For the past 8 years I have focused on the symbiotic relationships between people and places; the way in which places affect people, psychologically and physically, and in turn how people’s perception, understanding and use of place is physically manifest in the built environment that surrounds them.
Through acute, daily, on-site observation over periods of months I watch people in their interaction with places. I focus on the unspectacular, transient, quotidian spaces of the city: subway stations, underground passageways, traffic roundabouts and squares, spaces Marc Augé, the cultural anthropologist, has defined as “non-places,” characterised by the atomisation of people in which community is dissolved into seas of discrete, anonymous individuals (“customers, passengers, users, listeners”). “Place” becomes “space,” resulting in the depersonalised and homogenous spaces that demarcate the contemporary world. It is precisely this depersonalisation and homogeneity however that I am attempting to penetrate as I aim to highlight the speci city of particular places. While I use the media of architectural representation such as models and plans to re ect these places, my work differs fundamentally from conventions and methods used by architects and urban planners. I employ my own subjective systems of measurement to survey public spaces in order to make visible the patterns, practices, and codes of everyday life that animate and de ne, co-opt and critique these sites.
In a conversation with the Master Programme in Urban Design I would like to explore possible methods, games, and acts that can be used to uncover and understand the life of urban places.
Larissa Fassler is concerned with the symbiotic relation- ships between people and places. Her artistic practices re ects her interest in the architecture of cities and the way in which places affect people, psychologically and physically, and in turn how people’s perception, under- standing and use of place is physically manifest in the built environment. Born in Canada, she lives in Berlin and exhibits widely.