week 4 - DP2

DESN801 // 19/05/2026

Overview of Week 4 Progress

This week, focusing entirely on The Strand Station, I've decided to test new methods of theme/narrative ideation and start developing installation concepts centred around this site. Due to the larger-than-anticipated amount of site analysis I've now completed, as well as becoming sick at the end of this week, I've had to reduce the scope of the second phase of my project as I'm left with less time than originally anticipated. Additionally, I want to take time with the place-based narrative identification stage of my project, something I didn't quite account for in my initial timeline, hence the dedication of extra time to this element of the project. As a result, my updated goal for the project is to present multiple work-in-progress concepts rather than one refined concept, with visual representations and prototypes to communicate these in-progress ideas. I will likely be unable to formally test these concepts with my peers as originally planned, but I am still regularly showing my work and ideas to those around me to get their insights and to consider how others might respond to and interact with my work.

Table of Contents for this week's blog:

1. Brainstorming Place-Based Themes and Narratives at The Strand Station

2. Visual Inspiration — Long Exposure Photography

3. Development of Installation Concepts: blurred[borders]

4. Reflections on This Week's Methods and Progress

Brainstorming Place-Based Themes and Narratives at The Strand Station

As mentioned last week, I wanted to adjust my methods for brainstorming and ideating place-based narratives and themes, this time applying them to The Strand Station, so that I might consider more ideas beyond ones rooted in historical background information and beyond simple input/output interactions. I felt my previous methods of sketching these decoupled interactions were limited in providing too narrow a focus and failing to generate a good breadth of ideas, so I decided to try some alternative methods for ideation this week.

First, I tried the method of mindmapping to get all my ideas onto paper and organise them around different themes or goals (Figure 1). These themes I worded in the form of arcs of inquiry, essentially short "How might we...?" questions to provide a lens with which to analyse the site and help simplify each brainstorming network. These arcs of inquiry, drawing from my background site research and site visit observations, were as follows:

1. How might a tangible interactive installation be used to connect people to artefacts of The Strand Station and its history?

   • This arc drew on observation of different artefacts tied to the history of the site, such as ticket machines, ephemera like tickets and refreshment cards, clocks, telephones, signage and passenger announcement speakers, as well as artefacts around the site in present-day, such as crates, rubbish bins, old electric wires, light covers, etc.

2. How might a tangible interactive installation be used to connect people with the confluence of different modes of transportation at The Strand Station?

   • This idea stemmed from historic research revealing the many different modes of transportation used on-site, from waka before land reclamation in the 1900s, to trains via railway when the station was first opened, to cars when this part of the station was turned into a road, and finally walking on foot to and from different platforms to use these different modes of transportation.

3. How might a tangible interactive installation be used to connect people with the structures, both past and present, of The Strand Station?

   • This arc was inspired by historic and present photography showing different structures at the site, such as pedestrian subway passages leading between the platforms and the railway station building, the platforms and canopies still present on the site today, and even more natural or abstract structures such as the trees behind the platforms and areas of shadow and light.

This mindmapping exercise involved both sketching and written words/annotations, allowing me to sketch artefacts and how people might interact with them, elements of the site both past and present, and written notes of interactions between people and the site as well. A particularly interesting observation from this exercise was the compartmentalisation of different modes of transport (waka, train cars, road vehicles, etc. all involve travellling inside a compartment), and how the platform structures also serve to compartmentalise walking (which could be seen as a non-compartmental form of transportation). The relationship between compartmentalisation of transportation and the residuality of a site is also obvious with how free one is to walk around anywhere in the site now that its original function has disappeared: the more residual the site, the more this compartmentalisation breaks down. The same relationship is also seen in other non-transportation elements of the site, such as manmade and natural areas, where ivy is now free to grow unchecked onto manmade areas, thus breaking down these "compartments" even further.

