IN-PERSON London. Section B

Abstract

This paper discusses an alternative aesthetics and approach to the design of cities and urban places through the perspective of time and rhythm. Embracing the dimension of timespace, design is looked at as performative, thus, also sensorial and affective, and defined by the interwoven social, architectural and nature’s aesthetic narratives of urban places. In the context of a latent temporal crisis of the contemporary city, the paper departs from concerns on the acceleration of cities, its impact on the urban quality of life and the liveability of urban spaces. This, alongside, the critique of mainstream socially unsustainable growth-led design and development practices, blighted by an obsolete visual and space-focused aesthetics which fails to put people, as experiential, performative and emotional beings, or their collective patterns of mobility and wellbeing at core. Scoping temporal urban design research and practice, the paper frames action by laying out fundamental principles for temporal design practice, ie. how to approach and design for senses of time, flow, rhythm and temporal atmosphere in urban places. Overall, and from a doughnut economic perspective, and post-growth perspective, this paper discusses cities and places as temporal renewable and curatable resources with inherent sensorial and performative attributes, and argues for the importance of focusing on place-time and place-rhythms, should one want to sustainably support both social productivity, and social, sensorial and affective wellbeing by design.