The Manifesto Club (of which I am a member) recently launched the Attention Please project to create a photo-album, capturing "unnecessary, absurd or patronising safety warnings in public spaces". The organisers write:
By turning our cameras on needless safety tape and signage, we hope to expose those who put them there - and encourage a more rational approach
I have posted posted a few pictures of my own to the public pages on the photo-sharing service Flickr. [Danger: Don't climb the beanstalk... (Barbican Arts Centre foyer)]
My contribution to the responses and reflections follows:
These images demonstrate that in the UK -- despite the enthusiastic commissioning of and support for landmark architecture by national and local government, the endless discussions about urbanism, and the slew of television programmes about design -- the authorities care little about the aesthetics of our urban environment. And to the extent they do, they are blind to the micro elements that make up this macro experience.
The acme of this 'safety tape and signage' philistinism is the Gatso camera [Wikipedia] that is so ugly only its designer could love it. Yet these insults to our aesthetic sensibilities are scattered across the land. [Image by MonkeyBoy69]
If there really are risks we need to be warned about we should be clear that such warnings can be communicated in elegant and effective ways. Designers and architects know how to embed subtle clues in artifacts and spaces: think of door plates and handles indicating whether one should push or pull; the visual semantics of changes in paving pattern or texture; and signs that use shape and colour to add information. Of course, communication designers facilitate the elegant and effective use of shape and icons, and colour and typography. (Just think of Jock Kinnear's and Margaret Calvert's work on UK road signage system.) And architects and urban designers can create street 'furniture' that is a delight -- or at least invisible.
Design critic Stephen Bayley notes that the New York city planners commissioned architects Rogers Marvel to design security measures "employing elegance and wit rather than brute force and ignorance" to protect the city's Stock Exchange. (See From car bombs to carbuncles, Stephen Bayley, Observer, November 18, 2007) In the UK we get the unsightly 'temporary vehicle control barriers' with which our (cowardly) leaders chose to barricade the Palace of Westminster. For them, aesthetics and beauty in design is all instrumental: reaping the financial benefits of the 'creative industries', creating an image (Cool Britannia), or facilitating social inclusion. Not about excellence and pride, and care and attention to detail in creating pleasurable spaces for its citizens.
[Image by OwenBlacker]
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