Could I design an education/ observing biosphere based on the Outlook Tower that Geddes used to enable people to look at life differently?
Should I name it in dedication of his unfinished work on the tower? The Outlook orb or outlook observations or OOO(the Outlook Observation Orb) conveying curiosity.
Idea: Outlook orb
Rather than projecting inside the tower could I project out the inner world of the self contained biosphere onto the roof of a class room? The projection in the shape of world symbolising the comparison between the small orb/ tower and the outer world. Possibly paint a earth shape onto the roof so when the orb projection is switched it just displays the world. Or inner world is only observed when it gets dark enough for projection to show up.
biologist Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) transformed it into the “world’s first sociological laboratory.” His purchase of Short’s Museum was part of his plan to communicate his social scientific ideas to a wider audience.
visitors moved through exhibitions that encouraged them to think about how the Edinburgh they knew was the product of much wider forces. Geddes’ hope was that visitors would exit the Tower with a new perspective on the Scottish capital and an understanding of how they could play an active role in its future through schemes for social improvement such as his own.
The Outlook tower was a powerful tool in communicating ideas about the wider context in which cities exist and develop. It was a testament to late Victorian and Edwardian beliefs in the power of evolutionary ideas to make sense of the world around us.
Although In the mid-twentieth century the Tower passed into the hands of the University of Edinburgh, who subsequently sold the building to its current owners who have turned it into more of a theme park than Outlook to wider ideas.
The sketch above shows how exhibitions on the tower were curated by Geddes. He dealt with the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, the English speaking world, Europe and the World in a series of exhibits. These exhibits expanded geographically descending down the tower and thus contextualised Edinburgh on many levels. Could I contextualise my biosphere in a similar way?
From the tower one can view the city on many levels at once. From micro to macro levels, the geographical, historical and social forces which act upon the city can be examined. Geddes would have explained how the geology of Edinburgh, with its craggy terrain has influenced the development of the city. How certain historic events such as the Jacobite invasion subsequently affected the city and its people. This understanding of the city was then related to Scotland, the Commonwealth, Europe and the World.
George Bizet, in an article written in the Leith Observer in 1898, saw the tower as "an essay towards exhibiting things in their mutual relationships". Importantly, it was a visual essay rather than a written one and thus accessible to all. Bizet rejoiced at the prospect of the tower ushering in a new direction in education.
The Outlook Tower in Edinburgh encapsulates the Geddesian concept of learning through acts as opposed to learning from facts.
Geddes described the tower as a "social observatory" from which the city, with its complex relationships and systems could be viewed, explained and analysed. how did he do this?
Similar to how a biologist might use a microscope to examine organisms, cells and their systems, Geddes used the Outlook Tower to analyse the city. Could I use my device in the same way to analyse a small system and its relation to the wider world.
From the tower one can view the city on many levels at once. From micro to macro levels, the geographical, historical and social forces which act upon the city can be examined. Geddes would have explained how the geology of Edinburgh, with its craggy terrain has influenced the development of the city. How certain historic events such as the Jacobite invasion subsequently affected the city and its people. This understanding of the city was then related to Scotland, the Commonwealth, Europe and the World.
George Bizet, in an article written in the Leith Observer in 1898, saw the tower as "an essay towards exhibiting things in their mutual relationships". Importantly, it was a visual essay rather than a written one and thus accessible to all. Bizet rejoiced at the prospect of the tower ushering in a new direction in education.
horizontal screen around which the public could gather to contemplate the projected image of the surrounding landscape.
A diagram (drawn by Geddes’ collaborator Victor Branford) of an exhibition that was held at the Outlook Tower in 1910, which is from Victor Branford, “The background of survival and tendency as exposed in an exhibition of modern ideas,”Sociological Review, 18 (1926): p. 207.
