MA thesis for MASTERREFLEX Institute Art, Gender, Nature at Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW
2022 - ongoing
- August 2022
It has been 5 years since I moved to Basel. I still get lost sometimes and actually have to check Google Maps to see where I have to walk or drive through to reach my destination. Although I pass by some streets every day, I could not tell them by their name.
I started taking long walks shortly after I arrived in this city in order to adjust my lack of orientation. I lived in Gundeli at the time and went for walks without a specific destination, just walking and seeing what the neighborhood would offer me. What was then a way to get familiar with a very foreign place became a habit over the years. I still get off at Johanniterbrücke when I'm driving home from university and just walk across the bridge, along Feldbergstrasse, stop at the intersection of Klybeck- and Feldbergstrasse, cross the crosswalk toward Dreirosenbrücke, pass by Vito's, where people are blocking the sidewalks waiting for their slice of pizza, my hairdresser, who every day leaves a sign in front of the entrance saying she still has vacancies, the owners of La fourchette, who sit on the red bench in front of their restaurant after their shift, the chef of Ephesus, who always nods when he sees me to say hello, and finally I pass St. Joseph's Church, whose bells ring every morning at 7 a.m. for about 12 minutes. My average walking speed is 4.3 km/h, and the average number of steps so far this year is 8090 per day.
As soon as I had my first bike here, the city became much smaller (average speed: 25km/h). I started to ride the routes that I would normally walk through, getting to know a new place and a new face of the city every time. On all my numerous walks and rides, I experienced these places in the most diverse ways possible. Early one morning, as I was walking along Klybeckstrasse on my way to work, a woman passed by rapidly and gave me a short glance. She was obviously sobbing and crying and running frantically. I was shocked to see a person in such a state in the middle of the street, so early in the day, and before I could even react, she was gone. In the hours that followed at work, I thought about this incident. What had happened to her? Where had she gone to? Did she have a home to return to?
As I thought about what makes a city a place with a high quality of life, I began to look more closely. There are public places for almost every human need: Eating, drinking, talking, peeing, and relaxing. What I realized, however, is that experiencing a public space probably always requires one to be in good mental and physical condition when you enter those spaces. The city as a whole is always operating, it never sleeps, and its infrastructure is maintained in order to sustain itself. What a functioning city wants is functioning people who inhabit and use it. One would go to a park to enjoy, but where can we go when we are deeply sad and desperate? Feelings associated with sadness and despair seem to have no place in public urban planning and infrastructure. But what if I do not want to keep those feelings intimate, close them up in my own four walls or get caught up by them while on the way? Can a city create or offer safe spaces that come close to what we call home? In between all the transit- and non-places, consumer zones, kids’ playgrounds, streets for cars and bikes, tramlines, bridges, highways, financial districts, and encapsuled residential areas, does the architecture of a city- even if unconsciously- leave a gap for non-economical places that only serve the human need for emotional detox? Is the city, that as much belongs to everyone as it does not belong to anyone, with its diaphanous, omnipotent character, willing to leave space for such a use of its facilities?
In my opinion, the fact that public restrooms are very popular places to cry and calm down is indicative of the lack of alternatives in public places, and here I also mean alternatives to parks and other green areas. With this in mind, I took my bike, rode my usual and added new routes, and began to look consciously. What I was searching for were public places that - according to my own personal perception - had a certain quality to them. The goal was to reapproach the idea of the city guide and suggest convenient public places to visit when one finds themselves in a difficult emotional state. The list of these places is not yet finished- if it can ever be. Although the suggestions are personal, I still believe that some places offer a quality meant for a collective experience not conducing any economical or functional purpose.
This is a continuing project that will be published in due course. The idea is to rethink the city guide and place it in a new context, in which topics such as the needs of the people who live in a city and urban planning come together.
