interventions may function as a driver for actions, communication and reflection that help to define problems and phenomena, and consequently guide the research study. It constructs from researcher/designer’s preliminary experience and knowledge and proceeds to upgraded knowledge from the making and understanding of the experimental work. Thus, exploratory interventions are tools of thought and action that merge empiria and concepts of the creative practice and process.

The study of the research process looks into the role of designer and researcher in order to evaluate their weigh for directing the research study, and recognize the meaning of theoretical and practical relations. It helps designers to make sense of their role as reflective practitioners. Interventions as inquiry recognizes the creative practice of design to support new ways for acquiring experiences and information that would not be possible without design practice. Moreover, utilizing only theoretical foundations would have not provided the same results.

REFERENCES1. Binder, T. and J. Redström. (2006). “Exemplary design research.” In Design Research Society Wonderground International Conference, 1–42. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. Blackwell: Oxford, UK. 3. The Situationist International Text Library/The Society of the Spectacle. http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/pub_contents/44. Unitary Urbanism. http://www.notbored.org/UU.html5. Vidler, A. (2001). Aftermath: A City Transformed: Designing Defensible Space. New York Times, September 23

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3. DIALOG BETWEEN STORIES AND PROTOTYPES

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3. DIALOG BETWEEN STORIES AND PROTOTYPES As the above chapter illustrated, stories have been seen as mode that build a bridge between four distinct professional perspectives and designing public spaces. It has been a ground that is at the same time somewhat familiar and strange for all the involved professions and while it has worked as boundary object it has also opened a whole new field for the participants; that of understanding and designing public spaces.

Unlike for example in branding, discussed in the chapter one, stories became utilised not as medium for communicating certain message but as a strategy to guide concept design that could provide elements that individual users could relate to and create own meanings and associations. In similar manner, stories evoked personal and subjective experiences within researchers, who became inspired of different types of stories and utilised them in diverse manner. E.g. Elina’s and Liisa’s text well illustrated how historical stories inspired and guided their rather artistic design process.

In the beginning we asked how storytelling approaches could be applied in designing public customer journeys including experiential spaces. During the course of the project storytelling approaches became rather as mood/mode than a tool. It was embedded in all the workshops, meetings and design activities involving users and researchers as well as company partners. In Otaniemi area it became evident that the place already has strong and unique place identity that could be brought up and supported through the design elements in coming metro station. Quite opposite to that, Niittykumpu seemed to be anonymous place, described as in-between other places without clear identity of its own. However, when getting familiar with the area and people living and working there, researchers’ found out many themes or characteristics that people seemed to share but were not that obvious. Therefore, boosting some of the themes through narrative that drives the design could enhance the place identity.

In other words, there were several ways stories and storytelling mode became useful in the project; as way of organising dialog with users and evoking anecdotes, experiences and metaphors; as communication tool within multidisciplinary team; as boundary object everyone could relate to but was allowed to interpret subjectively; as prototypes that brought design opportunities into discussion and showed potential for more experiential space design; as a strategy that tied elements into a coherent identity that could guide design decisions but still be open for many interpretations;

The way stories and storytelling mode has been utilised in Spice project can be described as a dialogical process where stories does not straightforwardly lead into design solutions but demand working with

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the fragmented elements through diverse visualisations from collages to three dimensional prototypes. Also initial gathered stories (from people, books, internet, personal experiences) has inspired new stories which has became sort of scenarios describing certain imagined people and the area vividly, especially those scripts written by scriptwriter Tomi Leino. We named them accordingly as narrative prototypes to illustrate their meaning in the design process not only as communication tools but as narratives that brings design elements and design drivers into discussion.

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4. CONCLUSIONS

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4. CONCLUSIONSSpice project started with an exploratory attitude: it believed in exemplary design research as described by Bidner and Redström (2006) and approached the research question ’how storytelling approaches can be applied in designing public experiences’ through making a set of experiments for investigating. The project plan had several objectives with an ambitious list of expected outcomes including:

- Benchmarking the application of stories for design. - Outlining urban customer flows with stories and descriptions. - Mapping existing and potential design elements and their connections to the local narratives including speculative verbal scenarios, stories and design potentials. - Creating an idea bank of concept design solutions including scenarios, animations, cartoons, 3D visualizations and prototypes.- A series of publications, exhibitions, workshops and seminars.

