Keiko Uenishi

Partitions

Dividers, Connectors, Gray-zones, Neighbours in Aural Space

This research explores the potentiality of grasping space through aural senses to shift from visual and physical perceptions that tend to dominate our senses. The author examines relationships between neighbours, structures of residential housings and commercial districts, and interventions/actions by local residents through aural perspectives through a multiple case study in three urban cities:
  1. Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A. – focused on Halsey St in Bushwick neighbourhood of Brooklyn: Having Darryl Montgomery-Hell (arti-vist) as a point person for the townhouse district where gentrifications are considered rapidly catching up.
  2. Vienna, Austria – focused on a new social housing project opened in 2014: VinciRast Mittendrin where ex-homelesses and students were invited to live together.
  3. Maebashi, Gunma, Japan – focused on the residents, shop owners, artists and loose community(ies) arose in the area where the centrally-located shopping arcade remains with many stores closed-down due to economical shifts to mega stores, malls and hypermarkets in suburbs.
The intent of the author is to document the experiences and interventions of local residents of each site, providing perspectives of partitions and relationships of neighbours, and examining the potential of “gray-zoning” the partitions themselves. With doing so, the partitions will function as connectors rather than mere dividers.
. The author’s central questions are as follows;
  1. How do you describe the structural changes where you live in?
  2. How are your experiences and interventions in living/working in the area?
  3. How do you describe your relationship with your neighbours (that may include your family)?
Through this research, Uenishi further plans to collaborate with Not-for-Profit organization(s) to support Hikkomori1 in Maebashi-city area (Gunma Wakamono Shien Net “Field of Alice”2) if her assumption would cast light onto the issue.

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori

2 http://neet.support

Keywords:

partition, division, connection, urban planning, aural space, neighbour relations, spatial perceptions, shopping arcade, Maebashi, Hikkomori, noise politics, gentrification, Brooklyn, social housing, co-habitation, sharing, Wien

Maebashi_shopping_arcade