Welcome back to Season 4 of Hassell Talks! This season we're taking a look at Designing for a New State of Togetherness.
We believe good things - great things - can happen when people come together through seemingly spontaneous experiences.
The emotional response we get when we’re surprised or delighted is hugely powerful. It can help us feel more connected to others, and our cities. It can inspire and move us toward great change - and great change is something our cities, communities and planet urgently needs.
But how do we design for spontaneity? Is this not inherently contradictory?
We asked Principal and previous Hassell Talks host Jon Hazelwood to return to the microphone for a conversation with FreeState’s Su Lim around the role of spontaneity in our cities and how we can curate spaces for the unplanned.
Su and Jon discuss how to design for experiences that we don’t always know we need but that can connect and reconnect us in novel and essential ways that will create memories and reset cities.
We discuss the role of landscape and nature in creating surprise and delight in cities and, with Hassell Principal Chong Wang, explore how one of the world’s great cities, Shanghai, has woven spontaneity into its DNA. We also hear from Hannah Fox, the creator of Melbourne’s renowned Rising Festival, about how spontaneous interactions feed creativity.
References:
Journalist, author, theorist, and activist Jane Jacobs Psychologist James Gibson
Parts of this episode were recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders past and present. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the land where we live, work, and learn.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
(gentle upbeat music)
- From International Design firm Hassell,
you are listening to Hassell Talks.
I'm Jon Hazelwood, I'ma landscape architect,
a writer, and a gardenerand I'm joined by Su Lim
from experience design firm FreeState.
- Hi Jon.
- Welcome.
(00:20):
We're here in Naarm, Melbourne
on the lands of the Wurundjeri,
Woiwurrung people of the Kulin nation
and I want to pay my respectsto the elders past and present
and acknowledge Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander people
as traditional custodians of the land
where we live, work, and learn.
This episode we'retalking about spontaneity,
and specificallyspontaneity in our cities,
(00:41):
why it's a powerful forcefor bringing people together
and how we design for it.
So Su, in your work,
I guess you're in the businessof creating experiences.
You design for many things,
for the joy ofcollaboration, for movement.
I imagine you've a really good sense
of spontaneous experiences,the ones you stumble across.
(01:02):
What do you think spontaneity is?
What does it mean in our cities?
- Yeah, it's an interesting question, Jon.
I think cities should be madewith and for its residents.
So in some ways, you know,
it's about handing overthe reins to the community
and not being too planned about things.
(01:22):
And so when I think ofspontaneity in cities,
it's about allowing for thissort of organic or unexpected
or, you know, allowing foropportunities that might arise
for a wide range ofactivities and it's flexible.
You know, there's space for change
in order to be sustainable and relevant.
(01:46):
- And I guess we'll come to the crux
of the inherent conflictin that turning around
planning of cities.
The word planning of a cityor the curation of cities,
I guess inherit in that sentenceis it's not spontaneous.
So how we go through that curation
or that planning of cities
and yet still allow spontaneityto occur on our streets,
(02:11):
that feels to be the kindof crux of the issue.
- Yeah, I mean, at FreeState,
we think about, you know,
the term over enablingor over facilitating.
And I think that's what we need to do
rather than over curating, if you like.
(02:31):
So, you know, perhapsone example of that is
if you think about thedevelopment at King's Cross,
which is a wonderful exampleof a city regeneration.
- King's Cross in London?- Yeah.
- Yeah.- That's right.
King's Cross in London.
When they planned it,
a third of the site wasactually unresolved.
(02:52):
So, you know, whilst it was planned,
it was also planned tohave change built into it.
And that actually allowed
for Central St. Martinsto come into the site,
which wasn't originally planned.
And so this idea that, you know,
you can leave space fornew things to emerge,
(03:13):
I think is really important
when we think about city planning.
- Because from my understanding,
some of those temporary activation pieces
that were enabled at King's Cross,
such as, you know, thefreshwater swimming, et cetera,
and those things they've actually changed
how the development hasbeen planned since then,
(03:34):
and the spontaneity of howthey used those devices.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I think it's this idea that, you know,
you can quickly prototypenew things all of the time.
And I think cities that are over curated
sort of push out the opportunityfor those sorts of things,
which, you know, can reallymake places really rich.
(03:58):
- As part of my work, as you know, Su,
I'm interested in howthe non-human respond
to the city as well,
that spontaneity of an insect
and through bringing inbiodiversity into cities,
but also the effect of thaton how it encourages people
to respond to nature as well as the city.
It's one of the few pieces
(04:18):
of practise as a landscape architect
where there's demonstrative evidence
on what it does to your heart rate
and what it does to howyou move through a city.
