Architectural Ethnography
As soon as you enter Kortestede you get the feeling of entering a private area, even though it belongs to the public space. This in-between is very well displayed by the front gardens: they create a rich patchwork that breaks the homogeneity of the row houses’ facades while becoming an extension of them. The domestic patchwork found in this slice of urban fabric tells us that its inhabitants want to express their cultures, belongings and ways of living. We realised that every garden had a story to tell. Aside from the visual and architectural focus the way the neighbours interacted with their environment and surroundings were documented during our site visit. Due to this our work has quotes of happenings and several interactions during our sight visits. Subtopics that arose during this investigation were: thresholds between public and private, Privatsphere and domesticity told by backyards, Public interactions and movement in the boulevard and the timeline of the customization of a garden.
Task
To investigate how people have succeeded in existing in their built environment and how they have incorporated their social, private needs as much as their identity and culture in their space. It is indeed possible by ethnographic research and architectural visualization to represent the wants and needs of people.
Atlas of domestic objects and pavements that together built the identity of each front garden or entrance thresehold.
Two Urban Pixels of our area were selected to represent the activity we could witness during our visits, and represented in isometric projection.
The final output, containing all our research about the spatial appropiation in frontyards and backyards, our interactions with neighbours and our perception of public-private theresholds, was delivered as 4 stories based on 4 different streets, focusing on 4 different topics.







