Interviewing walls: how to read the surfaces of the city

Surfaces taught me everything I know about cities. Our streets and public walls are covered with posters, signs, art and graffiti, yet we rarely think about their collective role in shaping social values.
Join me for a morning of interviewing walls, a method I developed in my research on graffiti, urban surfaces and the right to the city. In this two-hour workshop, we will explore how urban walls and surfaces offer insights into communities and public life, by reading the messages, materials, and images displayed in the city.
The workshop has two parts: we begin with an indoor discussion of urban visual culture and public walls, and explore the wall interview method. Then we develop a wall interview together, and put it to the test on the streets of Melbourne in the second part of the workshop.
How are urban surfaces designed and managed to support values of public order and private property? How are these subverted by creative and political voices? And who should decide what cities look like?
Walls speak. Are you listening?
Sabina Andron is a cities scholar specializing in creative and transgressive public cultures, with an interest in the semiotics of urban walls, surfaces, and public spaces. She works on urban visual culture, graffiti, and signage, to examine the role of public images in urban citizenship and governance.
Her first monograph, Urban surfaces, graffiti, and the right to the city (Routledge 2023) establishes a research field of surface studies, looking at how surfaces articulate cultures of control and resistance in cities.
Sabina is a Postdoc Fellow in Cities and Urbanism at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Cities. She previously taught at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, where she received her Architectural History and Theory PhD in 2018.

Event Details:

Date: Saturday 25 May 2024
Time: 10:30am - 12:30pm
Location: Japanese Room, Level 4, Glyn Davis Building, followed by a walk East toward Fitzroy.

The Glyn Davis Building is wheelchair accessible. If you have any questions about your visit don't hesitate to email us at [email protected].

Parking is available at the

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Host or Publisher Melbourne School of Design