the role of the designer in creating identity: georgia butina watson interview

In a world of increasing globalisation, where one high street becomes interchangeable with the next, the role of the placemaker and the concept of identity have become of increasing importance. There is much talk about the need to stem the tide of globalisation, and for placemakers in particular, the more difficult question of how this might be done. The role of the designer in creating identity has been a recurrent theme in the work of Georgia Butina Watson, Professor of Urban Design at Oxford Brookes University, who talks to Lucy Tennyson about the issues

What role does the designer play in creating identity?

What gives a city or place its identity has been a recurrent theme in the work of Professor Georgia Butina Watson, Professor of Urban Design and Head of the Department of Planning at Oxford Brookes University. With co-author and colleague Ian Bentley, Emeritus Professor of Urban Design at the JCUD at Oxford Brookes, she has tackled this difficult and complex issue in a new book Identity by Design, recently published by Architectural Press.

The book attempts the seemingly impossible task of trying to describe in print the complex series of processes by which towns and cities become places with their own special identities. These processes are due to the geography and history of a place, as much as the efforts of designers, architects and planners.

Georgia Butina Watson, like many of her colleagues at Brookes, is both an academic and a practitioner. She was part of the team that worked on the pioneering Angell Town redevelopment in the 1990s. (See the case study on the RUDI website).

What distinguished their approach in drawing up the brief for the south London estate was their commitment to working with the local community. ‘We collected narratives from the people who lived there, and some of them even remembered what it was like before Angell Town was built. This enabled us to build up a picture of what people felt about the place they lived in, and what they wanted,’ she says.

In the 21^st century, the pressures of a globalised world can seem even more overwhelming, she admits. ‘Local place identities are being lost or eroded. Firms are working internationally. But you can’t just blame the architects, as the communities themselves want to be more modern.’ What she believes is important in this process is to accept that modernisation will take place, but to find ways of guiding it so that traditional architectural concepts and features can be incorporated.

You can find examples of this in Malaysia, she says, where local designers have tried to work with a complex tapestry of cultural traditions.

In writing the book, co-authored with Professor Ian Bentley, also from Oxford Brookes, she drew on much of her previous work, including her PhD thesis on the morphological structures of Ljubljana and Zagreb. Her interest in identity goes back to her own degree studies in Virginia, USA.

She met Ian Bentley at what was then Oxford Polytechnic 30 years ago, discovering a common interest in identity. On one of their early collaborations, they wrote about Czech cubism. Later they went on to found the urban regeneration consultancy consultancy Place-ID.

Her other major influence has been the JCUD at Oxford Brookes, which has a strong international representation. Students and lecturers from around the world have come to Oxford bringing with them case studies from their home countries, and their own ideas on how to design places. ‘There’s never any chance of becoming complacent. The students are always pushing us. I am always being challenged by them.’

In addition, Georgia has travelled extensively herself, looking at cities in North and South America, Eastern Europe, Australia and South East Asia. The fact that she has studied so many different kinds of cities around the world enables her to take a overview. She makes some unlikely comparisons, for example, between Fobney Street in Reading and Perugia in Italy.

‘Both have stood the test of time. They are both popular with residents. When you visit so many places, you become aware of the common problems. In Malaysia, the new state capital of Shah Alam in Selangor reminded me of Milton Keynes. It all heightened my enquiry into the whole issue of place and identity.’

She has always been interested in the issues involved in urban morphology and how places transform over time. Georgia is now working on concepts raised in the book Identity by Design a stage further. 'I am now looking into heritage and identity, and working in different cities across the world.'

She continues to work as a consultant on various government projects. Her latest project for A-level geography students Making Better Places won a Silver Medal Award from the British Geographical Association

She has worked on several research reports for the government, such as Transferable Lessons from the New Towns (pdf) for the Department for Communities and Local Government in 2006.

She has also worked on a review of Poundbury with Ian Bentley and other academic colleagues for the Duchy of Cornwall. ‘It’s interesting to compare what different groups of people are saying. The professional experts, especially architects, are critical of it. Planners like the layout. But if you ask the people who live there, they say they love it.

‘My view? It offers many positive lessons, the layout and materials are good. It has good energy efficiency.” But she has doubts whether the concepts are based on a true sense of local identity.