You just look at thecherry blossoms in Japan
and the activation that comes through that
is something that I am interested in
that those natural elementsof the city aren't in stasis,
(04:38):
that they're constantly changing,
and they're also spontaneous.
So there's as much joy inseeing a bird land on a tree
as there is bumping into afriend on a street corner.
- Yeah, I totally love that.
You know, I mean, sometimes wewant those kind of efficient,
seamless journeys, you know,
where we wanna get somewhere fast.
But actually I think, you know,
(05:00):
increasingly we need tobalance those kinds of journeys
with the sort of open-endedmeandering, you know?
I mean, that's really essentialfor creativity and thinking.
And, I think, you know,
even during COVID that was something
that people really appreciated, you know,
(05:23):
that connection totheir local communities,
but the connection to nature, you know,
was such a strong thing.
And I think people have sortof reconnected with that again,
you know, even in thissort of post pandemic world
where I think people are realising
that they need more green space,
(05:44):
they need places in whichto gather in nature.
So, I mean, I love the ideathat we need to design,
you know, cities not just for people,
but for ants and birds and-
- That's great.- everybody.
- And one of the key projectswe're working at the moment,
the Melbourne Arts Precinctis a great example of that.
There is, you know, healthydebates within the design teams
(06:08):
and the stakeholders very much
to what you were talking about,
whether is it a space to gofrom A to B as quick as you can,
from one cultural facilityto another cultural facility,
or is it that space formeandering and slowing down
and smelling the flowers,I think is the cliche.
The other piece, I guessmoving away from nature
(06:29):
and back to I guess, in howhumans interact with the city,
going back to the greatJane Jacobs in the US
and her writings from her book in '61,
she wrote, "That the trustof a city street is formed
over time from many, manylittle sidewalk contacts.
It grows out of peoplestopping by a bar for a beer,
(06:50):
getting advice from the grocer,
or giving advice to the news stand man.
Comparing opinions withother customers at the bakery
and nodding hello to the twoboys drinking pop on the stoop.
Most of it is ostensibly utterly trivial,
but the sum of it allis not trivial at all."
That seems to be a kind of sum up
the conversation we're having I've felt.
(07:12):
- Yeah, that's really wonderful.
I've been reading a bit ofJames Gibson lately who talks
about the, you know,concept of affordances.
And I think that mightbe relevant here too,
that the idea that a singlesort of physical intervention
can create lots of differentopportunities, you know,
(07:32):
that are created by a single setting.
So the idea that you cankind of take something
and make it your own and that, you know,
what might have beendesigned for a single use
might actually have enormous diversity
and, you know, kind of freedom for change
with the different sorts of audiences.
(07:54):
- And Su, I understand you were part
of the MPavilion Event in Melbourne,
looking at the role of dataand design, is that correct?
- Yeah, absolutely.
We had Hannah Fox from Rising,
which is a festival in Melbourne
and it's all across the city.
And Hannah shared a great example
of a spontaneousexperience during lockdown
(08:16):
and how the absence of spontaneityreally brought the idea
of it into sharper focus.(water trickling)
- I think the loss of spontaneity
during the pandemic was one ofthe things I missed the most.
Just that, you know, abilityto not know what your day
(08:37):
or night or week wasnecessarily gonna entail.
And one of the bestthings that happened to me
in the last two years actuallywas walking along this river
and I noticed Deborah Cheetham,
who's an incredibleartist and opera singer,
in a boat on the river,
and she was doing a listeningtrip for some research,
(09:00):
for a project that shewas doing for Rising.
And I just flagged herdown and we got in the boat
and went on this littlelistening trip together
and it sparked a whole lot of ideas
that became the foundationfor the next programme.
But that was somethingthat just most people
weren't able to access, I guess, you know,
in the last two years thatjust happening upon a person
(09:23):
that you admire or a pieceof work that you admire
and being inspired by it.
(water trickling)
- What Hannah's talkingabout there is, you know,
we're missing that surprise and delight,
and, you know, when we don't have that,
we don't have anythingto come together around.
(09:44):
And actually there's this great story
which happened at the TanHill Inn in North Yorkshire
where guests were all snowed in together
and they were trapped for,you know, several nights.
And of course it was this terrible affair
and you know, all of thetravel plans were interrupted
and all that sort of stuff.
- I felt better yesterday.
(10:05):
- But because they couldn't go anywhere,
the pubs started putting on, you know,
quizzes and games and karaoke.
♪ Baby, baby ♪
- And so, all of these people,
I think there were about 60 odd,
were basically forced to hangout together for three days.
(group clapping and whistling)
And so of course they made the most of it.
