Public Design – Center for Design Fundamentals Research, Kyushu University

Public design is a field of environmental design that deals with the design of public spaces. According to the Kukan-gaku no Jiten (Encyclopedia of Spatial Studies), “Environmental design is the act of giving basic planning and form to natural elements such as the sun, water, wind, greenery, and soil, and to artificial physical elements such as urban architecture, from a human and ecological perspective.” In addition, the Paburikku Dezain no Jiten (Encyclopedia of Public Design) states, “We consider environmental design to be the formation of a better ‘place of interaction‘ between person and person, and between people and people. Public design, or design of public spaces, is one area that forms this environmental design.” This encyclopedia classifies the target spatial areas as public or private, and uses the term public design to describe the environmental design of outdoor spaces in public places.

However, in urban space, which is a public place, there are spaces that are difficult to regard simply as outdoor spaces. This is the case with atriums, arcades (gallerias, passages), colonnades, and other spaces composed of ceilings and the exterior of facilities along the street. Some people compare these areas to the relationship between the figure and the ground of a gestalt, and explain them as ambivalent spaces that can be regarded as either indoor or outdoor spaces depending on where the subject is located. However, the reality is that in everyday life, people distinguish between spaces only when physical boundaries such as walls, fences. If this is the case, then the entire space of an arcade, for example, is difficult to uniformly classify as either indoors or outdoors, since various types of spaces that cannot be shared are mixed inside the arcade. As for public places that are the subject of public design, it can be said that urbanization has made it less and less easy to define their public character.

Whenever people gather to live together, they need a public place where they can interact with each other. In the case of urban spaces, there are a variety of elements that condition the various activities of people, influence the climatic conditions, and constitute the surrounding environment. In the 19th century in France, Napoleon III, through Haussmann, governor of the Seine, carried out a major renovation of Paris. At that time, many mono-elements (structures) such as lights and billboards were installed in the squares, which were representative of public places in the city. In Japan, too, by the end of the Edo period(1603-1867), as much as 15% of the total population lived in cities. In the castle towns, wide streets called “Hirokouji” were formed, where outside lights and water troughs for fire prevention were installed. Today, the development of urban infrastructure has enhanced the basic functions of indoor and outdoor spaces, and people’s needs for living in public spaces have become more diverse.

Elements of public places, such as lights, signs, and protective fences, are necessary to protect people from the various dangers that arise when many people live in the same place and to ensure their safety and security. Benches, trash receptacles, etc. are necessary to maintain sanitary conditions, to extend the time people stay there, and to make people comfortable. Even though the elements installed in public places can be classified into several categories according to their roles, most of them are produced as industrial products in factories and supplied to unspecified places where they are needed. In the fields of architecture and civil engineering, the specific place to be maintained is the foothold from which a one-off design tailored to that place is intended. On the other hand, in the case of industrial design, a product that has already been produced is used as a foothold for considering how to install and utilize that product in the particularity of the place. In this respect, public design in the field of industrial design is distinguished from environmental design in architecture and civil engineering.

When it comes to the design of elements that support life in public places, it is first necessary to recognize that elements alone cannot create an environment. It is necessary to take into account the relationship between the space where the elements are installed and the surrounding environment, the mutual relationship with other elements, the relationship with the actions and behaviors of the people who use the public space, and the relationship with the norms and rules necessary for urban development.

By contrast, in new development projects and general urban environment development, designs are often made by different developers in vertically divided work categories such as civil engineering and construction projects under urban planning, and in some cases, developers such as local governments purchase only mono-elements and install them in existing spaces. In these cases, duplicate maintenance, a sense of unevenness, and lack of design consideration are likely to occur. In today’s increasingly complex and diverse urban development, conventional projects based on business categories and the mere installation of mono-elements in existing spaces cannot meet the diverse demands of users of public places.

Urban dwellers do not grasp the city according to existing business categories such as civil engineering and construction projects, but rather touch, see, and experience the city in their daily activities. In this way, people perceive urban space as a continuous environment. What is important is not the fact that the space has been developed by someone else, but that the elements that make up the urban space are experienced by the consumer in a contextualized form. Public design is not the design of individual elements, but the design of elements installed in a public space, taking into account all the relationships surrounding the elements. It can be said that it is design that creates public places where people can enjoy a rich life.

(SOGABE Haruka)

References

日本建築学会編（2007）『建築・都市計画のための空間学事典［改訂版］』井上書院
パブリックデザイン事典編集委員会編（1991）『パブリックデザイン事典』産業調査会事典出版センター

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