Is there a connection between strolling and the authenticity of life? How do various theories interpret and metaphorise walking? When did walking become a discipline in its own right? Which brands have shown interest in the topic of "walking," and why have they chosen to delve into it? Do consumers resonate with this branding approach? Has the development of technology influenced the authenticity of our walking experiences? How can we walk more authentically?

I aim to explore how different theories interpret "walking" in various contexts and across different fields. Additionally, I seek to discuss the relationship between these theories and brands, examining how brands narrate the seemingly mundane act of "walking" in diverse ways.

• Architecture

• Branding

• Culture

  • Urban Culture

  • Pop Culture

  • Visual Culture

• Literature

• Sociology

  • Modernology / 考现学

I shared some of my fragmented thoughts related to Flaneur, Street Observation, Strollogy with Emilie. I had the bias that 'many people now travel for the sake of being Instagrammable', and I believe that observing the streets and daily life might be a valuable way of engagement.

Emilie told me the "DÉRIVE" theory.

another rabbit hole! ➝

Situationist International, Guy Debord, Derive, Psychogeography

"De Lauwe diagrams all the movements made in the space of one year by a student living in the 16th Arrondissement. The student's itinerary forms a small triangle with no significant deviations, the three apexes of which are the School of Political Sciences, her residence, and that of her piano teacher."

I started to reflect on my own life and tried to document my everyday life.

Emilie said that a crucial aspect of psychogeography is establishing one's own scale to measure the city. Besides Google Maps, are there other ways to map the city? She gave an example of an artist who is exploring cities by mapping their smells.

If I were to create a London guide, what would be the psychogeographic scale or standard? Would it be based on colours, such as the London Green Guide? Or perhaps a specific icon, like seeking all smile faces in London? Considering the aimless wandering nature of the Derive, should such a standard even exist???

I should create my own standard/toolkit to derive in London

• Starting from a predetermined location

• Three hours of derive

• No Google Maps or GPS, trust and train your instinct and sense of direction

• Take a camera and record everything that you observe and feel interesting

• When the derive is finished, organise all the photos and create a brief summary.

*** Maybe I should do this derive once a week and invite my friends to do it with me?

It's missing the connection with BRANDING. Are there any brands that have already adopted this image? How could brands change the phenomenon? Why are brands the best way to address this issue?"

I have to weave branding into my filed of study. Which brands incorporate the intention of flâneur into their strategies? I started researching, and found that many fashion brands seem to enjoy exploring themes related to 'urban strolling.' Examples include the LV City Guides, HERMES hosting an exhibition named FLÂNEUR FOREVER, etc.

*** Editor-in-chief: 木下孝浩 Takahiro Kinoshita

LifeWear Magazine focus lots of content on simple joy，自由漫步的 Flaneur 形象会是 Lifewear Magazine 强调 Simple Joy of Everyday Life的一个强有力工具吗？

flaneur ->

aimless wandering ->

simple joy in the city ->

simple joy of everyday life

The column about traveling -

UNIQLO AND OUR TOWN

👉 [ UNIQLO is part of the community.]

vol.01 Hamburg

vol.02 Gothenburg

vol.03 Taipei

vol.04 Paris

vol.05 Warsaw

vol.06 Kunming

History of Parco

https://psychogeographicreview.com/baudelaire-benjamin-and-the-birth-of-the-flaneur/

这篇文章后面的评论区 comment by Julian Beere

LOTUS EATER or AGAINST COMMODIFICATION OF PUBLIC SPACES?

LOTUS EATER:

"a person who spends their time indulging in pleasure and luxury rather than dealing with practical concerns". (wikipedia)

_____

[ my point, however, is in the transmogrification of the word “flâneur” over the years from a somewhat pejorative term to one which elicits nuanced notions of virtue, as if the label itself had been fiddled with by those with vested interest — writers, artists and the like, who, marked as such and suffering under the weight of its implication, put time and effort into altering the tone of its import, elevating it with some success to its current status as an epithet of favourable connotation。]

[ a flâneur is, at worst, little more than a stylised lotus-eater (albeit a percipient one with a conscience), and, at best, a fancy moniker for an observer of life. And whom among us can not lay claim to that? ]

[Oscar Wilde: I amused myself with being a flâneur, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds.”]

walk in the debauched milieu

(often drunk, not in a sober mood)

"Sneaking in and wandering around meant the breaking of rules and the possibility of knowledge recuperation."

Enjoy a cup of coffee roasted that same morning, as you walk down a street that hasn’t changed in two centuries. From classic brasseries and gorgeous old bookshops, to lively markets, let’s be flâneurs and peruse these spirited institutions.

介绍Galerie Véro-Dodat时，文案：

The shopping arcades are a central pleasure of wandering around Paris. These “passages,” as they’re fondly called, have the air of a bygone century. Built in 1826, the Neoclassical structure of Galerie Véro-Dodat features diamond-shaped floor tiles. In its heyday, this was a place of smart boutiques and galleries, teeming with travellers waiting for carriages. There’s no better place than the terrace of Le Café de l’Epoque for savouring the arcade’s bourgeois history.