"Patrick Geddes has summed up his efforts and symbolised his work in a singular invention that is at once a museum, an observatory and a university : the Outlook Tower" Charles Zueblin of Chicago and Firmin Roz of Paris, 1896
From 1895, he was involved with Elisée Reclus's "Grand Globe" - an ambitious project akin to a cross between a "Georama" and the Outlook Tower, for the 1900 Paris Exhibition.
The Grand Globe would have measured 90 meters in high but was never produced.
The Globe was to be used to study and gather knowledge of the land and for the teaching of geography. He said the traditional maps are illusions that distort the perception of reality and distort the true form.
More than a representation of part of the earth's surface, the card should be a substitute for nature.
The geography student is forced to rely on the cartographer who alone knows the hidden form of map projection.
In a number of promotional items globes, Elisha Reclus tackles different projection modes that lead to the confusion of ideas. The key word is respect for the form.The distance between nature and its representation by geographers it seems insurmountable, "After saying that the Earth is round, it's a ball rolling in space as the sun and the moon, I would come to them present the image as a rectangular sheet of paper with colored pictures included Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, the two halves of the New World! "(Reclus, 1903).
He imagines the possibility of building two nested spheres, including mobile. The outer sphere to give the big picture, the inner sphere to give precision and allow the study to detail.
The world has to show the unity of the earth, not to mention that it is inhabited by a story. In geography, the man is intimately connected with the earth, we find this concern in its architectural design. His globe may not be a static monument. It will be enriched by documents intended to complement and animate it. Views, photographs, prints, drawings or relief maps will bring the complement of life that can not be expressed directly on the globe. It is a kind of "map picturesque of the earth" it is to show the visitor, with categories of images that are very much in the style of the period: monuments, picturesque views and scenes ethnographic. Classic images that echo the engravings ofNew Universal Geography: "Thousands of views, landscapes and types of men and animals, scenes will be placed in the diorama features moving in the inside panels of the envelope, same face shapes corresponding geographical figured on the convexity of the globe. And we will see all the manifestations of life on earth, which we will cross the eye scopes. We shall see come to life, change and harmony will be in our imagination between the earth and its phenomena of any kind, its plants and inhabitants.
Unlike a map that offers a static image, the visit to the globe is already some experience of the world. All information would be updated, the globe, the summary of global knowledge and will be a site of living knowledge. Reclus wanted to represent the state of geographical science any time when people would come to study and visit the monument.
The Monument would be a working tool rather than a fairground attraction, rather than a museum it should be seen as a library of real world information. A cutting edge library where visitors can pick out what ever interests them and come away with a new piece of wisdom or knowledge artifact based on observations.
The Grand Globe project is in great continuity with the educational tool offered by Patrick Geddes known as the Outlook Tower. (Chabard, 2001).
Relations between Patrick Geddes and Elisee Reclus were both numerous and fruitful.
attractions made for Expo 1900 is finally a real counterpoint to the project designed by Reclus. All the achievements that give a certain image to see the earth at the same time offer a playful and exciting. Around the world, a sort of human zoo, presents a survey run by indigenous costumes that leave staring at natural settings representing all countries in the world (Neurdein, Baschet, 1900). In Cinéorama, "the most wonderful synthesis of great spectacles of nature," the audience, placed on a platform contained a basket ball, watching a climb on screens located all around them (Paris Exhibition, 1900 ). Another type of trip is offered by the Maréorama reproducing the illusion of cruise visitors sit in rocking chairs placed on the deck of a ship in motion. Images of the crossing of the Mediterranean are accompanied by a brisk wind and iodine. Finally, it is through the doors of a luxury car on the Trans-Siberian travelers are virtual scrolling landscapes from Moscow to Beijing. Movements vibrations make a little more the illusion of a real journey (Book of World Fairs, 1983).
Painted canvas, mobile, movies, animations, the Exhibition of 1900 unfortunately emphasizes movement and leaves little room for reflection and study.
Georama definition: a large globe or sphere in which a spectator can stand and view a representation of the earth’s surface.
