Situated Interface #1
The brief we were set this week was to undertake a design research project recording, analysing and visualising situations where people are ordered, filtered, sorted or controlled by designed systems and infrastructures of space. My group (Vishal, Tyler and I) decided to use Waterloo station as our location for our project as it’s known to be the busiest station in the U.K therefore there must be a large designed system and framework in place.
John Schlesinger captures the use of Waterloo railway station in 1961 over an entire day by a child, couple, professionals, criminals and deceased person and how they use the space. When watching the film, you can’t help but compare how things are done electronically to when at that time things were manually conducted manually. For example, if one wanted to buy a train ticket they had to approach a counter with a barricade (which acted as a crime deterrent with just enough space for someone to get their hand through) but nowadays we have ticket machines, therefore, there aren’t as many counters to purchase tickets. Another example, is when viewing the timetable they had split-flip timetables, which would flick numbers on a massive board so it was large enough to display all timings but is now replaced by LED boards. One other comparison, is how we get pass ticket barricades nowadays we insert our tickets or tap our oyster cards onto the gates whereas at
that time there would be a person standing by the gate checking every person’s ticket. Not only that, if a person hadn’t reached the gate in time even a couple minutes before the train departed the person by the gate would shut the gate and the person would be refused entry. The rules of the space were made by those with authority in the stations, they would use benches to create a barrier for people from entering spaces. As well as, just like baggage collection in an airport there was a designated area for collecting luggage but was barricaded by benches until all luggage was out then was moved out of the way for people to collect their bags. If a person in the train station didn’t follow the designed system such as sitting on the walkway they would be moved out of the way by a member of authority even when the space of Waterloo station was and still is massive to prevent disruption.
After having watched the film, I have gained some historical context of the station at the time of the 1960’s and will compare the designed systems and infrastructures of then to now. I’ll see how the impact of technology has affected the use of space in the station and take this into consideration in my project.
Unfortunately, the screenshots I had taken whilst watching the movie were showing printed as grey screenshots so I can’t present photographic evidence but I have described the scenarios of those screenshots in this blog.
Reference: Terminus(1961)[DVD]Directed by John Schlesinger. U.K. British Transport films