Communicating the Incommunicable: Understanding Public Space Through Creative Method/Visualisation of Memory, Perception and Imagination

The design of good public space contributes to liveable places, healthier lifestyles and sustainable cities. Good quality public spaces usually possess qualities that are experienced as beautiful, comfortable, elegant, sublime; complex phenomena. However, these experiences are deeply subjective and thus difficult to define and measure. To study the quality of public spaces is to study these perceptions and experiences of public space as determined by the people who use them. Although analysis and measurement of public spaces occur, many of the traditional methods that are currently used fail to capture this complexity. Increasingly it is understood that creative methods, which are inherently complex, may offer a solution to capture this complexity.
As a city, Canberra offers a variety of public spaces currently under development which offer the opportunity for such an analysis. In order to develop these spaces the analysis of the quality of space must first take place for improvement to occur. Transport is the main driver for development of public space, specifically the proposed Light Rail Development along Northbourne Avenue in the Civic precinct. Historically and up to present day, this Garden City has been designed around the scale of the car, and only in recent years has this perspective begun to shift to be centred around design for humans.