We no longer linger in public spaces and even if we are able to, we’re inevitably locked into our phonesīut the poor old Olympic Park mustn’t carry the can for all our ills. It’s how we learn to live with each other. And an encounter, he reminds us, is so crucial because it offers the possibility to “sit with the discomfort of our differences until something new blooms out of them”. In this way the opportunity for random, chance encounters has been removed. We no longer linger in public spaces and even if we are able to, we’re inevitably locked into our phones, isolated and unapproachable. At its heart is the idea that in seeking to make our public spaces frictionless and our gadgets ubiquitous, architects, town planners and tech designers have left us little opportunity to do the things that allow us to connect with others. The opportunity for valuable random encounters has been designed out, to our detriment – and it’s something that’s affecting more and more of our public spaces.įield, 39, a “slightly undefinable” artist and writer, is fixated on the idea of these random human encounters – good, bad or indifferent – and has written a book on the subject, Encounterism: the Neglected Joys of Being in Person. But the Olympic Park is a place, he says, that seems to exist mainly for users to be ushered through as swiftly and easily as possible without lingering, except in strictly designated areas. These places invite, say, a pickup football game, a dog let loose, a blanket spread on the ground which can all lead to the kind of human encounters we are increasingly cut off from. It sits in opposition to more traditional public parks that are blank canvases, providing a ragged “geography of openness and possibility”. It’s like: this bit’s for sitting, this bit’s for walking and this is for exercising.” But there’s no scope for the visitors to this park to be able to determine its meaning, which is the true joy of any park. “No one is explicitly telling you don’t do this, don’t do that. “We’re sitting right in the middle of the problem,” he says, gesturing out of a café window towards the Olympic Park in east London. A ndy Field reckons your life doesn’t have enough randomness in it – but don’t worry, it’s not your fault.
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