(10:26):
And what happened was theyreally came as strangers,
you know, to this inn,but they left as friends
and now there's talk of,you know, annual reunions.
And so, you know,
you can kind of see howthis notion of serendipity,
you know, somethingthat wasn't anticipated,
starts to turn into a whole new
(10:47):
kind of community getting together.
And I think, you know, through lockdown,
we didn't have thosekinds of opportunities
for those kinds of surprising,you know, occasions.
- I guess the flip to thatthrough the experience
over the past two years is theamount of anecdotal evidence
(11:09):
that has been around the attraction
to the open spaces of our cities as well.
And so, if you take, again, harking back
to the work of Jane Jacobs
that she obviously made the comment
that people like to observe people,
there's a passivenessto spontaneity as well.
(11:30):
There's the observation,
there is the physicalbringing together of people
and those moments thatHannah talked about,
but there's also the passiveside of that that was missing,
the ability to observe peoplegoing about daily business.
You know, that there's something,
you know, just sat in a park.
(11:50):
Then the flip side of that, obviously,
was there was actually froma non-humans perspective,
more spontaneity happening as well
because, you know, there'stales of goats appearing
in city centres in the UKand those sort of things.
That observation of people brings me to,
I thought it's worth touching on,
(12:12):
on a city such as Shanghai, you know,
it's a city as Hassell we work in.
And one of my greatregrets of the pandemic
is not being able to visitour friends over in Shanghai.
And it's a city I'veenjoyed spending time on it,
and I don't think there is anywhere else
I've experiencedspontaneity in public spaces
(12:36):
in the way it happens in Shanghai.
You know, we did someamazing research over there
where our staff went intoparks and open spaces
and spoke to the users of the space
and asked what it was that they enjoyed
and so much it was about observation,
that kind of passive spontaneity.
(12:59):
There was a wonderfulquote from Mr. Xi Zhong Hu,
who was a user of oneof the parks Shanghai.
His quote was, "At home,
my wife complains aboutthis and that about me,
but when we're in the park,there's so many things to see,
she doesn't nag at me anymore."
(laughs) That was hisexperience with spontaneity.
I was wondering if you couldspeak about your observations
(13:23):
of Shanghai and life in there,in that amazing metropolis.
- Yeah, well it's such acity of diverse contrasts,
isn't it?
You know, you've gotthe kind of old and new,
the very traditional as wellas that crazy futuristic,
you know, blend of east and west
(13:44):
and it's, you know, it'skind of open 24 hours,
so you're right, there'salways something to see,
something happening or going on
that is really kind ofcontrasting, you know,
with perhaps what you'vejust been through.
So yeah, I agree with you.
I think it's a wonderfulplace for people watching
(14:05):
and discovering new things.
- I think it's amazing aswe see it's, as a city,
it's just beginning toemerge from lockdowns now.
For Hassell with our studiothere, we've been, you know,
really excited to watchour colleagues being able
to experience the city again.
We actually asked our colleague,Urban Designer Chong Wang,
(14:27):
about the presence of spontaneity
in the daily life of Shanghai.
(traffic hooting)
- What I really loveabout living in Shanghai
is that you don't need to planfor your days or weekends.
You just bump into different people
and activity when youmove through the city.
I've got drawn intoplaying "Diablo" for hours,
(14:49):
from wandering at the waterfront
or just their pop-up eventsalways happening around the city
like clowning parades, squiddancing, kids roller skating.
(child yells)
Being in a big city like Shanghai,
I think what is attracting usto stay was that stimulation.
(15:13):
You could just go onto the street,
you can go into the city andthen things are happening.
(whimsical music)
The excitement and then theencounter to different things
and to some unexpected events and moments,
and people are so important tokeep the level of creativity
(15:33):
and because, as I say, it's so inviting
and it doesn't need mucheffort to be part of,
and then that encourage uscontributing and participating
and to be part of the events itself
and to be part of the placeand to be part of the presence.
Yeah, I think that there's a beauty to it
(15:54):
that's been missed induring the lockdown stage
that we would like to be onto the street
to go into the parks to again participate.
(whimsical music)
- I love Chong's point thereabout being the ability
to go back into the streets and the park.
I mean, I cannot imagine how those parks
(16:16):
and those spaces were during the lockdown.
I know my favourite activity
in the time I spent in Shanghai
is getting up early in the morning
and heading out and justsitting on a park bench
and watching huge crowds ofpeople dancing or exercise.
It's a way of using a park spontaneously
(16:36):
that just doesn't happen here
in our Australian parks, I don't feel,
and the same in the UK.
It's quite unique.
- Yeah, I think there is thatneed to create opportunities
for those things to happen, you know?
