Revealing Invisible Cities
''Now I shall tell of the city of Zenobia, which is
wonderful in this fashion: though set on dry terrain it stands on high pilings,
and the houses are of bamboo and zinc, with many platforms and balconies placed
on stilts at various heights, crossing one another, linked by ladders and
hanging sidewalks, surmounted by cone-roofed belvederes, barrels storing water,
weather vanes, jutting pulleys, and fish poles, and cranes.
No one remembers
what need or command or desire drove Zenobia's founders to give their city this
form, and so there is no telling whether it was satisfied by the city as we see
it today, which has perhaps grown through successive superimpositions from the
first, now undecipherable plan.
But what is
certain is that if you ask an inhabitant of Zenobia to describe his vision of a
happy life, it is always a city like Zenobia that he imagines, with its pilings
and its suspended stairways, a Zenobia perhaps quite different, a flutter with
banners and ribbons, but always derived by combining elements of that first
model. This said, it is pointless trying to decide whether Zenobia is to be
classified among happy cities or among the unhappy.
It makes no sense
to divide cities into these two species, but rather into another two: those
that through the years and the changes continue to give their form to desires,
and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it.''
Analysis of Public Interiors
I focused on Siam
Center. The appearance and the frame are not much different from general malls, but the strong individuality of each store that
has nothing to do with the structure,
created experience such as surprise
and interests. Each shop's ingenuity varies from ceiling, wall objects, lighting, dolls, house and dome structures. Experiences
that strong personality create integrated the interior space of this
building.
I made this
and deepened my understanding of the
difference between the S center and the other malls. Each shopping mall’s experiences was caught as a flow, and it was divided into psychological, physically flat, relief, wide, close.
It’s easy to say that the continuity of
the volume which is too large
and the closed inorganic shop
creates boring and feeling of alienation. Nearby, strong personality creates affinity
and adventure. So, I think that experience has the potential. Shopping
malls should have not only shopping,
but also people who come to experience.