This collection of essays is one of the outcomes that aim to answer the research question. It also illustrates the spectrum of perspectives that were joined together during the project. Experimenting, developing and collective learning took place throughout the process. Much of the details remain to be reflected in the future projects. In the following I will try to conclude the results of the project.

Throughout the project the concept of storytelling that was defined loosely and flexibly to start with, was considered. The following quotes from Spice project’s academic publications address storytelling mode:

‘Bruner (1986, 11-13) claims that there exist two fundamentally different modes of thought: the storytelling and the argumentation mode. These both provide ways of ordering experience and constructing reality, but the ways in which they convince and are constructed differ fundamentally.’ ‘Stories, as compared to a logico-scientific argument, represent a mode of thought that may be utilised to convince, because stories are lifelike, imaginative and believable even if not true. In comparison to a logico-scientific mode (ibid.), then, stories are chrono-logical (Abbott, 2008 16).’‘Storytelling thus appears and can be applied in many ways, also in design.

- It is about communication. - It is engaging.- It allows individual interpretation and triggers imagination. - It is about joining individual details together into larger entities.

In design contexts the application possibilities of storytelling are vast, but understanding its potential requires sensitivity to the forms it may take, the matters it may address and the scale it may grasp.’

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‘We claim that the storytelling mode does not happen accidentally but results from methodical work. More to the point, it takes methods and tools to trigger narrative events that illuminate design objectives.’ (Mattelmäki, Routarinne & Ylirisku 2011)

In the Spice project we have used various methods for searching and supporting the storytelling mode from workshops, field studies to the design solutions. The applied methods involve material means, social settings and language. Storytelling mode also requires a particular mindset that differs from the more analytical one often related to research. However, from research we are aware that field studies are never complete. Thus we have suggested, that ‘one way to deal with the fragmented characteristics is to create a more coherent picture about people and their experiences by applying storytelling for sharing and creating insights. Storytelling can be said to include two separate stories: one is the story being told by someone; the other story is the listeners’ story that is based on their experiences and interpretations of the story being told (Aaltonen & Heikkilä 2003). In the open-ended interpretation context this means acknowledging the variety of interpretations, and at best benefiting from them.’ (Mattelmäki, Brandt & Vaajakallio 2011) As discussed also in the essays above storytelling is used in art, in movies, and in literature to convey messages, inspire imagination and reconstruct meanings. During the project we have started to question ‘where is the boundary between artistic expression as a tradition to resonate, to create insights and the user-centred and empathic design? Do we have to care about those boundaries? Or can we instead move towards the application of more designerly and artistically expressive ways to enable new interpretations?’ (ibid.)

Methods experimented and developed in the Spice-project have been collected and described to a set of illustrated cards that hopefully trigger storytelling mode in future projects. These cards were exhibited in the Spice project’s exhibition titled ‘What if…’ and delivered to the project partners. Some of them have roots in user-centred design methods, screenwriting and scenography or design prototyping, but were applied with a Spiced twist.

The Spice project considered urban environments and experiences especially focusing on the new metro line to the west, to Espoo. Customer journey aims to capture and communicate the process of travelling. It is always a personal experience that combines several elements such as time, and the people around. In such setting the time plays an important role. We have pinpointed some of the situations, activities and possible service touch-points that can arise during the customer journey of a passenger taking the metro. Some of the touch-points can be designed, some are more or less uncontrolled. However, awareness of their existence should trigger new design ideas, support the overall design management, and positive customer experience, too.

In the world of design, ideas don’t remain on the immaterial level for very long, but there is an interest to render them more tangible through the use of models and prototypes. In prototyping, ideas develop in direct interaction with doing. Prototyping constitutes small-scale experimentation where different ideas are tried out; efforts are made to establish the final shape of the concept and to specify its details, and the possible benefits and challenges. The local settings of the two case studies, Otaniemi and Niittykumpu, have provided the source of inspiration for a set of design ideas created by the project

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researchers in collaboration with the company partners. The ideas start from the notion that finding new solutions is based on an understanding of the user and the local context. The results of user and field studies were however, intertwined with other sources and the personal impressions, experiences and stories of the researchers. These ideas, similarly, were collected in a booklet.

