The name is the thing, and the true name is the true thing
a place called … is a critical response to two newspaper articles about a shopping centre in a deprived neighborhood, which stopped an incipient development process of the place.
The Site-Writing aims to emphasise the power of stories and illustrate how stories about a place contributes to the place identity. A collection of many different stories about the shopping centre and a direct engagement with the site through a workshop about naming the place, happening on the square in front of the shopping centre, all resulted in a development of A New Map.
Maps are a well-known way of telling stories about places. Most maps that we know of are telling the story of static elements and how they are located and sized in relation to each other. They are simplifications converting all elements into different signs. The sign of a road, with all its contained complexity, are two lines ||.
A New Map could tell the story about experiences and stories from a place. Like the map we know so well, this map would also need simplification through signs – signs that capture a story. Signs are on one hand simplifications, but they are also a translation of meaning and content; like || capture very well the meaning and content of a road.
On A New Map are all the stories about the place turned into simplistic representations of the stories told by naming them. The name, of the experience that turns into a story, will be the sign of every story on A New Map, naming the narrative is important, because experiences and stories leave tracks and are co-creators of a place, similar to a lamp post, a road or a building.
a place called … was conducted while following the course Theorising Practice/ Practicing Theory at Bartlett UCL in spring 2017, as an affiliate PhD Student.
I am trained as an architect in 2008. Present I am employed at Design School Kolding as a Ph.D. student and Head of MA program Design for People; https://www.designskolenkolding.dk/en/design-people\
Publications:
Words upon a place: Highlights from a Design Experiment on Sharing/Using/Experiencing Urban Places, Corlin, A. & Akoglu, C., 2018.
The role and future of social housing – Three PhD projects approaching the challenges: A place called…, A Corlin, B Melgaard, JS Bach – … Social housing festival, 2017
An analysis of the ´The Urban Songline Book´ as a mediating tool for mapping the experienced space in the social housing neighborhood, Skovparken /Skovvejen, A Corlin – 2016
a place called … evolved into my next urban design intervention, Words upon a Place, where I used interactive benches to tell stories from different places in a city. The benches gace voice to citizens who normally have less of a voice in society and let them tell their story about their place. The benches are located in Skovparken, a deprived housing neighbourhood in Kolding, Denmark and in the Library park in the centre of the city of Kolding, Denmark The intervention is also part of my Ph.D.
https://www.desisnetwork.org/2019/04/26/words-upon-a-place-a-dk-desis-lab/
Sarah Butler, Central Line Stories, 2010, UK: https://art.tfl.gov.uk/media/central-line-stories/
Graham Coreil- Allen, Names vs The Nothing, 2012, US: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-60-names-vs-the-nothing/
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Rules of Names, first published in the April 1964 issue of Fantastic, US.
