Allowing for the in-between in our design, planning, and maintenance processes grants us more adaptability in our coming, unknown future. This project celebrates in-between spaces and proposes a set of flexible framework interventions for the Petite Ceinture—a ring railroad encircling Paris, France—based in the language of weaving as a way to thicken in-between characteristics of a site and interlace emergent relationships. Designing in the in-between with the in-between in this way enables professionals and citizens alike to become ecosystem participants on site, co-creating a woven matrix of interventions. As a participant-designer, our role doesn’t end at the completion of any intervention, but encompasses the life of the place.
(click through slideshows to view more of the project, full capstone available on request)
Transect Analysis Methods & Process
Through a rigorous methods process, the beginning of each transect analysis includes preparation, landing, walking, photography, video, and sampling. Each transect's ground, sky and edge plane was recorded for 5 minutes each to record character. Site photos were compiled into a map record.
Transect Photographs visualize the weft laid out perpendicular to the walk’s warp:
Plant Palettes
Each plant was collected at a set pace measure that varied according to the transect length, then recorded through photography and ESRI’s Fieldmaps app, cut, and placed in order in a bag to prepare for weaving.
Transect Weaving as Site Analysis
The plant samples were woven in the order they were collected, in order to create a record of the transect walk through plant material. As these samples were woven, visitors engaged with the weaving process and the question of spontaneous plants.
Tapestries just after weaving on the frame loom, then left behind in the urban environment. Nine transect weavings (2 woven & analyzed twice) for a total of 11 weavings recorded site conditions through plant characteristics, for example: wild carrot in sunny, dry embankments and white avens in shady, wet ravines.
A Series of Interventions:
The following section shows a set of three slideshows of FUTURES for the Petite Ceinture.
Seeding Walks Futures:
Process methodology becomes a Future as transect weavings are left behind in neighborhoods surrounding the Petite Ceinture, flush with seeds in October. The left-behind tapestries engage the public, inviting viewers to get to know curated Petite Ceinture plant ecologies outside their "messy" context. Each tapestry left behind becomes a matrix of seed dispersal across Paris as the tapestries dry out and the wind takes the seeds where it sees fit. The last weaving traveled around Paris, in a visit to all dried tapestries.
Community Connection:
Weaving in public drew questions, comments and conversations with people along the Petite Ceinture. This Future is a proposal to host a series of walks with the public, in partnership with managment organizations, in order to weave a series of transect weavings along the Petite Ceinture in order to get to know the plants and how they propagate or seed. This public engagement allows for a reexamination of spontaneous plants and participation in the site as an in-between place.
Weaving Pattern Book:
Site Scale Interventions:
- Velvet Mowing Pattern
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Tangled Bramble Pattern
- Woven Slopes Doubleweave Pattern
- Vine Twining Pattern
- Plain Weave Layering Pattern
This set of site interventions collaborates with management workers to weave adaptability across the Petite Ceinture. Interventions like creating hedgehog habitat through Velvet Mowing and Tangled Bramble Patterns can be used in in-between places throughout the Paris region. Weaving existing vegetation and plant material into these sites keeps materials on-site, mends erosion, and thickens existing systems. Weaving interventions promote creativity for management workers, grafitti artists, and citizens to participate in building palimpsest and placemaking.
Seeding Palimpsest: Collect, Walk, Disperse (Neighborhood Scale)
Open-ended scripts invite the public to gather seeds from one PC transect, then dérive (or drift) to the next, dispersing seeds along the way.
Woven Matrix: Site and Neighborhood Scale Interventions Inform Regional Scale Matrix
By expanding site and neighborhood scale interventions we can weave together an indeterminate framework of adaptable in-between spaces for the future.