The next speaker was a guy called Will Sandy, from Three Green dots. Will sandy was a student once at Kingston university and its always interesting to see what former students do now. Will began talking about how this world is changing in a direction for the worst, at this point i thought he would go on about sustainability but he surprised me when he began talking about more social changes. It was apparent after he was talking for a while that he shared a common interest that I have, human behaviour and how people can be influenced consciously and subconsciously. He explained these ideas using examples.
• He began by explaining how technology in, more specifically wireless technology has created a world where human interaction is less and less. Using an oyster card, self service checkouts, online banking has cut down interaction between people vastly. But i see this as a huge decrease of interaction only on a physical level, virtually interaction has become off the scale due to websites such as facebook and twitter. What he said however is very true, you could easily go a day even days without seeing another soul or have very little interaction due to this.
• The word “public” is becoming a diminishing idea as the idea of “Big brother” is watching through CCTV cameras everywhere. Being told to move or told that “you cant take pictures here” in what seems to be a public realm when really they are just private security guards patrolling public spaces. There is always little in terms of defence you can use when wanting to carry out your action in taking pictures. This reduces the feel of trust as people feel like others don’t trust them to go about their business; this becomes a never ending circle of trust. Public open spaces is something that Landscape Architects should strive for, bringing enjoyment and freedom to people to enjoy what has taken months, years to create.
• Will showed us a video clip of what I though was quite amusing, the idea that Tesco will dominate the world making it a sort of “Tesco world”. However this comical expression has a very true and underlining realist that is large companies do monopolise this world reducing the chances for small businesses to survive. Personally I did not feel how this interacted with Landscape Architecture I think it was something that Will personally felt strongly about and that is what I would like to take from this section, which you should be passionate and strong on what you believe.
Will now explained a series of projects he executed within London, again looking at human behavioural pattern which I found fascinating and refreshing. The first was one he names “How many spots”, this was a project to see if people would use walking over public transport. They hoped they could influence people’s decisions by changing the bottom of the bus timetable with quirky quotes such as saying how you’re fat and you should walk its healthier. They lasted for about 2 months before TFL removed them all, and where seen in central London along Oxford Street and neighbouring streets. The way they executed this is brilliant and funny. It’s a shame they couldn’t make any money out of it.
The second project was the parking tickets one which was again a genius idea that made me laugh and smile at the very thought of it. The idea was to give people parking tickets but instead of a very negative fine that you usually see, you receive a notice of thanks for being a good driver and that you have parked very well. People will always see a parking ticket as a greatly annoying thing, so to create happiness from that is great. The idea goes really into how people will majority of the time do right and very rarely are people thanked or congratulated for these good deeds, however when they are wrong it’s always a form of punishment or scolding from others they receive. So to turn things around and put a smile on people’s faces is definitely the way forward. Will has started on talks of doing this is America which will be fascinating to hear about.
The link below is his blog:
http://threegreendots.wordpress.com/
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