It's designing our cities sothat they allow for activities
(16:58):
and activations to occur,
that the place is always programmable
so that people can kind of take it over
and take it on with whateverthey want to do with it.
- Where do you see the handof the designer in something,
in those kind of experienceswe're talking about?
Obviously spontaneity is a powerful thing
(17:19):
and as I mentioned at the beginning,
there's the conflict betweenallowing it to happen
and the curation of it to happen.
I guess as designers,
we don't feel it can be left up to chance.
- Yeah, I think we needto create opportunities
for, you know, what we talkabout as being collision
and that isn't, you know,
(17:39):
necessarily kind of in the violent sense,
but something that allowsfor a talking point,
allows for, you know, specificattraction between people
or perhaps between peopleand nature, you know,
places in which interest canarise, I suppose, you know?
(18:03):
I think when we think aboutlevels of sort of efficiency,
you know we often think
to design out friction in our cities,
but actually we need thatchance of error, you know?
We need the ingredients of adventure.
And I think those thingsare important to consider
(18:25):
as we are designing.
- At risk of banging on about COVID,
and I don't want to keepon dwelling on COVID,
but it has been anextraordinary time and it's,
as we've talked about,
it is intrinsically linked tospontaneity within our cities,
but a key part of this,
and what we're interestedin as an immediate change
(18:46):
is how we bring this idea oftogetherness within our cities.
I mean, you can see already with festivals
such as Rising in Melbourne
or Vivid in Sydney, in Australia,
the mad rush of everybodydesperate to attend, you know,
and experience these.
In Europe, it's the mad rush to holiday,
(19:08):
heading back to the Mediterranean.
And that's great in terms ofthat's related to spontaneity
around activation andcuration and city planning.
So I was interested around howmore permanent institutions,
galleries, or even retail could be,
what value they can bring
(19:30):
in terms of bringingspontaneity into our cities.
- So one is kind of theconcept of Hyperburgers,
developed by a womancalled Francesca Tembussi,
which is actually kind ofan inconvenience store.
So it sort of riles against, you know,
(19:50):
the speed and efficiency of Amazon Go,
which of course is touchless,
so I don't need to talk to anyone.
And Hyperburgers is astore that's designed
to serve communities, notthe business, if you like,
and it's a supermarketentirely run by the consumers.
So there's no middleman,people pay each other directly,
(20:13):
but to participate, theyhave to give something back.
So they either have to, you know,
bring food or donate theirtime or maybe packaging.
And so through this kind of network,
it becomes a community resource
as opposed to a commercial business.
So that's one example.
(20:35):
A second, which is also kindof to do with the supermarket
is the Dutch supermarket chain, Jumbo,
has these dedicated chat lanes
for people who actuallywanna chat to the cashier,
and it's part of this programme
to reduce loneliness in communities.
And so, you know,
(20:55):
if you actually wannago to the supermarket
and you haven't spoken to anyone
and you wanna have a good old chat,
you line up in a chat laneand everybody realises
that there's no speedgoing on there, you know,
it's a slow lane for conversationwhilst you're, you know,
buying your groceries.
And, I think, you know, theseare things that, you know,
(21:19):
really speak to what people need
as opposed to what businesses need.
- At Hassell, we're currentlythinking about togetherness,
togetherness in our cities
and what's the outcome of that?
Because obviously there'sthe designed outcome,
there's the hardwarethat's involved in it,
but what actually happens?
(21:40):
What is the outcome from thatword togetherness in the city?
- When people come together,
we can create great adventures
and then in turn, that manifests in memory
and I think, you know, as we know,
memory is a really powerful thing.
It's the thing that createsthat sense of belonging.
(22:03):
It's the thing that wants you to return
and wants you to experiencethat time and time again,
and I think when that starts to happen,
then we can almost moveoutside ourselves, you know?
We can learn something new.
We can be exposed to differentideas and different people,
and in turn, you know,at the most aspirational,
(22:25):
perhaps it's transformation.
- I think yeah,(gentle upbeat music)
that idea of that the outcomeof togetherness is memories.
I don't think I can beat that, Su,
I think you've summed it up.
Thanks, Su, for the conversation.
I think it's not somethingwe talk enough about
when we're sat down in our day-to-day jobs
(22:46):
of designing how our cities are evolving
and I know it's something,
obviously it's close to FreeState's heart
in the way you work and design,
but the potential forchange through spontaneity
at the moment, it's immeasurable.
People talk about thatchanging of moments,
those instances of enlightenment,
when understanding is deepened,
(23:06):
and our perspectives are changed.
You said it right at the very end there
about it's all about memoriesand that chance moment
to connect people in new ways
to the past and the future,but also the present as well.
