In Search of Place by University of Washington

“In Search of Place” is an exhibition poster series exploring what elements of spaces are more personally significant in facilitating placemaking processes and making meaningful spaces. The series were created as part of a class assignment inspired by the “quantified self” research projects, which aim to gain self-knowledge through self-tracking personal data.

In the current trends of rapid changes to the built environment of Seattle, disappearing third spaces, and deprioritization and/or inequitable disinvestment of the public realm, understanding what elements and dynamics are personally significant in gaining a sense of place in my environment can be helpful for others to understand what factors work for them and for individuals seeking to foster placemaking.

Over the course of 5 weeks, I collected spatial data, the locations I visited, and social data, the interactions I engaged in, and used them to create a series of visualizations to understand my own sense of place. As a college student living in Seattle, most of the spaces and interactions are centered around the campus and nearby neighborhoods. For the collage images of the poster, I took photos while on regular walking commutes, primarily in the University District, the general college town vicinity of my campus. I ended the project with this formula with how I build my sense of place: Sense of Belonging + Sense of Agency = Personal Sense of Place.