Finally, both the research and company partners have joined the research journey with explorative mindset. The partners have actively participated in the events organized by the project team with motivation. They have bravely stepped into the storytelling mode without hesitance and contributed to the outcomes. Their role has been invaluable. We want to thank the team and the partners of the two years. Spice has been a great source of inspiration. The Spice methods, design ideas and research insights continue their lives in new research projects, in stories, and hopefully in practice too.

References1. Aaltonen, M. and Heikkilä, T. 2003. Tarinoiden voima. Miten yritykset hyödyntävät tarinoita? Gummerus: Jyväskylä, Finland. [In English: The Power of Stories. How companies use stories?]2. Abbot, Porter H., 2008, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Second edition. Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press. 3. Bruner, J. 1986, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.4. Mattelmäki, T., Brandt, E. and Vaajakallio, K. (2011) On designing open-ended Interpretations for collaborative design exploration. In CoDesign: International journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts. Vol 7 no2. Taylor & Francis Pp. 79-935. Mattelmäki, T., Routarinne, S. and Ylirisku, S. (2011) Triggering the Storytelling Mode. In Buur, J. (edit) Proceedings of the Participatory Innovation Conference PINC 2011. P. 38-44. (available at http://spirewire.sdu.dk/proceedings/PINC-proceedings-web.pdf)

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‘T a k e y o u r t i m e’TOMI LEINO

Background In our national epic Kalevala Aino’s arrogant brother Joukahainen sues Väinämöinen to compete in singing. Väinämöinen sings Joukahainen to swamp. In order to save himself from drowning Joukahainen promises his sister to Väinämöinen. And by this way innocent Aino is under a threat to become Väinämöinen’s wife. Aino tries desperately to turn to his mother’s side. Aino’s mother, however, sees Väinämoinen as a good husband, and doesn’t understand the anxiety of her daughter. Aino sees that there is no other option than to drown her. And that she does.

‘Jo ois minulla aika näiltä ilmoilta eritä, aikani Manalle mennä, ikä tulla Tuonelahan: ei mua isoni itke, ei emo pane pahaksi, ei kastu sisaren kasvot, veikon silmät vettä vuoa, vaikka vierisin vetehen, kaatuisin kalamerehen alle aaltojen syvien, päälle mustien murien. (Kalevala. 1935, 25.) After the suicide both Väinämöinen and Aino’s mother regret and feel guilty due to their selfishness. Joukahainen begins to hate even more Vainamoinen and refuses to see in his own behaviour anything wrong. Aino’s story Aino moved to London with her mother after her mother and father got divorced. For the ten-year-old Aino moving and the separation from father and brother because of the long-distance felt extremely painful. Because Aino enjoyed nature it felt also heavy to leave the residential area of Otaniemi with its woods and the sea. Naturally she could still on holidays visit familiar places, but the feeling was never again the same. Aino became more strong-tempered after moving to London. Strong will acted as a good protection

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as a means to hide the sorrow of the big change. On the other hand Aino got what she ever wanted, obviously her mother tried to make the happened up to her. Aino had a strong sense of justice, and he reacted strongly to the injustices. In addition, various natural phenomena, such as full moon and stormy seas, fascinated Aino.

Aino became interested also in arts in London. She made small-scale sculptures already when she was just a little bit over ten years old. The materials Aino used were the ones she loved and missed in London most; wood and ametrines. Occasionally Aino sent new works of art as photographs to his father.

As a teenager she became interested in the environmental movement and participated in their activities. His father and mother - and later, also his brother - had a technological, logical and positivistic ideology and they couldn’t relate to Aino’s pathos in anyway. In a long e-mail Aino with a certainty of a teenager emphasized to her father and brother how their work for the benefit of the technology is only waste of time. They should work for the benefit of the environment and the world. Aino continued teasing her father that the best technical invention, which she remembered from Otaniemi, was a bike-like gadget that did not work. As a voice of a young artist Aino sums up that everything is not about functionality and logics to really function. Her father got irritated of the defiant message so that their contacts became incidental. And often their few contacts broke with a fierce dispute.

