The first project we were given at Design Interactions at the RCA was an unusual one knowing the programme’s critical and speculative nature. The 3 week project was based in Vauxhall (not the car manufacturer, but the South London area) and invited us to challenge what modern philanthropy is and how it manifests itself in an urban community.
At the beginning of the project we were introduced to key community figures in Vauxhall, which was essential to rapidly immerse ourselves in this place. Vauxhall seemed like a no-man’s land when we first arrived. Lambeth council has permitted a worryingly large number of redevelopment plans to take place in the next 20 years. This includes One St. George’s Wharf, Vauxhall Sky Gardens and Vauxhall Cross.
I was really craving for some team work since it had been a while since the last time I was in a team. Before going in a team however, I conducted some initial research myself. I decided to look at Vauxhall’s demographics by going on a cycle around the area. I documented my cycle route and found out the postcodes of all the streets I cycled past. I then used a website called UpMyStreet to find out the demographics of every street. These demographics are described in a marketing-esque language called Acorn classification. These descriptions are arguably insensitive and sometimes borderline racist in describing certain groups of people. To see what people think about their own demographic and capture their reactions of this insensitive “bagging” of people into one generic description, I made a poster and put it up on most streets included in the cycle route. An email address was included for people to reply with their opinion.
Shortly after that quick experiment, I got interested in what David Chatting (a very talented, very modest, and very friendly second year) was doing. He was looking at how visualisations of the buildings in the real environment might give Vauxhall residents a better understanding of the impact they will have on their community. We started talking about how you could visualise the amount of sky that will be dominated by these new buildings. After some chats, we decided that we would design two experiments.
The first was an augmented reality application that would scan the sky, recognise the separation between the sky and the buildings currently in Vauxhall, and place the buildings due to be built in the near future. A stylised, slightly cynical view of these new buildings would hopefully provide an alternative perspective to the pristine architectural renderings that are regularly shown to residents.
The second was an audio tour in which current residents could learn more about how their neighbourhood might change because of these redevelopments and who their future neighbours might be. Again, a slightly cynical voice would give the listener a description of the future demographic of the street they would be in based on the proposed redevelopment plans.
What was interesting about this project was that everyone was constantly challenging this notion of philanthropy. What does it mean to give? What does it mean to receive? Traditionally, the nature of philanthropy has been materialistic. It involves a rich person donating a large sum of money or an organisation providing a building or public space for a community to live in. But what we were giving was a different perspective. As outsiders, we made connections between people who might necessarily not speak to each other. Even though the crit has passed, the project can’t quite be considered finished yet. We need to present our different perspectives, our weird insights, our connections to Vauxhall. And not just the residents, but future developers, council members, commuters and businesses.
In an idealistic world, we would just invite all of these people and present to them. But I imagine it might be a little bit more complicated than that. It will be interesting to see how this philanthropy, this giving of perspective will manifest itself in the future.