Places
AboutJournal Archive
Partner Schools
Foundation
Submissions
Call for Articles
Contact
Departments
AudioEssays
Events
Fiction
Gallery
Interviews
Miscellaneous
Opinions
Partner Schools
Projects
Report
Reviews
Scholarship
Slideshows
Video
Topics
ArchitectureArt
Books
Branding
Business
Cities / Places
Community
Culture
Design History
Design Practice
Development
Disaster Relief
Ecology
Economy
Education
Energy
Environment
Film / Video
Food/Agriculture
Geography
Global / Local
Graphic Design
Health / Safety
History
Ideas
Infrastructure
Internet / Blogs
Journalism
Landscape
Magazines
Media
Museums
Nature
Peace
Photography
Planning
Poetry
Politics / Policy
Popular Culture
Preservation
Product Design
Public / Private
Public Art
Religion
Reputations
Shelter
Sports
Sustainability
Technology
Theory/Criticism
Transportation
Urbanism
Water
Gallery: Elizabeth Felicella
Portfolio: Uneasy Spaces
Uneasy Spaces is about the landscape of security — about how public places are divided and marked to be shared or protected. Although the project is in part a catalog of public space and recognizable security measures, such as lighting and fencing, ultimately it is more concerned with an emotional register of territoriality, security and even fear as it is manifested in our urban environment.
The survey comprises 140 photographs made in New York City in 1997 and 1998 with a large-format camera. Two problems I faced in organizing the project were how to survey a city as large and varied as New York and how to approach a topic, urban security, that is as much about collective and individual psychology as it is about the built environment. I needed a structure for producing images that was also a mode of inquiry — an experiment that would further push my observations on the subject as well as my own sense of security.
I decided to approach the survey as a mapping project. Assuming that the will for security is a fundamental condition of urban existence, then every location can be viewed as a source of equally valuable information. I choose fifty locations according to a randomly drawn grid that was applied to bus maps from each of the city’s five boroughs. I traveled to ten sites in each borough at two different times of year.
Rather than using photography to illustrate what I already knew about security, I was confronted with places that were not always recognizable as having been designed for security, or even as photographic subjects. At times this was itself an uneasy space that required me to expand my visual vocabulary, as well as to trust the process. In the end, just as I found many of New York’s uneasy spaces to be its most compelling and also most dynamic, I was happily challenged by the uneasy relationship it forced within my work.
The survey comprises 140 photographs made in New York City in 1997 and 1998 with a large-format camera. Two problems I faced in organizing the project were how to survey a city as large and varied as New York and how to approach a topic, urban security, that is as much about collective and individual psychology as it is about the built environment. I needed a structure for producing images that was also a mode of inquiry — an experiment that would further push my observations on the subject as well as my own sense of security.
I decided to approach the survey as a mapping project. Assuming that the will for security is a fundamental condition of urban existence, then every location can be viewed as a source of equally valuable information. I choose fifty locations according to a randomly drawn grid that was applied to bus maps from each of the city’s five boroughs. I traveled to ten sites in each borough at two different times of year.
Rather than using photography to illustrate what I already knew about security, I was confronted with places that were not always recognizable as having been designed for security, or even as photographic subjects. At times this was itself an uneasy space that required me to expand my visual vocabulary, as well as to trust the process. In the end, just as I found many of New York’s uneasy spaces to be its most compelling and also most dynamic, I was happily challenged by the uneasy relationship it forced within my work.
Uneasy Spaces: Security and the Public Realm was made possible with a fellowship from the Design Trust for Public Space. The project is part of a larger initiative by the Design Trust to examine the problem of securing the city’s parks and open spaces for the public without compromising their integrity as places belonging to the public.
Read Complete Comments Policy >>
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Felicella is an architectural photographer in New York City.More Bio >>
ADS VIA THE DECK
DESIGN OBSERVER JOBS
RELATED POSTS
China Portfolio: From the Linked Hybrid to the Bug Dome
On Places, Architizer curates a portfolio of recent architecture in the People's Republic of China, from Beijing to Shanghai, Shenzhen to Chongqing.
Spatial Intelligence: New Futures for Architecture
Can buildings makes us happy? On Places, William L. Fox explores this possibility in his review of Spatial Intelligence: New Futures for Architecture, by Leon van Schaik.
Detroit: Syncopating an Urban Landscape
On Places, Dan Pitera, of the Detroit Collaborative Design Center, curates a portfolio of projects by artists, architects and activists who are reshaping the city's abandoned landscapes.
New Aging
On Places, a gallery of projects from Architizer's New Aging competition.
Modern Architecture for the "American Century"
On Places, an excerpt from Alice Friedman's American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture, on Eero Saarinen's iconic projects for General Motors and TWA, and the rise and fall — and rise — of the architect's reputation.