Figure 1. Mindmapping around three different arcs of inquiry connected to The Strand Station: 1. How might a tangible interactive installation be used to connect people to artefacts of The Strand Station and its history? (red), 2. How might a tangible interactive installation be used to connect people with the confluence of different modes of transportation at The Strand Station? (blue), and 3. How might a tangible interactive installation be used to connect people with the structures, both past and present, of The Strand Station? (green)

The second method I practiced was sketching onto transparent paper overlaid on some of the photographs I took of the site (Figure 2). I used this exercise in three ways: 1. to note past interactions between people and elements of the site, such as where cars would have moved, where benches and thus sitting people would have been situated, and where past artefacts such as telephone boxes would have been located, 2. to note present-day elements of the site such as leading lines created by the canopies, platforms, shadows, etc., areas of light and darkness, manmade and natural structures, and 3. to note potential installation ideas that could be implemented, or even what interactions could possibly occur if the site were to be made public in its present-day form, such as where people could walk or sit and where installations could be located and what form they could take. This exercise helped to both analyse and ideate people's interactions in the site while keeping the site's scale and structure at the forefront to ground these ideas. A notable observation from this exercise was the leading lines present in the site, sectioning off different areas and guiding one's line of sight along certain paths. The shadows, for example, form very distinct sections of light and darkness in addition to the physical sections of the platforms, road and treeline, but unlike these latter areas, shadows can shift and move around the site over time, adding a temporal element to the location of these "sections".

Figure 2. Sketching onto transparent paper overlaid onto three different photographs of The Strand Station, noting past interactions between people and elements of the site, present-day elements such as shadow and light, and potential installation ideas that could be implemented in the site.

Finally, having identified various elements and themes from the above two methods, I wrote down all possible themes centred around The Strand Station to organise my thoughts in written form (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Written themes and narratives centred around The Strand Station based on the above ideation and brainstorming exercises.

From the above written ideas, notable themes are as follows:

• Permanence vs. Impermanence (Spatially and Temporally)

  • Permanence and impermanence both imply a spatial and temporal element exist in relation to the object they are attributed to, as a thing being impermanently in a place implies there are times where the thing exists elsewhere.

  • This theme is present onsite in the tension between permanence and impermanence of aspects of the site, both past and present.

  • Permanent aspects include the manmade structures, such as the canopies and platforms that are still standing on the site; however, these aspects were threatened to be demolished in the 2010s, and are currently crumbling in places, showing evidence of some impermanence due to manmade or environmental forces.

  • Shadows onsite also demonstrate this tension, through being permanent in some areas of the site (directly under the canopies, under the subway passages before they were demolished), but impermanent in others (constantly shifting around the platforms, being broken by dappled light from the trees).

  • Although train cars might be imagined as a permanent physical structure, they are impermanently located in a particular site as they are designed to move around. The trains (and, by extension, cars parked onsite in the past) would have existed as temporary structures onsite, there for a short time before moving elsewhere.

  • Artefacts onsite also have permanent and impermanent attributes. Objects such as passenger announcement speakers, or telephones, could be seen as permanently in a place, but they are no longer located onsite meaning that they were impermanently situated there long-term. Sounds coming out of these objects would also have been impermanent, existing only in the present moment and being confined locally around these more permanent objects. The clocks would have also been a more permanent object onsite, but the time shown on their hands would have been impermanent, changing every second.

• Compartmentalisation vs. Blurring of Borders

  • As previously mentioned, compartmentalisation is evident in relation to the site in the form of past modes of transport, from waka and train cars to road vehicles. Walking, while normally non-compartmentaled, was confined to the platforms and thus rendered compartmentalised. However, this compartmentalisation has broken down due to the site's residuality and disuse, allowing movement anywhere within the site and showing this "blurring of borders" between normally walkable and non-walkable areas.

  • Comparmentalisation is also evident in other aspects of the site, such as areas of shadow vs. light, areas of manmade vs. natural features (eg. canopies vs. trees), and areas of hard and soft materials (concrete vs. grass). The blurring of borders between these "compartments" is also tied to the increasing residuality of the site, such as how shadows can shift as the sun moves and let dappled light in through the trees, how the ivy has begun growing on the canopy columns, and grass growing on the canopy roofs and in cracks of the pavement.