I think that that's so important.
(gentle upbeat music continues)
(23:27):
So thank you for the conversation.
Also, thanks to HannahFox and the MPavilion team
for the use of Hannah'sclip about spontaneity
and to my colleagueChong Wang in Shanghai,
and Su Lim from FreeState, of course.
FreeState, have a terrific podcast series,
you should be checking out
called Free Thinking (23:43):
Meeting the people leading the charge
on resetting our citiesall around the world.
And again, of course, thankyou to you, our listeners.
This episode was produced by Prue Vincent,
Verity Magdaleno, and Jo Richardson.
Thank you.
(gentle upbeat music fades)
(gentle upbeat music)
- From International Design firm Hassell,
you are listening to Hassell Talks.
I'm Jon Hazelwood, I'ma landscape architect,
a writer, and a gardenerand I'm joined by Su Lim
from experience design firm FreeState.
- Hi Jon.
- Welcome.
(00:20):
We're here in Naarm, Melbourne
on the lands of the Wurundjeri,
Woiwurrung people of the Kulin nation
and I want to pay my respectsto the elders past and present
and acknowledge Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander people
as traditional custodians of the land
where we live, work, and learn.
This episode we'retalking about spontaneity,
and specificallyspontaneity in our cities,
(00:41):
why it's a powerful forcefor bringing people together
and how we design for it.
So Su, in your work,
I guess you're in the businessof creating experiences.
You design for many things,
for the joy ofcollaboration, for movement.
I imagine you've a really good sense
of spontaneous experiences,the ones you stumble across.
(01:02):
What do you think spontaneity is?
What does it mean in our cities?
- Yeah, it's an interesting question, Jon.
I think cities should be madewith and for its residents.
So in some ways, you know,
it's about handing overthe reins to the community
and not being too planned about things.
(01:22):
And so when I think ofspontaneity in cities,
it's about allowing for thissort of organic or unexpected
or, you know, allowing foropportunities that might arise
for a wide range ofactivities and it's flexible.
You know, there's space for change
in order to be sustainable and relevant.
(01:46):
- And I guess we'll come to the crux
of the inherent conflictin that turning around
planning of cities.
The word planning of a cityor the curation of cities,
I guess inherit in that sentenceis it's not spontaneous.
So how we go through that curation
or that planning of cities
and yet still allow spontaneityto occur on our streets,
(02:11):
that feels to be the kindof crux of the issue.
- Yeah, I mean, at FreeState,
we think about, you know,
the term over enablingor over facilitating.
And I think that's what we need to do
rather than over curating, if you like.
(02:31):
So, you know, perhapsone example of that is
if you think about thedevelopment at King's Cross,
which is a wonderful exampleof a city regeneration.
- King's Cross in London?- Yeah.
- Yeah.- That's right.
King's Cross in London.
When they planned it,
a third of the site wasactually unresolved.
(02:52):
So, you know, whilst it was planned,
it was also planned tohave change built into it.
And that actually allowed
for Central St. Martinsto come into the site,
which wasn't originally planned.
And so this idea that, you know,
you can leave space fornew things to emerge,
(03:13):
I think is really important
when we think about city planning.
- Because from my understanding,
some of those temporary activation pieces
that were enabled at King's Cross,
such as, you know, thefreshwater swimming, et cetera,
and those things they've actually changed
how the development hasbeen planned since then,
(03:34):
and the spontaneity of howthey used those devices.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I think it's this idea that, you know,
you can quickly prototypenew things all of the time.
And I think cities that are over curated
sort of push out the opportunityfor those sorts of things,
which, you know, can reallymake places really rich.
(03:58):
- As part of my work, as you know, Su,
I'm interested in howthe non-human respond
to the city as well,
that spontaneity of an insect
and through bringing inbiodiversity into cities,
but also the effect of thaton how it encourages people
to respond to nature as well as the city.
It's one of the few pieces
(04:18):
of practise as a landscape architect
where there's demonstrative evidence
on what it does to your heart rate
and what it does to howyou move through a city.
You just look at thecherry blossoms in Japan
and the activation that comes through that
is something that I am interested in
that those natural elementsof the city aren't in stasis,
(04:38):
that they're constantly changing,
and they're also spontaneous.
So there's as much joy inseeing a bird land on a tree
as there is bumping into afriend on a street corner.
- Yeah, I totally love that.
You know, I mean, sometimes wewant those kind of efficient,
seamless journeys, you know,
where we wanna get somewhere fast.
But actually I think, you know,
(05:00):
increasingly we need tobalance those kinds of journeys
with the sort of open-endedmeandering, you know?
I mean, that's really essentialfor creativity and thinking.
