02: OBSERVE
Learning to look
The strategy behind the evaluation of the built environment has historically been rooted in the surveying of users. Deeming this too subjective, this project is built on a strategy observation and photographic documentation. All methods of observation detailed below are possible to perform yourself with little architectural knowledge, or even photography experience. All you need is a camera capable of recording time-lapse, a few SD cards, patience and relatively mild weather. If you try your own observation, visit the analyze page to learn to process your data, and share your results with agorascope below.
agorascope’s observational strategy focuses on entrances and exits to federal public plazas. Seen here in a sixteenth-inch model of Las Vegas City Hall, the vantage points (red rectangles) are placed to cover the two main street-side entrances of the plaza, with two more vantage points providing wide angles of the entire space. The convergence of these perspectives provides reasonable coverage of the main occupiable space while prioritizing how users enter and enter the space.
raw time lapse footage
The Las Vegas footage here on the left was taken with 250 frames over 40 minutes, whereas the Charlotte Courthouse footage was taken with 900 frames over only twenty minutes. The difference in result is that exact paths of travel will be more evident in the latter. In the former, it the data showing hotspots and occupation density will be more accurate because it was taken over a longer duration. You will also notice that the videos were taken from each vantage point once in the morning and then again in the afternoon.
