UCL Public Engagement Fellowship
Place: Somers Town, London.
Use of the building: Research.
Author: Izaskun Chinchilla (Senior Teaching Fellow, Senior Researcher and Public Engagement Fellow a the Bartlett School of Architecture).
Responsible of the project in Camden Council: Ben Knowles.
Colaborators: Sally Hart (Research Assistant), Adriana Cabello Plasencia, Alejandro Espallargas and Paula Mena and Jaime Viamonte.
The Space Syntax Laboratory: Sophia Psarra, Fani Kostourou and Athina Lazaridou
Sociologist: Emilio Luque.
Prototyping: Antonio Abellán, Javier Esquiva and Soledad Rico.
Students: Cristna Garza, Shuo Yang
Colaboration with: UCL Public Engagement Unit, The Barttlet School of Architecture and Camden Council.
Design period: 2014-2015
The role that children play in the urban space has been concerning the office during the last cople of years. The research aims to empower the urban and domestic legacy of the 2000-2010 generation .
We are a team developing a combined activity as designers, researchers, space syntax team and public engagement fellows. We develop together these fields because we think that’s the best way to improve the city, create social opportunities and to increase the quality of our designs.
As part of Izaskun Chinchilla Public Engagement fellowship, in colaboration with The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL Public Engament Unit and Camden council we have been working in a project to ecourage children to go cycling to school.
Key aims of this Cycle to School Partnership are;
-To encourage children that live and study within the locale to feel safe enough to use implemented cycle routes from a young age, encouraging their cycling skills through to
adulthood, and improving health and wellbeing.
– Encouraging the community to discover their borough´s unique and often unrecognised heritage features.
– Discovering the spatial and multicultural richness of their borough.
We propose a number of routes that will feature a series of WAY-FINDING SIGNALS and GATEWAYS that will allow children to navigate the city with more independence.
WORKSHOPS.
We work with the local comunities to build up robust research evidence in developing an understanding of patterns of human activity and use, accessibility, and cultural identity. We have experience with many workshops with children between 4 and 15 years old.
Our motivation is to implement a great and broadly evaluated design and to develop further our research and public engagement expertise using the community feedback to increase engagement and quality in our designs.
We develop different activities in order de get data like: the relation between ages and activities, their identification of the urban spaces and identification with buildings and landmarks.
The central focus of the workshops has been the design os a 10 scale-models of landmaks buildings from the urban space we are working on. The children have to indentificate and locate them in the big 1/10scale map. It give us clues about how children navigate within their borough.