And, I think, you know,
even during COVID that was something
that people really appreciated, you know,
(05:23):
that connection totheir local communities,
but the connection to nature, you know,
was such a strong thing.
And I think people have sortof reconnected with that again,
you know, even in thissort of post pandemic world
where I think people are realising
that they need more green space,
(05:44):
they need places in whichto gather in nature.
So, I mean, I love the ideathat we need to design,
you know, cities not just for people,
but for ants and birds and-
- That's great.- everybody.
- And one of the key projectswe're working at the moment,
the Melbourne Arts Precinctis a great example of that.
There is, you know, healthydebates within the design teams
(06:08):
and the stakeholders very much
to what you were talking about,
whether is it a space to gofrom A to B as quick as you can,
from one cultural facilityto another cultural facility,
or is it that space formeandering and slowing down
and smelling the flowers,I think is the cliche.
The other piece, I guessmoving away from nature
(06:29):
and back to I guess, in howhumans interact with the city,
going back to the greatJane Jacobs in the US
and her writings from her book in '61,
she wrote, "That the trustof a city street is formed
over time from many, manylittle sidewalk contacts.
It grows out of peoplestopping by a bar for a beer,
(06:50):
getting advice from the grocer,
or giving advice to the news stand man.
Comparing opinions withother customers at the bakery
and nodding hello to the twoboys drinking pop on the stoop.
Most of it is ostensibly utterly trivial,
but the sum of it allis not trivial at all."
That seems to be a kind of sum up
the conversation we're having I've felt.
(07:12):
- Yeah, that's really wonderful.
I've been reading a bit ofJames Gibson lately who talks
about the, you know,concept of affordances.
And I think that mightbe relevant here too,
that the idea that a singlesort of physical intervention
can create lots of differentopportunities, you know,
(07:32):
that are created by a single setting.
So the idea that you cankind of take something
and make it your own and that, you know,
what might have beendesigned for a single use
might actually have enormous diversity
and, you know, kind of freedom for change
with the different sorts of audiences.
(07:54):
- And Su, I understand you were part
of the MPavilion Event in Melbourne,
looking at the role of dataand design, is that correct?
- Yeah, absolutely.
We had Hannah Fox from Rising,
which is a festival in Melbourne
and it's all across the city.
And Hannah shared a great example
of a spontaneousexperience during lockdown
(08:16):
and how the absence of spontaneityreally brought the idea
of it into sharper focus.(water trickling)
- I think the loss of spontaneity
during the pandemic was one ofthe things I missed the most.
Just that, you know, abilityto not know what your day
(08:37):
or night or week wasnecessarily gonna entail.
And one of the bestthings that happened to me
in the last two years actuallywas walking along this river
and I noticed Deborah Cheetham,
who's an incredibleartist and opera singer,
in a boat on the river,
and she was doing a listeningtrip for some research,
(09:00):
for a project that shewas doing for Rising.
And I just flagged herdown and we got in the boat
and went on this littlelistening trip together
and it sparked a whole lot of ideas
that became the foundationfor the next programme.
But that was somethingthat just most people
weren't able to access, I guess, you know,
in the last two years thatjust happening upon a person
(09:23):
that you admire or a pieceof work that you admire
and being inspired by it.
(water trickling)
- What Hannah's talkingabout there is, you know,
we're missing that surprise and delight,
and, you know, when we don't have that,
we don't have anythingto come together around.
(09:44):
And actually there's this great story
which happened at the TanHill Inn in North Yorkshire
where guests were all snowed in together
and they were trapped for,you know, several nights.
And of course it was this terrible affair
and you know, all of thetravel plans were interrupted
and all that sort of stuff.
- I felt better yesterday.
(10:05):
- But because they couldn't go anywhere,
the pubs started putting on, you know,
quizzes and games and karaoke.
♪ Baby, baby ♪
- And so, all of these people,
I think there were about 60 odd,
were basically forced to hangout together for three days.
(group clapping and whistling)
And so of course they made the most of it.
(10:26):
And what happened was theyreally came as strangers,
you know, to this inn,but they left as friends
and now there's talk of,you know, annual reunions.
And so, you know,
you can kind of see howthis notion of serendipity,
you know, somethingthat wasn't anticipated,
starts to turn into a whole new
(10:47):
kind of community getting together.
And I think, you know, through lockdown,
we didn't have thosekinds of opportunities
for those kinds of surprising,you know, occasions.
- I guess the flip to thatthrough the experience
over the past two years is theamount of anecdotal evidence
(11:09):
that has been around the attraction
to the open spaces of our cities as well.
And so, if you take, again, harking back
to the work of Jane Jacobs
that she obviously made the comment
that people like to observe people,
there's a passivenessto spontaneity as well.