• Meeting vs. Departing, Stasis vs. Motion

  • Drawing from historic photography and imagined past lives of the station, both trains, cars and people would have met and departed each other in this location, implying motion in and out with brief periods of being in stasis. The site's existence as a train station also reinforces this tension between movement and staying still, where trains or cars must be still for a brief moment in time when changing directions as would have happened at this station, and the station would have housed people waiting to leave or to meet others.

  • In its present-day state, the station also demonstrates these ideas through the stationary structures of the canopies and the movement of crumbling pieces from them that have fallen to the ground (thus implying some kind of motion).

  • Sections of shadow are static in places, such as under the canopies, and moving in others, such as between the platforms (similar to the permanent vs. impermanent theme).

  • Trees may be seen as static structures, but would technically be moving through growth or wind, and ivy would also be a constantly (albeit slowly) moving element in the space.

These themes have considerable overlap between each other, providing options to combine ideas together for installation concepts. I also ideated a few other themes worth mentioning, although not developed enough to pursue at this stage:

• Different height levels of the site

  • This is evident in the subway passages that would have existed on the site (being at an "underground" level), the current roads, slightly raised platforms, and the canopies.

• Skeletal structure of elements of the site

  • From discussion with classmates, the overall look of the canopies with their support columns and arches gave them the impression of a skeletal structure.

  • This structure is also evident in a singular canopy, where the crumbling concrete revealed the rebar underneath (a kind of "skeleton" for the concrete structure).

Visual Inspiration — Long Exposure Photography

With the above themes in mind, I sought out visual inspiration to help ideate installation concepts centred around these narratives. As a photographer, I thought of long exposure photography of light trails, and looked at other photographers' images depicting light trails specifically of trains (Figure 4). I found these images compelling with how they captured these themes:

• Permanence vs. Impermanence is clear in the way that these photos capture trails of light, something that could be considered impermanent, in the more permanent form of a photograph, as well as capturing the impermanent nature of motion in a more permanent way by leaving the shutter open over a longer period of time (thus producing the trail of moving light as a singular "beam" in the image).

• Compartmentalisation vs. Blurring of Borders is also similarly depicted through blurring the points "between" the lights that would have been evident if the train were captured in a more static way: the movement of lights captured in a singular image ensures that spaces between them aren't visible, instead depicting these lights as a continuous line.

• Meeting vs. Departing, Stasis vs. Motion is shown in the way moving light has become static, appearing almost as a singular structure rather than an element in motion.

Figure 4. Long exposure photography of train light trails (Varga, 2012; Durand, 2010; Durand, 2011).

During this period of photography research, I also stumbled upon long exposure photography of train passengers, depicting people in motion instead of lights on train cars (Figure 5). These images almost depicted a sea of people, where individual faces were blurred and obscured but their movements were highlighted almost in the form of "currents". This also created a ghostly effect, speaking to the past lives of people in the station, where even a mere few seconds ago could still be considered a part of history.

Figure 5. Long exposure photography of passengers at Moscow stations (Zverev, 2017a; Zverev, 2017b) and photography of St. Petersburg as part of The City of Shadows exhibit (Titarenko, 1992; Titarenko, n.d.).

Development of Installation Concepts: blurred[borders]

Drawing on the above theme/narrative brainstorming, and the visual inspiration of long exposure photography, I began ideating two main installation concepts:

1. Light sculpture based on long exposure light trail photography

   1. This sculpture would be situated between the two platforms, where trains would originally have travelled.

   2. The sculpture would consist of different lines of light that could move along their respective paths, triggered by people sitting on benches placed underneath the canopies (where they originally would have been located). The light would travel along different directions, guiding people's head movements from left to right and vice versa, as if they were following a train leaving or arriving at the station.

