Explore beautiful and ugly buildings. Mathematics helps us create beautiful d...
Reading the Campus/Reading the City
1. ReadingReading
For the University of LeedsFor the University of Leeds
55thth
November 2015November 2015
Tina RichardsonTina Richardson
……the citythe city
ReadingReading
……the campusthe campus
2. Overview
• What is psychogeography and how can we use it
critically
• Urban semiology and the reading of space
• Guided campus walk
• Researching/discussing what we discovered
• Learning resource/quiz answers
Urban cultural studies…where cultural theory/culturalUrban cultural studies…where cultural theory/cultural
heritage meets psychogeography…heritage meets psychogeography…
3. What is psychogeography?
The study of the specific effects of the geographical
environment, consciously organized or not, on the
emotions and behavior of individuals.
[The] active observation of present-day urban
agglomerations.
[A psychogeographer is] one who explores and
reports on psychogeographical phenomena.
Situationist International
4. What is psychogeography today?
…when using the term psychogeography one
should always be thinking of psychogeographies.
The bricolage nature of psychogeography means
that its influence for a specific group or individual will
be vastly different from each other. Even if two
psychogeographers define what they do in, say,
Situationist terms, this will result in a different
practice and outcome for each of them. It might be
better to think of the historic influences of urban
walking practices as being a kind of toolbox for
contemporary psychogeographers.
Tina Richardson
Introduction to Walking Inside Out
5. Reading Space in Cultural Theory
• Sigmund Freud
• Roland Barthes
• Karl Marx (+ neo-Marxists)
• Michel Foucault…
Stones can make people docile and knowable.Stones can make people docile and knowable.
Michel Foucault
6. Psychogeography works by…
Showing that the act of physically exploring spaces reveals information not available elsewhere
Highlighting contradictions between the discourse on and the manifestation of urban space
Allowing minority voices to be revealed from the postmodern terrain...
...enabling the potential for an alternative history to be written
9. William Airey and Sons
• Were building contractors in Leeds, the North
and the UK
• Builders of the Brotherton Library
• Sir Edwin Airey (1878-1955), William Airey’s son,
helped build one of Rugby’s most famous venues
- at Headingley
• Designed a significant prefabricated house – the
Airey House!