(11:30):
There's the observation,
there is the physicalbringing together of people
and those moments thatHannah talked about,
but there's also the passiveside of that that was missing,
the ability to observe peoplegoing about daily business.
You know, that there's something,
you know, just sat in a park.
(11:50):
Then the flip side of that, obviously,
was there was actually froma non-humans perspective,
more spontaneity happening as well
because, you know, there'stales of goats appearing
in city centres in the UKand those sort of things.
That observation of people brings me to,
I thought it's worth touching on,
(12:12):
on a city such as Shanghai, you know,
it's a city as Hassell we work in.
And one of my greatregrets of the pandemic
is not being able to visitour friends over in Shanghai.
And it's a city I'veenjoyed spending time on it,
and I don't think there is anywhere else
I've experiencedspontaneity in public spaces
(12:36):
in the way it happens in Shanghai.
You know, we did someamazing research over there
where our staff went intoparks and open spaces
and spoke to the users of the space
and asked what it was that they enjoyed
and so much it was about observation,
that kind of passive spontaneity.
(12:59):
There was a wonderfulquote from Mr. Xi Zhong Hu,
who was a user of oneof the parks Shanghai.
His quote was, "At home,
my wife complains aboutthis and that about me,
but when we're in the park,there's so many things to see,
she doesn't nag at me anymore."
(laughs) That was hisexperience with spontaneity.
I was wondering if you couldspeak about your observations
(13:23):
of Shanghai and life in there,in that amazing metropolis.
- Yeah, well it's such acity of diverse contrasts,
isn't it?
You know, you've gotthe kind of old and new,
the very traditional as wellas that crazy futuristic,
you know, blend of east and west
(13:44):
and it's, you know, it'skind of open 24 hours,
so you're right, there'salways something to see,
something happening or going on
that is really kind ofcontrasting, you know,
with perhaps what you'vejust been through.
So yeah, I agree with you.
I think it's a wonderfulplace for people watching
(14:05):
and discovering new things.
- I think it's amazing aswe see it's, as a city,
it's just beginning toemerge from lockdowns now.
For Hassell with our studiothere, we've been, you know,
really excited to watchour colleagues being able
to experience the city again.
We actually asked our colleague,Urban Designer Chong Wang,
(14:27):
about the presence of spontaneity
in the daily life of Shanghai.
(traffic hooting)
- What I really loveabout living in Shanghai
is that you don't need to planfor your days or weekends.
You just bump into different people
and activity when youmove through the city.
I've got drawn intoplaying "Diablo" for hours,
(14:49):
from wandering at the waterfront
or just their pop-up eventsalways happening around the city
like clowning parades, squiddancing, kids roller skating.
(child yells)
Being in a big city like Shanghai,
I think what is attracting usto stay was that stimulation.
(15:13):
You could just go onto the street,
you can go into the city andthen things are happening.
(whimsical music)
The excitement and then theencounter to different things
and to some unexpected events and moments,
and people are so important tokeep the level of creativity
(15:33):
and because, as I say, it's so inviting
and it doesn't need mucheffort to be part of,
and then that encourage uscontributing and participating
and to be part of the events itself
and to be part of the placeand to be part of the presence.
Yeah, I think that there's a beauty to it
(15:54):
that's been missed induring the lockdown stage
that we would like to be onto the street
to go into the parks to again participate.
(whimsical music)
- I love Chong's point thereabout being the ability
to go back into the streets and the park.
I mean, I cannot imagine how those parks
(16:16):
and those spaces were during the lockdown.
I know my favourite activity
in the time I spent in Shanghai
is getting up early in the morning
and heading out and justsitting on a park bench
and watching huge crowds ofpeople dancing or exercise.
It's a way of using a park spontaneously
(16:36):
that just doesn't happen here
in our Australian parks, I don't feel,
and the same in the UK.
It's quite unique.
- Yeah, I think there is thatneed to create opportunities
for those things to happen, you know?
It's designing our cities sothat they allow for activities
(16:58):
and activations to occur,
that the place is always programmable
so that people can kind of take it over
and take it on with whateverthey want to do with it.
- Where do you see the handof the designer in something,
in those kind of experienceswe're talking about?
Obviously spontaneity is a powerful thing
(17:19):
and as I mentioned at the beginning,
there's the conflict betweenallowing it to happen
and the curation of it to happen.
I guess as designers,
we don't feel it can be left up to chance.
- Yeah, I think we needto create opportunities
for, you know, what we talkabout as being collision
and that isn't, you know,
(17:39):
necessarily kind of in the violent sense,
but something that allowsfor a talking point,
allows for, you know, specificattraction between people
or perhaps between peopleand nature, you know,
places in which interest canarise, I suppose, you know?
