NARRASCAPE: Urban Environment as Narrative System in the UK and China

本项目将围绕城市叙事环境这一中心主题，力求将叙事环境的最新研究成果引入城市研究领域，并建立这一主题的国际研究网络。今天我们生活在一个城市的世界：几乎50%的世界人口居住在城市（89.7%在英国）。“随着建筑与社会之间的联系变得更加复杂和脆弱，我们了解城市发展对人和环境的影响是至关重要的。”对城市条件的理解，包括冲突、价值观和记忆以及人类对它们的体验，需要多学科的方法，并对艺术和人文学科提出了挑战。叙事是人类经验不可或缺的一部分：一方面，我们生活在一个充满各种形式的故事的世界；另一方面，叙事是我们组织和理解世界的基本方式之一。叙事是先前的方案之一，“积极地用于组织和解释一个人与环境的接触，包括内部和外部。”叙事提供了一种独特的方法来理解我们对环境的知识和经验是如何构建的，以及反过来，如何组织符合人类经验和记忆的环境，并促进人类与环境的互动。该项目将通过调查时间结构叙事与空间配置之间的相互作用来研究城市环境，换句话说，研究“空间如何变得充满活力，并对时间、情节和历史的运动做出反应”。该项目旨在揭示城市环境中隐藏的“叙事景观”，作为与体验环境的自然方式相对应的叙事层的拼贴，即凝视、路线和调查模式。这种“景观”为分析和评估城市空间的价值、组织和表征提供了一个特殊的层面。“景观”的概念和方法将通过四个多学科研讨会发展，并进行独立但相关的案例研究。数字媒体，特别是动态图像和虚拟现实，在表现（和创造）人类经验方面具有非凡的力量，将被用作呈现和发展城市“景观”的主要工具。数字工作室是剑桥大学建筑系马丁建筑与城市研究中心的一部分。由franois Penz博士领导，多年来成功领导EPSRC， AHRC和EU资助的空间叙事组织，非线性叙事形式和数字媒体的表达性使用，以促进建筑和城市问题的设计和交流。该项目旨在将数字工作室的研究扩展到城市研究领域，并考察英国和中国城市背景下的先前研究成果。中英两国在城市环境和城市条件等全球性问题上开展研究合作的兴趣日益浓厚。马丁中心与中国大学在建筑和城市研究方面有着良好的合作项目记录。该项目将启动一个新的网络，将两国的研究人员和专业人士聚集在一起，讨论和探索城市环境的叙事价值、组织和表现。这个项目将包括讲习班、会议、翻译和出版工作以及传播活动。研讨会的重点是三个历史城市的案例研究：英国的剑桥、中国的南京和长沙。每个案例研究都有一个“叙事”的子主题。通过这些研讨会，该项目旨在促进我们对城市叙事环境的理解，并建立一个网络，以促进未来的研究和实践机会。

This project will focus on the central theme of Urban Narrative Environment, seeking to introduce recent research findings on narrative environment into the field of urban studies and to establish an international research network on this subject.Today we live in a world of cities: almost 50% of world population inhabits cities (89.7% in UK). 'It is vital that we understand the impact of this urban growth on people and the environment, as the links between architecture and society become both more complex and more fragile.' An understanding of urban conditions, including the conflicts, values and memory as well as human experience of them, necessitates multidisciplinary approaches and offers a challenge to the arts and humanities.Narrative is integral to human experience: on the one hand, we live in a world abounding with stories of various forms; on the other hand, narrative is one of the fundamental ways we organize and understand the world. Narrative is one of the prior schemes that are 'actively used to organize and interpret a person's encounter with the environment, both internal and external.' Narrative offers a distinctive approach to understand how our knowledge and experience of the environment is constructed and in return, how to organize the environment that conforms to human experience and memory and facilitates human interactions with the environment. This project will examine urban environments through investigations into the interaction between temporally structured narratives and their spatial configurations, in other words, to investigate how 'space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history.' This project aims at revealing the hidden 'narrative landscape' in urban environments as a collage of narrative strata corresponding to the natural ways of experiencing an environment, namely gaze, route and survey modes. This 'narrascape' provides a particular layer to analyze and assess the values, organizations and representations of urban space. The concept and methodology of 'narrascape' will be developed through four multidisciplinary workshops with separate but correlated case studies. Digital media, especially moving images and virtual reality, with their extraordinary power in representing (and creating) human experience, will be employed and explored as the primary tools in presenting and developing urban 'narrascape'.The Digital Studio is part of the Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge. It is directed by Dr. François Penz and has for years successfully led EPSRC, AHRC and EU funded researches into narrative organization of space, non-linear narrative forms and the expressive use of digital media to facilitate design and communications on architectural and urban issues. This project seeks to extend Digital Studio's investigation into urban studies and to examine previous research outputs in the urban contexts of UK and China.There is growing interest for UK and China to carry out research collaborations on the global issues of urban environments and urban conditions. The Martin Centre has strong track record of collaborative projects with Chinese universities on architectural and urban studies. This project will initiate a new network to bring together researchers and professionals from both countries to discuss and explore the narrative values, organizations and representations of urban environment. This project will consist of workshops, conference, translation and publication works, and dissemination activities. The foci are the workshops on the case studies of three historic cities: Cambridge in the UK, Nanjing and Changsha in China. Each case study addresses a sub-theme of 'narrascape'. Through these workshops, this project seeks to advance our understanding of urban narrative environment and to establish a network that will foster future research and practice opportunities.