thistle street nolli - levels of inquiry

The classification of what is public space and private is a highly debated subject and when one looks at an area of a contemporary city and attempts to draw, visually defining the public and private spaces within that area many grey areas emerge and questions are posed by the drawing.

To produce his drawing of Rome, Nolli might too have been confronted by the same or similar questions and would have had to resolve these issues to arrive at his final drawing. 

These observations cause us to speculate about the process by which Nolli arrived at his final drawn plan of Rome. Did he have to establish a set of rules by which he could define whether a space was public or private? i.e. drawn as white or black. Or was it purely for aesthetic reasons that he made these decisions?

In our attempt to draw and model the Thistle Street block in Edinburgh we have identified three elements which depending upon ones perceptions would alter the drawing of the Nolli plan; monetary obligations; periods of time and levels of inquiry.

The above images explore the third element of levels of inquiry. Depending upon the gumption of person walking around the block there are various places that they may or not venture.

- The first Nolli plan represents a person with a high level of inquiry prepared to risk possible confrontation. Perhaps they would venture into a back street car park on Thistle Street Lane to have a better look at the buildings and be approached by a car owner questioning the validity of their presence.

 - The second (middle) Nolli plan conveys the public and private spaces that a typical person might consider appropriate to enter. They are not prepared to cross assumed boundaries such as an open archway into a courtyard and stick to spaces accessed directly of the street.

- The third Nolli represents the block in its most defensive state, where even the back street lanes become private and spaces such as hairdressing salons, the whisky society and banks where users are presumed to be a member or in the case of the salon have an appointment also become private.