This Research is funded by the AHRB and EPSRC, under the auspicies of their 'Designing for the 21st Century' programme. It began in January 2005, and is focussed on design and 'non-places' (as described by Marc Auge). Non-places are the ubiquitous everyday spaces of late-capitalist cities: airports, malls, supermarkets, motorways, hotels, banks, call centres, certain bureaucratic spaces. In contrast to traditional places, where orientation and belonging are predicated upon the knowledge that accrues through sedentary and localized inhabitation, non-places are designed to be experienced by transitory and mobile subjects: shoppers, commuters, corporate nomads, tourists, itinerants, migrants, virtual workers. Traditional places and generic non-places are not mutually exclusive and are often juxtaposed, inter-penetrated, or hybridized. This research is focussed on understanding non-places so that they (and their technologies) might be designed to enrich everyday urban life.
For further details of the project please refer to http://ace.caad.ed.ac.uk/NonPlace/