—— resonate with Walter Benjamin's ARCADE PROJECT

导语：

The people of Taipei are adept at finding “simple joys” throughout the city. .... In good weather, you can hop off of the subway and onto a rental bike. ....Let’s try some of the simple joys.

すれちがう人が美しい〜渋谷公園通り〜

/ Walkers passing by are beautiful /

👆

商店不是主角，街上的行人才是主角。

建筑之间 > 建筑内部

[ METHODOLOGY ]

定点観測 / Fixed-Point Observations

(developed from 考现学 / Modernology)

Fixed-Point Observations

an application of the contemporary adaptation of the Modernology. Over the past 41 years, it has involved capturing street photography and conducting interviews with young people and fashion in Shibuya, Harajuku, and Shinjuku.

观察路上行人->

primary research 的最直接来源 ->

分析观察结果->

推演 branding & marketing strategies

新建築：The image of the city created by fashion

https://shinkenchiku.online/column/7580/

这个采访里面，

ACROSS主编高野公三子对【定点观测】的定义：

这是今和次郎考现学Modernology的现代应用。每个月的第一个星期六，ACROSS会在涩谷、原宿和新宿的三个地点同时进行街头观察，统计男性路人、女性路人、穿裙子的女性比例、穿当时流行的物品和款式的女性比例（根据事先调查确定），总共拍摄约 600 张快照，采访约 30 人。

会在观测之前事先做一些调查与调研，从而确定每个月的观察主题，在观察之前，也会对流行趋势进行预测。

bias / hypothesis of fashion trend -> observe -> conclusion

——“找回人的感觉与敏感性”

ファッションがつくり上げる都市のイメージ

Popeye Cityboy 风格的来源——

就可以溯源到70年代常春藤风格了

From Popeye to Uniqlo

bring / CITYBOY / to the fast-fashion brand

Drifting toward a Situationist Revolution

Watching Your Step: The history and Practice of the Flaneur

The Painter of Modern Life

Thanks to these reading about walking.

ROJO's influence

（What we observe in the streets are those design that was not out for design's sack but for a functional need, it's grass-rooted, from bottom to above. ）

Made In Tokyo: Atelier Bow-Wow

"A guide book to the unique modernity of Tokyo's urban space through the architecture that architects would like to forget. Born of a functional need rather than aesthetic ideal, golf range nets span spaghetti snack bars and a host of 70 other remarkable combinations are pictured and described in this quintessential glimpse of Tokyo's architectural grass roots."

West: from Surrealists to S.I to Fluxus.

East: from Modernology, to young students, to ROJO, to Atelier BOW WOW.

Hermès creative director Pierre-Alexis Dumas recalled the words of the great French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau: 'I like to be busy doing nothing, … to come and go as the whim takes me, to change my plan at every moment, … to while away the day without purpose.'

“Flânerie, that wonderfully liberating art of urban wandering, is second nature to Hermès”

WHAT are in this exhibition:

Objects from the private collection of founder Emile Hermès, along with various pieces from the French fashion house, will be displayed in eleven interactive rooms

Flaneur ---> hermes exhibition theme ---> the brand's long history with traveling

Flaneur --\-> why do we need all these objects to be a flaneur? --\-> 反例：S.I (stroll with nothing) (walk is walk)

Guy Debord's Society of spectacle

Hermes is creating an exhibition, and lots of spectacles.

flaneur = a material of shaping the spectacle

commodity fetishism

Debord:

"The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. It says nothing more than “that which appears is good, that which is good appears. The attitude which it demands in principle is passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance."

When I started thinking about this question, I tried to write down all the names of brands that ran into my mind that "they might have done something related to strolling."

Luxuries - Hermes, Lemaire, LV etc...

Retail - Uniqlo? zara?

Airline - Cathay Pacific, Lufthansa, British Airline etc..

Hotels - AMAN, Rosewood, etc.. Start from those boutique hotels

F&B - 不少中国新消费的品牌在做这件事，seesaw咖啡、三顿半、gaga等等

CAR BRANDS - mini cooper (about travel but not about stroll)

outdoor brands- snowpeak, patagonia, etc..?

• What is the brand trying to solve?

• Can the brand help people / help myself to stroll as S.I's derive?

• The brand mission is clear (encourage people to stroll authentically) but how to deliver the brand's mission?

• Can I use Google Maps / GPS?

• How to avoid big data and social media recommendations?

• Will I dare to trust my instinct?

• Will I dare to trust my instinct again when I was betrayed by it?(Like follow my instinct to enter a restaurant but turn out the restaurant is awful)

"He is persistently ungainly."

shooting some scenes in Elephant and Castle

Topics about Baudelaire, modernism, flaneur in Benjamin's eyes.