Just a bit over twenty years old Aino had already exhibitions in London in a couple of small art galleries. Exhibitions received attention due to the north exoticism and environmental awareness. In the middle of burgeoning success came a surprising message. Her mother had suddenly died. At the funeral in Helsinki Aino quarrelled heavily with her father and brother. Straight after the funeral Aino travelled back to London.

Aino disappeared suddenly and mystically a few weeks after the funeral. Aino grew to be in a small art circles a mythical figure. She was allegedly claimed to been seen in different places. In Otaniemi and especially at the metro station it started to appear small paintings and sculptures made of natural materials some years after the disappearance.

Seeking the connection with Aino – three stories Jouko Aino’s father Jouko has in his life always accustomed to the fact that everything has a logical solution. It is not surprising; he has been all his life interested in technology. He was named as a professor of metallurgy to Helsinki University of Technology when he was just in his thirties.

He found his wife, Marja, also from Otaniemi. She studied physics. They shared a passionate interest in technology. Together they had lively discussions on technical matters often at night, and many times until the morning.

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Their relationship began to rapidly weaken when their two children, Aino and one year after their son Harri, were born. Jouko found no interest in family life and everyday routines. The more he was needed, the more Jouko withdrew to his work.

When Marja was offered a research position in London, she did not hesitate to leave. A dispute arose, however, about children. Jouko took it as a personal defeat that the children were both about to leave with their mother. They went through a tedious struggle of children, which resulted eventually so that Harri stayed with his father in Otaniemi, and mother went with Aino to London. Parents told children that it would be only a temporary solution, but nobody in the family believed it.

Jouko was deeply imprinted by the bitter divorce; he started even more to accentuate his positivistic values. He wanted to leave the emotions to the background; they prevented him from concentrating to the important work. When the message of the death of Marja arrived, Jouko withdrew without a word work. But when shortly after the death of Marja became the data of Aino disappearing, Jouko collapsed. He felt that he had abandoned his own child. He blamed himself for their fights and saw himself as narrow-minded and cruel. Above all, he blamed himself that he had not even tried to understand Aino.

When Jouko a few years later began to see signs of Aino in the district of Otaniemi, he began to doubt his own sanity. But when the grandson Uolevi, Harri’s boy, started to talk about the mysterious signs which reminded signs and art of Aino-aunt, Jouko began secretly to believe that Aino had returned. Jouko slowly began to think that Aino leaves signs of her and is thus looking for a new connection with his father.

Gradually, Jouko begins to leave signs of him to Otaniemi Metro station. He leaves elements of mathematical formulas, as well as pieces of prototypes made on the basis of these formulas.

Harri Harri was as a child much calmer than Aino, more like his father. He became interested in solving small technical puzzles already in the very early age. And from his father’s lap he would have stared at the car’s engine with endless fascination.

Harri started as school-aged watching the odd activities and the strangest inventions of Otaniemi Technology students Father Jouni was not always very excited about this, but at the same time, however, felt proud about his son. He saw himself in the boy, and felt that they had a speechless connection through the interest in technology. He could not see that in fact his son used tehcnology to contact his absent father. In fact this activity of his son made him even more passive and alienated Jouko from his son. The divorce of his father and mother was a chock to Harri. In disputes, he was forced to keep the

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side of his silent father, and Harri also stayed after the divorce with his father. It was difficult for Harri to be separated from mother. But perhaps even more from his sister, who used to whisper at night times adventure stories, which she had made up. Harri worshiped his brave sister. Harri found after his parents’ divorce the same comfort as his father, technology. Many nights his father used to look quietly through the crack of a door how a grey smoke of a melting tin arouses behind Harri’s bended figure.

It was obvious that immediately when it was possible Harri went to study to the University of Technology. He knew already almost the entire staff of the university, but for everybody’s surprise, Harri’s studies didn’t start to move forward. Instead, Harri had a child, Uolevi. Uolevi’s mother disappeared pretty soon after birth and Harri remained with her child to live in Otaniemi student housing. Harri focused to make innovations, whose importance was hard to see for the externals. Studies were random and disjointed credits. Harri spent the first years with Uolevi and baby bottle in her lap by the computer. Later, when Uolevi had grown up he sat on the floor examining books about planets and the universe. Harri dragged enthusiastically those books home from the library of the university. Several nights Harri fell asleep in the middle of the investigations. Little Uolevi turned off the lights brushed his teeth, and went to bed.

