Harry Solomons

The London Breadcrumb Project and Storytelling as an Act of Resistance in the Digital City

Abstract: As digital maps become ever more ubiquitous in modern cities, the extent of our reliance upon them is fundamentally altering how city residents connect to the urban landscape around them. Among these changes are differences in the way people construct cognitive and mental maps of the space around them, and the seemingly unquestionable validity and permanent contemporaneity of the maps we reference. This paper discusses the creation of the London Breadcrumb Project, an urban design initiative that aims to reinterpret and disrupt these radically shifting infrastructures through street-level navigation, archival sound art and community dialogue. This paper also details various projects that served as inspiration, elaborating on how their design concepts informed our work.

A Study of Community-driven Interventions in Redesigning Urban Furniture

Abstract: When considering the face of a city, many theorists are quick to establish the inherent inequalities in urban planning and design, and the way in which these inequalities manifest themselves in the space. Built discrimination based on gender, class, and mobility issues, and the intersections thereof, have been of particular critical importance. As one physical manifestation of urban planning, urban furniture reflects these same inequalities, in both its material design and its provision – or lack thereof. However, as this essay will demonstrate, urban furniture represents an arena in which principles of community-driven urban shaping are made explicit. By examining the various forms of discrimination present in urban furniture design, particularly through a feminist lens, this essay provides examples of methods that disrupt the reciprocal nature of discriminatory urban planning.

How Tools in Game Design Can Inform Discursive Environments in Design Fiction

Abstract: The emerging discipline of design fiction draws significant inspiration from the blurred boundaries between science fact and science fiction. However, unlike narrative fiction, design fiction aims to use created objects as entry points into a constructed world, rather than to advance specific narratives and stories. This focus on world building creates an avenue into discourse in which the usability of created tools comes at diminished priority compared to their discursive power. Considering this established hierarchy of goals, this essay aims to re-examine the boundaries of agency created by the tool-user relationships in interactive media, particularly in how they establish discursive environments surrounding issues of power.