Placing Elsewhere: Approaches for Physical and Digital Flânerie

Ying-Lan Dann, RMIT University, Australia
Liz Lambrou, RMIT University, Australia

Abstract

This paper will discuss approaches and tools for physical and digital flânerie that emerged within an RMIT second- and third-year Interior Design Studio, during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the third week of classes in March 2020, social distancing measures in Australia led us to transpose urban site-based student projects online. Though unforeseen, this was taken as an opportunity for the interior design studio to explicate modes of physical and digital flânerie, via meandering and looking. We discuss teaching and learning experiences within the digital classroom, which we discovered was a dynamic chat-scape of hyperlinks, fragments, displacements and delays. We discuss how we translated aspects of the philosopher Walter Benjamin’s flaneur with reference to The Arcades Project. The paper is structured as a stroll through key discoveries and works and aims to explicate emerging frameworks for digital flânerie within the teaching and learning of interior design.

Publication Date

7-30-2020

References

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Submitted Date

2020-05-28

Accepted Date

2020-07-13

First Page

145

Last Page

162

Recommended Citation

Dann, Y., & Lambrou, L. (2020). Placing Elsewhere: Approaches for Physical and Digital Flânerie. Interiority, 3 (2), 145-162. https://doi.org/10.7454/in.v3i2.99

Authors' Bio

Ying-Lan Dann
ying-lan.dann@rmit.edu.au

Ying-Lan Dann is an Interior Design Lecturer (Industry Fellow) in the School of Architecture and Urban Design, RMIT University. She is a practicing architect, artist and PhD researcher. Her ideas led practice explores how dynamic site phenomena and layered histories can be revealed to provoke design action. Her teaching uses collaborative and site-based approaches to foster situated knowledge that enables shared and embodied discoveries about place. Ying has presented artworks in numerous Melbourne artist run spaces and contributed to architectural practices and projects across a range of scales.

Liz Lambrou
elizabeth.lambrou@rmit.edu.au

Liz Lambrou is an interior designer and educator who has taught within the interior design program at RMIT University for over a decade. Her ongoing practice is concerned with temporary conditions of space through the design of immersive experiences that respond to animated facades within urban environments. Ongoing works explore thresholds, ambiguous materials and dematerialization of space through screen-based installations. Her current doctoral work titled Space in Transition examines interior experience within spaces that “move you” and spaces that you “move past.” This research engages with questions pertaining to urban environments and the role of physical space and in a post-digital age.

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