Mother’s death didn’t shock Harri. Mother actually disappeared from his life already after the divorce. Instead, the disappearance of Aino depressed him. He blamed of the incident first mother, then father, and finally heavily himself. He was the one who didn’t help Aino in her disputes with their father, not even at the open quarrel after their mother’s funeral. He felt that he was the last link, which dismissed Aino. This guilt is not leaving him alone.

When Uolevi starts to claim that he has seen signs of the existence of Aino-aunt, Harri blames himself of this as well Harri thinks his son is seeking connection with his remote father, jus as he and Aino did when they were young. And then one night, there is a knock on Harri’s door. But when he opened the staircase it was empty. From the corridor could be heard only the remote sound of metro trains. Harri doesn’t know what to believe but slowly and in secret from his son, he starts to leave signs of himself to Aino.

Uolevi Uolevi does not know any other place than Otaniemi. As soon as he was born he was taken to Otaniemi student dormitory. The only time he has been absent from Otaniemi, was when he was with his father at his grandmother’s funeral in Helsinki. Uolevi learned to read at the age of four when he spelled planets’ names from the books handling universe.

Uolevi loves more than anything his father and fears that he looses him. He has chosen

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unconsciously invisible presence. He has been helping his absent-minded father since very little kid. Saddest fact is that Uolevi’s father did not even notice how much his son helps him on a daily basis.

When the father’s sister disappeared, Uolevi noticed the change in his father. He became even more distant. Nine-year-old Uolevi decided to start, if possible, to help his father even more than earlier. He understood that the key to save his father’s was to find Aino. Uolevi is clever to use a computer, and he quickly began to find surprising clues about Aino. He became acquainted with the Aino’s art through the net and his father’s photographs. The relation with the clues and Aino’s art made Uolevi to believe that Aino was alive.

One day while playing near a metro station Uolevi notes graffities that resemble Aino’s paintings. Uolevi gets an idea and finishes it to a scratch pad accordingly a painting he has seen in his father’s photographs. When the work is finished, Uolevi thinks that that piece of art is now complete. Gust of wind catches the paper and it flies to a branch of a tree.

Take your time Theme: Stop time, forget yourself and discover yourself.

Seeking the connection with Aino - synopsisAino is Jouko’s daughter, Harri’s sister and Uolevi’s aunt. She vanished at the age of 22, and family members feel guilty. At Otaniemi district, where all the family members live, work and study, it starts to appear mysterious signs, which resemble Aino’s art.

Jouko, Harri and Uolevi start looking for a lost contact with Aino unaware of each other. They are hoping that the lost connection could be found and together with Aino they could start over again. They feel that Aino will be found when the lost contact is reborn and Aino begins to trust them again. In this hope they leave signs of themselves, parts of their own research and burgeoning art, hoping that Aino would complement these signs.

It is possible that Aino is dead, and Jouko, Harri and Uolevi are looking unknowingly the lost contact with each other. On the other hand, who left the first sign? Or, secondly, is Aino something that they lack as individuals?

Narrative elements in Otaniemi metro station The above story helps the user to challenge his way of thinking as well as his relationship with the environment and other people. The space of metro prompts the user to use a minute for something foreign. The space incites to change and helps to see something familiar in a strange and perhaps useful for the user in personal life.

When entering the metro station the metro user dives into the story of the synopsis. Being active means that the fictional Jouko, Harri and Uolevi get help from the metro users – users supplement

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their signs. On the other hand, some of their signs may have been suddenly removed or changed places – this way obstacles are created and thus a dramatic tension to the space.

Throughout the metro district passes the paths of Jouko’s, eternal logician, Harri’s, the student innovator, and yet Uolevi’s, the path of a child-like art and technology. All of these paths and the whole metro district, however, are dominated by Aino, the strong-willed, feminine, nature loving character and filled with sense of community.

Plateau ‘Aino’ Aino is concretised at the plateau as a form of a statue. At the foot of the statue is a written text of Aino’s story. Around the statue lies a variety of games such as chess table made of wood, mini golf, (which has three types of tracks - technical students’, an engineer’s and a child’s path), or even a bowling alley (made of wood). And the lighting and heating systems are powered by solar power.

