Social Context is an important context for carrying out my research. The process and methodologies that I will be using would involve various groups of people, in terms of their background, cultural, traditional, geographical, political, economical etc. For this reason, it is important for me to engage with those groups that according to my risk analyses appear to be of a lower risk and more prone to be successful. I will take few examples in order to illustrate my point. 1) When trying to understand human behaviour, their requirements, their ideas about what community good, and or public good is, their actions, etc you start getting different representations of what they mean, based on geographical location, historical background, culture, tradition, demographics etc. same place gains several meanings depending on the above parameters. It is ideal therefore to engage with larger areas and variety of regions and parts of the world to try and understand what the essential human requirements are, the ones that are not related to all the upper levels of consciousness. Research proposal tries to understand the underlying principles of human subconscious behaviour. So the research will be predominantly focused on the subconscious rather than the conscious behaviour. To understand the subconscious behaviour, I will propose to carry out series of surveys and try and understand the conscious behaviour, and or conscious answers as to what spaces and places people describe as Public good or beneficial to the public. Places that are welcoming for everyone, places that do not segregate. The importance of the subconscious feeling is extremely important, because we as designers may think that we have designed a 'Public Good' space/place, but people of various backgrounds may not feel that those places are welcoming for them. It is therefore important to identify what are the causes for such feelings.
You may have noticed moving through various areas, or streets or places and squares within cities or towns, that there is that inherent feel good or not so good factor. Can we identify those characteristics that create these feelings, can we evaluate them, can we quantify them? what are they? is there a set of repeated patterns that are predominant throughout, in all parts of the world, are there any universal aspects that can provide us with the insight of humans and their feeling and thoughts as they move through places and spaces.
I will be looking at paths of least resistance and what that means in a social behaviour context. I will be looking at feedback loops as tools for change, behavioural change,. Feedback loop as the mirroring aspect, create awareness of our beliefs and behaviours, of what we say we do and what we actually do.
Another aspect of the Social context is the personal one, the relationship of oneself to the immediate context, i.e. to friends and family, their health and wellbeing, their needs and wants. Am I in that time fray in that space frame where my research is regarded as positive, beneficial and welcoming, or is it looked as a negative and impinging on the immediate relationships and understandings. It was pointed out to me that this context perhaps should be called the family context rather than the social context.
Going back to the original social context. I realise that carrying out extensive research on Human social behaviour and human behaviour in general would require extensive amount of time. This will only happen if it correlates with a particular project which my office may acquire during the time of my research. In that instance I will strategically aim to combine the two in order to create a synergetic approach where each would benefit the other. Failing this the process and the methodology would change to fit with the created realities, whereby I would focus on critical literature review and base my research on this aspect whereby extracting important data which may have the possibility of being translated into a programmatic code, whereby would work with my research assistant to create Computational tools and generate information in a digital/virtual model which would than be analysed in relation to the real physical environment. A description of this sort of methodology or process is the Intervisibility tools, which is able to identify in digital model , areas of high visibility with high usage potential, and areas of low visibility with low usage potential. The findings would then be checked against the real configuration and usage of the physical space.
Professional Context.
My research is closely intertwined with my professional life. My everyday job is running a company which employs around 70 people, and delivers services and products for 15 – 20 clients at the same time. I have been working on management systems and structures to try and extract myself from various second level tasks which are not very strategic for the company and try and focus myself on the strategic aspects of the running of the company. I have managed to set these structures and systems in place up to a point, but they still require a constant monitoring and presence from my behalf. I have considered stepping up the managements structures and creating a board of directors who are able to make decisions as a board without ultimately requiring my own presence.
Various strategic involvement in acquiring new jobs and shifting the company on new directions are now an ongoing event. I have been setting up various meetings and travelling to various parts of the world, looking at the oppurtunities for large scale urban planning developments and looking into how best to create teams who are able to produce a substantial proposals to the governmental bodies and or investors in order to engage in such projects.
There is a major discussion around the worlds about creating or generating affordable housing, creating generating sustainable communities, but very little effort to actually get the processes moving. In UK, CABE is one of the organisations which is a leader in carrying out research and producing various document guidance for designers on this areas. I will be focusing on researching, understanding and reviewing the research, analyses and methodologies that have been carried out by this body, following that
So to go back to the time element, my professional context is closely intertwined and it effects me on daily basis. I would evaluate the processes and potentially revise the methodolgy based on the success or trajectory that the company takes. I am therefore prone to amendments and changes, this is what I would call a dynamic take on my research processes and methodologies. There are, however, parameters which can be regarded as static, such as my focus on ‘Public’ good and what that means, how it can be defined, how it’s meaning fluctuates, how it may be coded and what tools are produced based on findings, what are they able to reveal and how can they be utilised in generating, and/or evaluating current or new Urban conditions?
