Radical Placemaking: Utilizing Low-Tech AR/VR to engage in Communal Placemaking during a Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the struggles of the excluded louder and has also left them socially isolated. The article documents the implementation of one instance of Radical Placemaking, an “intangible”, community-driven and participatory placemaking process, in Kelvin Grove Urban Village (KGUV), Brisbane, Australia to tackle social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. KGUV community members were engaged in storytelling and interactive fiction online workshops to create experiential, place-based and mobile low-tech AR digital artefacts. The article expands on the methodology which involved a series of online workshops to design low-tech AR digital artefacts using digital collaboration tools (Google Classroom, Slack, Zoom) and VR environments (Mozilla Hubs). The study’s findings confirm the role of accessible AR/VR technology in enabling marginalised communities to create connectedness and community by co-creating their own authentic and diverse urban imaginaries of place and cities.

The praxis of radical placemaking

“…The critical reflections presented in this paper arise from a three-year program of research into Radical Placemaking. Other publications arising from this work include (i) the initial framework of Radical Placemaking and the ethos surrounding the first project, CBP (Gonsalves et al, 2020); (ii) a detailed account of the methodology in the use of immersive technologies and initial findings of CBP (Gonsalves et al, 2021b); (iii) a discussion of the findings of CBP based on the interview data of those who participated in the Radical Placemaking process (Gonsalves et al, 2022a); (iv) an account of the use of design probes within the placemaking process during the pandemic (Slingerland et al, 2022); and (v) the methodology and initial findings of THSP (Gonsalves et al, 2022b). This paper is a summative reflection and synthesis of our experience and learnings from conducting these three Radical Placemaking projects.…”

“…CBP is a situated, digital storytelling project conducted in the Kelvin Grove Urban Village (KGUV), Brisbane, Australia as a collaboration between the QUT Design Lab, local community organization Communify, and the KGUV Principal Body Corporate (Gonsalves et al, 2021b). It involved 16 KGUV experience-designers of varied racial and professional backgrounds creating KGUV-based digital stories on topics such as anxiety, domestic violence, and human migration for smartphones.…”

“…First, Radical Placemaking as a design practice emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Imagined as face-to-face workshops in computer labs, it pivoted to online and hybrid modalities (Gonsalves et al, 2021b); this led to exclusions of people who did not have personal technology or access to digital infrastructure that would have enabled them to participate. While this points to the larger digital inclusion debate about the availability, access, and affordability of digital tools (Thomas et al, 2020), the projects tackled the efficient use of technology where experience-designers learnt emerging technologies (Notley and Foth, 2008).…”

“…Bearing in mind these limitations of Pokémon Go, this paper presents the promise of Radical Placemaking (Table 1): It considers the possibilities of digital placemaking for building connections to place (Tuan, 1991), construction of other realities (Bruner, 1991), and prospects of community care, healing, and empowerment (Rappaport and Simkins, 1991). As a step away from colonial structures of design thinking and methodologies (Akama et al, 2019), Radical Placemaking engages marginalized communities in designing and utilizing digital tools to "occupy" the city with an emphasis on social justice and place-based activism (Gonsalves et al, 2021b). Positioning Radical Placemaking in literature and theory, the next section explores some of the challenges that lie at the intersections of placemaking, participatory action research, marginalization, and the potential of creative technologies.…”

Dreamscape Bricks VR: An Experimental Virtual Reality Tool for Architectural Design

“…Several studies have focused on the use of VR in education [6][7][8]. Other studies focus on VR in architectural design and education [9][10][11][12], urban applications of VR [13,14], and VR in architectural heritage [15][16][17]. It can be argued that the availability of consumer-level VR devices such as Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, and the increasing number of VR applications in architecture and design motivated researchers to investigate the potential of VR technology in design in recent years.…”