Entrances and exits, lobbies and staircases At the entrances begin the stories of Jouko, Harri and Uolevi. Stories can be localised so that, for example at the entrance of Keilaniemi begins the story of Uolevi, at the campus area begins the story of Jouko, and at the entrance of residential area begins Harri’s story. Stories are supported by audiovisual elements. Jouko’s story consists of a series of mathematical formulas, a variety of technical articles and prototypes at the beginning point. Harri’s story consists of student innovations (also non-functional)). At the Uolevi’s entrance lobby you will find child-like blanks of art, drawings, etc.

At the narrow stairways stories are run by audio and textual references which challenge the users of metro to change their point of view to a new one. When starting to go down to the platforms, one gets tuned to a story. When coming up from the platforms the user is asked: What has he learned? Did you search only familiar things? And even more: What is he doing on behalf of the loved ones? Who is he? What kind of a person is he going to be? Intersecting paths of the story can also be changed from time to time. By this way the user can suddenly be asked the same questions when entering the metro station or the user can be suddenly in the beginning of Uolevi’s story although he thought to be in the entrance of Jouko’s story. So the stories have linear paths, but you rarely follow a specific path from start to finish. By this way the undeground district remains fascinating and dramatically intensive.

Platform Area Technical formulas, prototypes, innovations of technical students, and the sculptures and paintings of children are all in disorganized order at the platform and as well at the back walls of the metro tracks. The user can search for the connections between these elements and also try to create ’the big picture’ in mind and also concretely. For example the platform area has benches made of

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natural material, which one can form to new bench combinations. In transparent boxes there are parts of non-functional bicycle, legos, technical drawings of what the whole package should be. Aino’s values dominate at the same time the entire space.

The Metro District as a Business Environment Companies attach to stories, either by purchasing their own business premise at the metro station or by advertisements. Otaniemi metro station reflects the values that are not only Aino’s values of the environment and community, but also the three stories of about technical expertise, innovation, and childlike creation.

Companies wishing to relate to the Aino’s story, can do so by acquiring the business premise, or advertising space near the statue Such companies could be organic food shop, shop selling wooden gifts, etc. Companies that are active in the field of technology can attach to Jouko’s story. And the entrance where Harri’s story begins can be clothing shops, bookshops and so on. At the Uolevi’s story, companies can be toy shops, and thinking of the residential area also grocery stores, etc.

In addition, a metro station makes it possible to extend their own corporate images away from their core business area to a more environmentally friendly, creative, youthful, or family-friendly directions. This is done by selecting a relation with not so obvious storyline.

Finally Active user of Otaniemi Metro station creates as by a mistake the individual foundations for the future scenarios. own future manuscript criteria. The user gets an opportunity to consider where he stands at the moment of his personal life, whether the path is his own personal ideal or whether it is ‘wrong’ path on which he may have gone without noticing it or is it perhaps a path which he is satisfied with.

Otaniemi Metro allows the user as well as the companies to start to change their own image of identity and the scenarios of their lives.

‘Take your time’ is inspired by: Krzysztof Kieslowski: The Ten Commandments (1988). The First Commandment Luc Besson: Subway (1981) Peter Greenaway: The Tulsa Luper Suitcases (2003-2004) Circle: ‘Miljard’ (2006)

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‘Collecting the pieces’ TOMI LEINO

BackgroundEssential thing about Niittykumpu is definitely the strong contrasts. It is beautiful, it is ugly, it is noisy but it has a nice park. Niittykumpu is a mixture of stagnation and movement. People seem to pass by it without leaving any trace. The identity of Niittykumpu does not begin of anything. It gets its form from the relationship to the neighbourhood. Niittykumpu is beside something or on the way when travelling somewhere else. It can be found only when travelled away from there. It is more of an image or a memory than a concrete place.

The time in Niittykumpu is visible in different time layers. It is strongest at the fifties and sixties but it mixes all the periods since the 19th century to the present. There are interesting contrasts in the architecture; solid apartment buildings, ragged garages, petrol stations and well looked gardens. Niittykumpu is like a demented senior, who combines randomly places and times together. On the other hand Niittykumpu is like a mother, whose teenaged children, Tontunmäki and Niittymaa, are growing up and do not want that they are constantly compared and identified with Niittykumpu. They have their own life and identity.

