Nadia Lesniarek-Hamid

The Chronic City is a research project, learning from chronic (pain) needs and routines in order to transform design practices in public spaces. Using tactics of continual rehabilitation for system change in the architecture and city design industry. 

The research project functions as a departure point, aiming to use design as a tool to increase access to public life for people which chronic pain, whilst simultaneously using these needs as a lens through which better-healing-design practice might be created for all. To conduct the research I formed a survey, and through physical and online participation, found 12 people with chronic pain to take part in the study. The participants were asked nine questions; from defining their acts of rest and relief, to their favourite places and ideas on how the city needs to change to include them.

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The design strategy that has emerged identifies four typologies of intervention:

Comfort: Create and Adapt regular, comfortable seating (supportive with props)

Social: Create fun and normative installations of rest in public spaces (with an ability to lie down)

Private: Create fully lockable, outdoor rooms for sleep which form a sculptural object from the exterior 

Quiet: Designate and Identify spaces of rest and calm in the city via spatial mechanisms and found through an app.

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The responses naturally situate themselves within different spatial scales relating to the body, the sensorial environment, the social context and the wider city. The project speculates on the opportunities with design, on how participant responses could be turned into policy aims.

The Chronic City video demonstrates what this might look like for the city as a proposal, using the Kings Cross area as a case study.