An Inventory of the Street
Carole Lévesque et Thomas-Bernard Kenniff, “An Inventory of the Street: Case Studies from Montréal”. Chapitre publié dans l’ouvrage collectif Everyday Streets: Inclusive Approaches to Understanding and Designing Streets, sous la direction d’Agustina Martire, Brigit Haussleitner et Jane Clossick, UCL Press, 2023.
“A large part of our blindness with respect to images comes from the fact that we consume them as elements of a primary meaning, without ever doing their inventory.”
(Laurent Gervereau, Voir, comprendre, analyser les images)
The inventory is presented as a research-by-design and pedagogical approach whose process and form engage with the street as a multitude while highlighting its complexity and significance for urban public space. By bringing together exhaustive observation and recording of urban phenomena with their representation in ways that resonate with the subject and are propositional, the inventory is defined as a situated exploratory practice of documentation and representation that manifests itself as a practice of design. To do an inventory of the street is both to draw the register of what is and to project its future possibilities, what could be. This is exemplified through a series of student projects responding to an exercise given by the authors. Through direct and indirect observations, questions about processes and methods, their inventories develop new ways of looking and understanding the city and its streets as well as novel considerations that call for action and reimagining. The inventory underlines the agency of documentation and representation with respect to the built environment beyond preconceived notions of design and disciplinary boundaries.