People tend to take architecture and urban planning a bit too seriously and approach the subject from very black-white perspectives. The script of the Niittykumpu could express its environment with warmth and understanding – without forgetting comedy. So the pieces, which are to be collected, come from the different layers of time and different but very locally close surroundings of the present. The theme comes from these ideas. The theme is: ’You might start to love the things that you hate’.

Romantic comedy ’Collecting the pieces’Characters: Janita & JapeJanita, woman at her thirties, has studied International marketing at the University of Tampere. She has been very aware that Tampere is not the place where she is going to live. First she takes Helsinki, then Manhattan. She is eager trying to forget that she is not even from Tampere, but from a small town 40 kilometres from Tampere, Orivesi.

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Janita does not have a background of a sophisticated family. Her father works as a trucker; mother is a hair -dresser. Janita shares a lot with her mother. They are both dreamers and talkative persons. They both also share the strong Tampere region dialect, which they both try desperately to hide. In addition they both are very good drawers.

But Janita is now graduated. The world is open. And after getting fancy lady-like clothing she starts to look after a working place in Helsinki. And very soon she succeeds; a one-man import and export company recruits her! The owner of the company says that the business is just about to get on its wings, but at the present they are sending used Toyota Corollas to Ethiopia but they are going to expand rapidly to selling ’almost anything that suits to Ethiopia’. Janita’s first job is to send the papers of Toyota Corollas to custom officers. Janita thinks this is a great start for her work career. There is sense of internationality - occasionally she has to speak about the reclamations of sent Corollas in English.

Janita starts to search a place to live. She understands soon that Espoo is a town, where prosperous people live. So she heads there. Very soon she gets an apartment – with a very reasonable price as she tells with pride to her mother.

Jape is a young man in spirit, although 37 years old. He listens to music from the fifties and drives a Chevy. Jape works at a garage in the middle of the Niittykumpu. He likes to fix cars. When an engine starts to roam after Jape fixed it, he is in heaven. After a successful day at work Jape goes home, listens Eddie Cochran, reads car magazines and takes one Budweiser. Jape is very friendly and people like him a lot. But everybody who knows him knows that there are certain things that you can’t argue with Jape. Everything that is related to fifties, is holy and beyond judgement.

Occasionally he draws models of different cars. He has also sprayed ornaments to trucks. The subjects are from the fifties – everything seen pure and visually colourful.Jape loves the area of Niittykumpu. The floating smell of gasoline and the constant sound of engines is his world. But the place is changing; Jape assumes that his days are soon over in the paradise called Niittykumpu. But if there is anything to be done for the place that is in Jape’s mind closest to America in Finland, namely Niittykumpu, that Jape will without hesitation do.

The scriptJanita, economist, has moved to Niittykumpu. She lives just a little bit away from the old shopping centre. Janita understands quickly that some people seem to have strong prejudices to Niittykumpu area. Janita fully understands them. She realizes that there is on the other hand the noisy, working-class related area with garages and car sales Niittykumpu, and on the other hand the Niittykumpu with the burning desire to be above the usual, place where nice people with beautiful, small, well-taken care of gardens want to live. These both aspects are deeply and with a great love supported. There is no question that Janita is the supporter of the point of view of the nice people.

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Janita finds out that there is going to be a competition to all the people who are somehow involved in the Niittykumpu district to plan and execute the design to the fore coming metro station. Janita knows that this is her opportunity to try to make a difference and stand for the important values. What Janita does not know, is the fact that there is a serious rival, Jape, who has exactly same thoughts.

They sketch a very detailed plan how the metro station should like. Jape’s proposal is full of cars (from different times though) and Janita’s proposal has smiling people in their business suits and beautiful gardens – and of course English text about the places (like Tontunmäki is Hill of the Elves).

To the surprise of everybody the main prize of the competition is decided to be split in two. The jury thinks that two proposals reflect the mixed identity of Niittykumpu best. Janita and Jape are both winners and selected hereby to plan and execute the metro station area. The entire area is divided in sections; both Jape and Janita get sections that are five metres wide. And their sections are crosscutting; Janita has first section, Jape second, Janita third and so on. They both are full of anger. They think that the result and the competition were totally unfair.