Un globe terrestre pour l'Exposition universelle de 1900. L'utopie géographique d'Élisée Reclus - Cairn.info Google Translate
When the Reclus "Globe" project was abandoned in 1900, Geddes forwarded proposals for a temporary Outlook Tower to be located on the Panoramic gallery at the "Trocadéro Palace" in Paris.
The recurrence of the Outlook Tower theme in these various enterprises suggests how important the project was to Geddes and how difficult it was to achieve at Short's Observatory in Edinburgh.
A First Visit to the Outlook Tower, the small guidebook he and his colleagues published in 1906, contains his first description of the project in completed form. This text, and the coherent state of the demonstration, made its mark on subsequent accounts by numerous visitors to the Tower, and notably that by Bertrand Faure. From 1905 onwards, Geddes continued to devise and build Outlook Towers in the course of his numerous travels, in India [1914-1924, notably at Indore]; New York [1923]; the Scottish College, Montpellier [1924]; and at Domme in the Dordogne, where the Tower was built by Paul Reclus in 1937, after Geddes's death.
With his training in the Natural Sciences- biology and botany- Geddes considered first-hand observation of phenomena to be the basis of knowledge; being at the interface between seeing and learning, between thought and experience, observation was to him at once a tool and a method, a means and an end. Geddes therefore considered the eye to be an organ of fundamental importance to intelligence, for it provided the means to decipher and understand the world. Having nearly gone blind when on a study tour of Mexico in 1879, Geddes always nurtured a predilection for the visual: painting, photography, optical instruments, diagrams and other forms of graphic representation. This predilection was particularly evident in the conjunction of several major visual themes of Western culture at the Outlook Tower : prospect and aspect, perspective projection and panoramic vision, blindness and visual maieutics, Speculum Mundi and Camera Obscura.
In a way, the principal aim of the Outlook Tower manifest in his 1906 guidebook was to restore the lost inter-relationship between individuals and their geographical space, their historic heritage and the outer world.
To Geddes, re-situating the individual in the world was the basic condition for changing the course of human evolution and opening up a brighter future. This overall aim, as set out by essentially visual means at the Outlook Tower, could be read almost literally as the very definition of outlook : "a place for looking out from; a view or prospect; a prospect for the future; a mental point of view; a vigilant watch" .
The outlook towers aim was to help people get a clear idea of its relation to the world at large.
The concept of Outlook Tower was tried elsewhere. When 70 years Patrick Geddes moved to Montpellier, France where he bought land on a hill with a view over the city, built a house and incorporated another Outlook Tower. The house became the Scots College (College Des Ecossais).
The Outlook Tower should be seen in terms of a scientific experiment to which visitors were subjected by Geddes, in order to awaken and heighten their visual faculties. The sequence of strongly contrasting physical experiences.
Included climbing the spiral staircase to the top of the Tower, "because the exertion of climbing makes one's blood circulate more rapidly, thus clearing the fog out of the brain and preparing one physically for the mental thrill of these outlooks" ; the discovery of the landscape as seen from above, breaking radically with the perception of the passer-by; adjusting to an initial change in lighting levels on visiting the Camera Obscura; being dazzled on leaving the Camera; rediscovering the landscape in all its brilliance, then being plunged into solitary confinement in the Meditation Cell - a tiny, windowless room contrasting with the open, panoramic expanse offered by the roof-top terrace, and so on. Visitors kept having to adapt to different visual modes - from direct to indirect, from long-range to close-up, from the analytic to the synoptic. Sometimes their visual range was stretched to the horizon [on the roof-terrace], sometimes it was restricted [to the screen in the Camera Obscura]. By such means, visitors were invited to experience all the mysteries of vision. Indeed, the Camera Obscura, which was among the first stopping points on the itinerary, could be perceived as a huge, accessible eye - a vertiginous encapsulation offering visitors the spectacle of what their own eye could see. Detached from the visible in this darkened room, visitors could experience the physical phenomenon of vision both internally and externally.
Got this far.... The city seen from above read rest
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