日本的【路上观察】是在 100 年之间一代代发展的。

从20年代的考现学，到七八十年代的路上观察学，到九十年代的犬吠工作室，从一门与建筑/设计领域相关的研究方法，变成了普通人看待世界的一种方式。

Japan's cities: high density and extensive layers

BRANDING CREATIVITY CREATIVE CITIES, STREET ART, AND “MAKING YOUR NAME SING”

我也曾想过或许可以尝试公交车，但是公交车的 perspective 是被限制了的，就算坐在公车二层的第一排，也只能往前看最多扫过一侧的风景。只有走路可以给我最大的自由度与自主权，我能决定自己看到的东西，或者说，只有走路能让我深入体验、实验这种关于走路的真实性。

Every week, at least three days, I take the Northern Line tube from Highgate to Elephant & Castle in the morning. (Usually, I catch the 9:34 train because it's past the peak at 9:30, and the fare drops from £3.70 to £1.95. However, this also means I'm basically 5-10 minutes late for school, sorry for that!)

Inside the carriage, there's polluted air and strong noise, hardly any scenery, just commuters and carriage advertisements. Although observing different people's outfits and what they do on the tube is interesting to me, I still feel like something is missing.

On the morning of February 14th, also on the Northern Line to LCC, I suddenly thought, why not try walking along this tube line above ground? Since it's not a short distance, I've also considered trying the bus, but the perspective from the bus is limited.

Even if I sit in the front row on the second floor, I can only see the scenery on one side at most. Only walking can give me the greatest freedom and autonomy. I can decide what I see, or rather, only walking allows me to deeply experience and experiment with the authenticity of walking.

His perception of the landscape is another thing altogether. He speaks primarily about its use, exploitation and yield—in marked contrast to the urban dweller, for he regards the landscape neither with a vested interest nor with a quick eye for soil quality or the most suitable site for seed potatoes. The urban dweller perceives the landscape quasi in aesthetic terms. He likes the way the trail winds around the hill and it never strikes him that this same trail might be a hindrance to rationalized agriculture.对于同样一条小径或者一片田地农民想的可能是卷心菜数熟了吗樱桃熟了吗，他关心的是土地的利用、开发以及产出，城市居民则是用准美学的方式来感知景观。

O happy People of the Fields, not yet Wakend to freedom.

来自席勒的诗歌。The city dweller sees a peasant and says: "O happy People of the Fields, not yet Wakend to freedom." Schiller's urban dweller implies that peasants are a part of these climes, a part of this rural fabric, and may count themselves lucky, to be able to work there, because theirs is a natural condition; whereas we urban dwellers are not so lucky, because we have woken to freedom, which is a great burden.—— We must entertain complex thoughts and can no longer participate actively in the landscape, because we have gained consciousness, an awareness of freedom, and are therefore able to enjoy landscape only in aesthetic。

"if we walkers now visit such a place and hear how Captain Cook and Georg Forster discovered tropical plants that are now on sale in our local florist's store then it opens our eyes and certain things fall into place; and in that respect we add something to the neighbourhood and render visible that which, although present, had hitherto been overlooked."

The first major shift was the railroad introduced in 1840. It allowed one to travel a certain distance at speed. Because a train stops only at stations, the path to a place became increasingly unimportant and destinations increasingly important for the walker, who had meanwhile been reduced to a tourist.

Famous and legendary hotels awaited him at the target destination: the Rigi-Gipfel, the Giess-bach, the Furka and the Belvedere Rhone Glacier were all hotels sought out by the tourist who, if at all possible, booked a room with a view of the local "must-see" sight. His vacation experience rested on the fact that the view and the postcard of it were identical. He was able to throw back the curtains each morning in the most expensive room in the hotel and enjoy the very same view he was already familiar with from a postcard or the hotel brochure. Almost all such destination hotels are now run down. Some have already been demolished, others bailed out by nostalgic fans. The sublime is no longer "in" when it comes to vacations; and this, despite the shortage of tourist accommodation and despite the fact that hordes of people still pass by those panoramic spots. The motorists overnight down in the valley, however, and spend only a few minutes in any sublime spot-after all, they manage to pack in two or three of them in a single day.

I see that as the logical conclusion to landscape development. Everything is everywhere, so one need no longer take a trip. The trip comes to you. The landscape event, for example, or the Finnish-Japanese-style spa experience including views of a mural painting of an Alpine landscape fringed with palms. That is how one reduces the walk to point zero.

to talk things over more, to discuss where the beauty lies in a landscape that we have not yet even recognized as one. Talking about landscapes sure beats using bulldozers to change them.

Because those artists painted pictures of the peat landscape and Rilke wrote about it, simply because it was talked about and its praises sung, this supposedly ugly by-product of agriculture became a thing of beauty.

Worpswede 最开始与艺术毫无关系，但是那些艺术家画了泥炭地景的画，而里尔克写了关于它的诗歌，仅仅是因为谈论它并且赞美它，这个被认为是农业的丑陋副产品变成了一件美好的事物。

The zebra crossing is safe and secure, they say, but in fact we should be able to cross any road safely, anywhere. And over time, the zebra crossing itself comes to be regarded as too unsafe and is replaced by a set of traffic lights at which one must wait for a signal before crossing.

nearly 6 hours walk

from 10.30 to 16.30

the only way