(18:03):
I think when we think aboutlevels of sort of efficiency,
you know we often think
to design out friction in our cities,
but actually we need thatchance of error, you know?
We need the ingredients of adventure.
And I think those thingsare important to consider
(18:25):
as we are designing.
- At risk of banging on about COVID,
and I don't want to keepon dwelling on COVID,
but it has been anextraordinary time and it's,
as we've talked about,
it is intrinsically linked tospontaneity within our cities,
but a key part of this,
and what we're interestedin as an immediate change
(18:46):
is how we bring this idea oftogetherness within our cities.
I mean, you can see already with festivals
such as Rising in Melbourne
or Vivid in Sydney, in Australia,
the mad rush of everybodydesperate to attend, you know,
and experience these.
In Europe, it's the mad rush to holiday,
(19:08):
heading back to the Mediterranean.
And that's great in terms ofthat's related to spontaneity
around activation andcuration and city planning.
So I was interested around howmore permanent institutions,
galleries, or even retail could be,
what value they can bring
(19:30):
in terms of bringingspontaneity into our cities.
- So one is kind of theconcept of Hyperburgers,
developed by a womancalled Francesca Tembussi,
which is actually kind ofan inconvenience store.
So it sort of riles against, you know,
(19:50):
the speed and efficiency of Amazon Go,
which of course is touchless,
so I don't need to talk to anyone.
And Hyperburgers is astore that's designed
to serve communities, notthe business, if you like,
and it's a supermarketentirely run by the consumers.
So there's no middleman,people pay each other directly,
(20:13):
but to participate, theyhave to give something back.
So they either have to, you know,
bring food or donate theirtime or maybe packaging.
And so through this kind of network,
it becomes a community resource
as opposed to a commercial business.
So that's one example.
(20:35):
A second, which is also kindof to do with the supermarket
is the Dutch supermarket chain, Jumbo,
has these dedicated chat lanes
for people who actuallywanna chat to the cashier,
and it's part of this programme
to reduce loneliness in communities.
And so, you know,
(20:55):
if you actually wannago to the supermarket
and you haven't spoken to anyone
and you wanna have a good old chat,
you line up in a chat laneand everybody realises
that there's no speedgoing on there, you know,
it's a slow lane for conversationwhilst you're, you know,
buying your groceries.
And, I think, you know, theseare things that, you know,
(21:19):
really speak to what people need
as opposed to what businesses need.
- At Hassell, we're currentlythinking about togetherness,
togetherness in our cities
and what's the outcome of that?
Because obviously there'sthe designed outcome,
there's the hardwarethat's involved in it,
but what actually happens?
(21:40):
What is the outcome from thatword togetherness in the city?
- When people come together,
we can create great adventures
and then in turn, that manifests in memory
and I think, you know, as we know,
memory is a really powerful thing.
It's the thing that createsthat sense of belonging.
(22:03):
It's the thing that wants you to return
and wants you to experiencethat time and time again,
and I think when that starts to happen,
then we can almost moveoutside ourselves, you know?
We can learn something new.
We can be exposed to differentideas and different people,
and in turn, you know,at the most aspirational,
(22:25):
perhaps it's transformation.
- I think yeah,(gentle upbeat music)
that idea of that the outcomeof togetherness is memories.
I don't think I can beat that, Su,
I think you've summed it up.
Thanks, Su, for the conversation.
I think it's not somethingwe talk enough about
when we're sat down in our day-to-day jobs
(22:46):
of designing how our cities are evolving
and I know it's something,
obviously it's close to FreeState's heart
in the way you work and design,
but the potential forchange through spontaneity
at the moment, it's immeasurable.
People talk about thatchanging of moments,
those instances of enlightenment,
when understanding is deepened,
(23:06):
and our perspectives are changed.
You said it right at the very end there
about it's all about memoriesand that chance moment
to connect people in new ways
to the past and the future,but also the present as well.
I think that that's so important.
(gentle upbeat music continues)
(23:27):
So thank you for the conversation.
Also, thanks to HannahFox and the MPavilion team
for the use of Hannah'sclip about spontaneity
and to my colleagueChong Wang in Shanghai,
and Su Lim from FreeState, of course.
FreeState, have a terrific podcast series,
you should be checking out
called Free Thinking (23:43):
Meeting the people leading the charge
on resetting our citiesall around the world.
And again, of course, thankyou to you, our listeners.
This episode was produced by Prue Vincent,
Verity Magdaleno, and Jo Richardson.
Thank you.
(gentle upbeat music fades)
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