Anyway the result creates a huge rivalry. Janita and Jape are asked to start from the lower platform area. They both do long hours after work hardly saying anything to each other. They both are doing there best that there point of view beats the point of the other one, in this way they believe they can show what Niittykumpu is really about. This continues for days.

Then on one evening Jape decides to work the whole night. But when the morning dawns, exhausted Jape sees that he has done a terrible mistake just in the middle of the platform, he has painted on Janita’s section. The painting is an image his own beautiful and shining Chevrolet, which seems just to be about to fly.

When Janita sees the damage, she gets furious. She paints just beside and also a bit over Jape’s painting a huge, colourful garden with roses and other plants. She demands that she has to have the permission to finish the work all by herself. But when the representatives of the metro station see the results, the conflicting forces of Janita’s and Jape’s works make again the opposite reaction. They think that this is just how the Niittykumpu area can be seen in the metro station. The beauty and identity comes from the complexity of the immediate surroundings of the metro station. Janita refuses to work like that.

Few days later, there is a knocking on Janita’s door. Jape is having a big bucket of roses in his hands. He wants to apologize and make up with Janita. Jape says that he is going to give up and not to paint anymore the metro station. Janita can do it all. Janita starts to regret her behaviour. The final strike is that Janita’s father gets angry about Janita’s behaviour. He comes to Niittykumpu and sees all the magnificent paintings Jape has done. Father says to Janita that he would have been really proud if anything even close to the Jape’s paintings would have been on the hood of his truck.

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Little by little, Janita realizes that she has to either compromise or not to participate any more. Janita calls Jape. After long conversations they start together to plan from a new perspective the metro station. They decide to name the plan ‘Collecting the pieces’. They decide to drop hints of different areas and from different periods of time. Honouring the both perspectives, but without compromises concerning their own visual ideas, the work shall be done.

At the opening of the metro station, Jape and Janita realise suddenly while watching their own paintings, that they also, just like the separate parts of Niittykumpu area, complement each other… The end

Narrative elements in Niittykumpu metro station - Entrances, exits, lobbies and staircases

Platform area The script ‘Collecting the pieces’ does not approach the Niittykumpu metro station as separate segments but as a whole. This means the same kind of visual images, same kind of auditive elements, possibly same kind of lightning solutions in all parts of metro station. This ‘whole’ is created from two very different approaches, the other one ‘the car-heaven’ and other the sub-urban garden paradise’.

The essential thing is to create the feeling of conflicting forces and to engender understanding to other perspectives. To get the metro user sense the beauty of seeing beauty in different ways. To someone beauty is old cars; to other one it is beautiful business suits with smiling faces.

The best way to accomplish this was to use comedy. Comedy comes from identifying with the familiar actions and behaviour. They are just exaggerated in comedy. In this particular case the comedy is seen in the exaggerated and polished images – they are like propaganda paintings. But when put to face one another – I see it is comedy. This could have back up from the auditive elements – roaming engines and the sound of burning rubber of the tyres of fast cars versus singing of the birds.

Niittykumpu case is not in the same way user-centred and interactive as the Otaniemi case. In Otaniemi –case the user got active in action-wise. Instead in Niittykumpu –case the metro user makes observations of the surroundings of the metro station, its history and present. It might get the user to ponder how the Niittykumpu will or should be like in the future.

The Niittykumpu Metro District as a Business Environment This metro station is meant for companies who don’t take themselves too seriously, who are always ready to play with what they are and what kind of values they stand for. The environment gives an image of capability of changing but at the same time a certain respect to the passed times.

Niittykumpu stands for understanding and accepting different ideas and values. It is about creative teamwork, about that one + one is more than two. There cannot be said that Niittykumpu fits just for companies in precise fields of industry. Because Niittykumpu and metro station reflects controversial ideas and ways of thinking, the companies here must be alike. Beside a gym can be a pub.

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‘Collecting the pieces’ is inspired by:Selja Ahava: Eksyneen muistikirja (2010)Wim Wenders: Paris, Texas (1984) (especially music by Ry Cooder) Federico Fellini: Amarcord (1973)Robert Altman: Short cuts (1993)David Lynch: Mulholland drive (2001)

understanding spice public spaces through narrative ... · 7. 1. introduction. the aim of this...

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