2. PAYING ATTENTION
The life in many cities tend to be so fast and
stressful that we rarely stop to look around
us and observe and feel all the things are
happening. It seems like people use to walk
seeing, but not watching, avoiding the
existence over their head, just looking in
front of them or to the floor… In order to
give a response to this assignment I tried to
break with this bad habit and spent some
minutes predisposed to pay the attention to
my environment with the aim of finding
hidden opportunities.
3. Open House: the hidden stories behind the walls
Last weekend, the Open House took place
in my city. This is an event that showcases
outstanding architecture for the citizens to
experience, completely for free. Open
House initiatives invite to explore and
understand the value of a well-designed
built environment. This is a chance for
discovering the past and present history
behind the walls of emblematic buildings
and particular flats of the city, and
therefore, the history of the city too.
5. Open House: the hidden stories behind the walls
So, if the Open House is every year so successful (as the long queues show it) why not to
keep something about it for every day of the year, why no to feed our curiosity about
how our environment became what it is today? I’m sure that if you are a specialist in
general history or art history you are able to know a lot of things just looking at one
building, but what about the people who can’t? As advertisements have become
usual elements in our urban landscapes, could be possible to add new informational
inputs to them? Could be possible to make our daily walk to the office much more
interesting by showing in some way past and present history behind the walls of
buildings?
6. Food markets: exclusively older women targeted?
Imagine you are a young guy who lives
independently of your parents and share a
flat with two friends. You are used to buy
groceries at supermarkets, where
everything is “rationally” organized (you
know all the fruit is in the section of fruit, for
example) and you find all the food
packed, you think in terms of a pack of four
apples for the week, or a pack of sliced
chicken for tomorrow’s dinner.
7. Food markets: exclusively older women targeted?
But one day you realize you can improve your food
habits by buying in a market, where you know that
the product is fresher than in the supermarket and
therefore, you know you will find a higher food
quality. But what happens the day you decide to
visit the market? You arrive to a place where you
don’t know very well how to start to move inside of
it, maybe through the central path? Or the one at
the right? Or the path in the left? And how to
identify sections? There are no sections! Fruit street
markets are everywhere, meat street markets are
everywhere! Fish street markets are everywhere! So
how do you decide which street market is better for
you? You have to study everyone and crossing all
the market once and once again? (Hey, I have a lot of
things to do! I can’t be wasting my morning time here!) And
when you decide to buy some apples they ask you
how many kilos you want… Kilos? You are not used
to buy thinking on kilos, you just buy 4 apples a week
and you don’t know how much they weigh… It
seems as if all the people is buying there
(women, older than you, by the way) have been
always living there and know perfectly where and
how to buy. You feel like a stranger lost into a
chaotic atmosphere.
8. Food markets: exclusively older women targeted?
So, what does this situation mean?
You have to go there week after week until you learn to
move inside the market?
Or you think it has been too much time wasted to make the
weekly shopping? Does it represent the end of the markets?
If young people don’t go there, how will markets survive in
the future?
Could be possible to make easier, and more intuitive the
movement inside the market without becoming it into a
supermarket?
How to attract younger people to markets?
