Public Gratification Palace:

An Applied Framework for Increased Civic Engagement

0 Preface

If the Fun Palace (1960-1976) –initiated by British theater director, Joan Littlewood (1914-2002), designed by British architect Cedric Price (1934-2003) and British cybernetician Gordon Pask (1928-1996) –is understood as a muse for physical public infrastructure through Cybernetic System thinking, then the parameters of this cybernetic system could undoubtedly be incorporated in your smartphone today, such that the Palace would be the intersection between your smartphone and the neighborhood park, that unshaded plaza a few blocks away, or that train stop with a single bench. The Palace is the public at play; it is the natural derivative between Public Space and Instant Gratification methods used in social media platforms. The Public Gratification Palace can be wherever one may seek an instant gratifying, dopamine filled improvement on the public environment with their ever-engaging local community!

It is in this search for the Public at Play that ignited my motivations to explore how intimate and close we can, as urban residents, contribute and manifest the public places we go and experience.

How to bring a more intuitive and practical experience to civic engagement and participatory design processes,
nested in the comfort and familiarity of our daily technological interactions?

The Public Gratification Palace Framework comes from historical literature reviews, and contemporary methods and precedents studies (Chapters 1 to 4) >> Jiang, J., Spencer, L., Werner L.C.: Public Gratification Palace: A Framework for Increased Civic Engagement. In: Proceedings Media Architecture Biennale 2021

︎︎︎ Link to Conference Paper

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