City As Material
City As Material is an ongoing series of collaborative urban exploration and book-making events. Our initial series of 5 events in Autumn 2010 took groups of people on routes through London guided by some evocative topics : Streetscape, River, Skyline, Underside, Sonic Geographies. Each event ended with the planning of a collaborative Diffusion eBook made with bookleteer, which was then completed remotely and published on diffusion.org.uk. Download, print & make up the City As Material Overview book.
It drew inspiration from a course taught by Giles Lane in Autumn 2009 to a group of young American students on an International Study Program in London. As part of the course, Giles took the students on long ambles through the city, investigating its layers as inspiration for their own creative interventions.
In 2011-12 we are taking the City As Material format to other towns and cities in the UK and abroad as an extended form of research and engagement for our Public Goods programme. Inspired by Daniel Defoe, Mass Observation, Nicholas Pevsner and others, we’ll be investigating County Towns in the UK as well as other cities abroad as part of our efforts to explore the intangible assets and layers that form the social glue binding people, places and communities together.
Read about our first two trips to Bristol & Norwich.
Begun 2010 | Ongoing