   3. If more than one person were to sit at different benches, the lights could travel between these two locations, thereby opening up a sort of "communicaton" channel across the space.

2. Projection-mapped ghostly visuals of people's movements along the platform

   1. This concept would involve projection mapping visuals of people's movements (such as "past lives" using pre-recorded visuals, or echoing movements of people in the site at the present moment) onto the shadowed areas of the platforms such as the ground, ceiling and columns.

   2. Movements would represent the motion of people (capturing only their motion, rather than static moments), inspired by Anna Zhang's Change Capture camera (n.d.). These movements could be echoed from different areas of the site, such as the othe rplatform, to once again open up potential non-verbal "communication" channels between people across the space. Visuals would travel along the platform, thus simulating the motion of people along these platforms in the past.

   3. These visuals could be triggered by footsteps of people on the ground, or through the use of proximity sensors.

   4. A sound element could also be incorporated, such as whispers with the use of past artefacts like the passenger announcement speakers or the telephones, to add another multisensory element to the experience.

I decided to name these concepts blurred[borders] due to the visual inspiration of blurred long exposure photography as well as the thematic elements of motion and compartmentalisation (also partly suggested by a studio peer in response to the narratives I had presented). At this point in the week, I became sick with the flu, so I decided to develop them further later in the week, identifying contextual elements present in these ideas to tie in my theoretical research and sketching and prototyping them to better communicate these ideas for the Summative Presentation in Week 6.

Reflections on This Week's Methods and Progress

This week, I trialled different methods for brainstorming place-based narratives such as mindmapping and sketching on transparent paper overlaid on site photographs, which I felt were much more successful compared to the method of sketching inputs and outputs that I used in Week 2. These methods allowed me to imagine users' interactions with aspects of the site more directly and opened my mind up to elements of the site I wouldn't have otherwise identified, leading to the generation of a variety of place-based narratives that would then spark ideation for potential installation concepts. I also enjoyed being able to pull from other areas of interest such as photography: although not directly related to my research, I still found the medium a good source of inspiration for how I could visually represent the narratives I had identified and implement this visual aesthetic into my work. This process has shown me the value of looking at media outside one's discipline for more breadth of inspiration and ideation.

However, I do feel there is still much more for me to explore in terms of interactions in this site, such as with specific artefacts (both past and present) and with the different modes of transportation that would've been present at the site. I also wish I would've explored this idea of constant energy and motion surrounding the site, such as trains passing by. Becoming sick has made further concept ideation difficult, and I still want to trial other methods that are more related to the concept development phase before the end of the project, such as rapid prototyping and sketching/storyboarding the interactivity of my installation ideas. As a result, I plan to focus on this latter stage of methods, as well as creating a scale model of the station as I've previously expressed interest in doing, as soon as I'm well enough to do so. I hope to revisit this stage of concept ideation after the end of this proof-of-concept project so that I may further explore some of the themes I've identified and exemplify them in a wider range of installation concepts and prototypes.

References:

Durand, A. [everydaydude]. (2010, December 7). East Bay, CA [Photograph]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/everydaydude/5242739265/in/album-72157628975507849

Durand, A. [everydaydude]. (2011, November 20). [Untitled photograph] [Photograph]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/everydaydude/6374855311/in/album-72157628975507849

Titarenko, A. (1992). [Photograph from the series City of Shadows] [Photograph]. Alexey Titarenko. https://www.alexeytitarenko.com/cityofshadows

Titarenko, A. (n.d.). [Untitled photograph from the series City of Shadows] [Photograph]. Alexey Titarenko. https://www.alexeytitarenko.com/cityofshadows

Varga, V. [rotkivagrav]. (2012, December 13). Fényvillamos / Christmas Light-Tram in Budapest [Photograph]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/merowingi/8269511891/

Zhang, A. (n.d.). Change capture. Retrieved June 4, 2026, from https://change-capture.anna-zhang.com/