The Moving Observer: Walking, Sensory Atmospheres and Situated Urban Evidence (Byrne, Mason, Macpherson, Robinson, Gandy, Wesener, Üstün, Iturra) · LAPIEZA LAB · Anto Lloveras · Socioplastics · 2026

Urban knowledge changes when the observer moves. A street, park, route or neighbourhood does not present the same object to a stationary survey, a passing pedestrian, a cyclist, a participant walking beside a researcher, a camera moving without a predetermined destination, or a body attending to sound, light, smell, fatigue and memory. Movement is not simply a means of reaching the field; it is one of the conditions through which the field becomes knowable. Byrne’s distinction between structured and naturalistic observation makes this explicit at the level of research design: observation is an interpretive act whose validity depends on where, when and how attention is organised, not a transparent extraction of facts from space.