Heightened Level of Realism

"Our society tries to understand its own structure, and builds its physical extensions on the earth's surface, guided by blank slate hypothesis. City planners believe that people's taste for green, for functions, is just social construction. We do no not inhabit architectural space simply for shelter. We do so because we need the experience of space." (Salingaros; Jane Rendell "Critical Architecture")

When the space can understand what it is what we appreciate about it, that space can sustain, replicate or even enhance the aspects that make it special on a personal level. When architectural space has a true communicative capability, it can foster a heightened sense of attachment.

"It is a well known saying that you see your habitat anew through the eyes of a stranger. It's a cliche so it must be true. Take a guide of your own city. For once try to follow its instructions and become a tourist in your home town. Everything will be different. First of all, the aesthetic experience becomes central, instead of functional and emotional ones. One must keep in mind though that there are more reasons than one to keep on searching for characteristics and qualities that do not only conform the aesthetic tourist or commercially successful image." (Arjen Oosterman; Volume #4 2009)

A guide is not only a program or a manual for making decisions. It might also show realities that are influenced by design decisions and other interventions. Exploration of the city does not need to start from the idea of continuously aligned streets, but looking at the "blocks" behaving independently. 

So what about taking Google Street View a step further and looking at those immersive spaces with panoramic video? Not only recording stills of streetscapes but exploring the interactive inner lives of city blocks? As Marshall McLuhan has once said: “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us” - our experience of the space.

Spaces that could create communal dialogue

 
"... It can be manifested with an architecture grounded in its use by people. One potent point of departure could be the boundaries and adaptation of space. It might be argued that contemporary architecture is a rethinking and perhaps softening of the borders: inside/ outside, individual and public, program and form, physical and virtual... 

Perhaps the oxymoron can represent a productive paradigm; can these binaries (intersections of public/ private, global/ local, artificial/ natural, monumental/ mundane, complex/ simple, symbolic/ pragmatic, fake/ authentic, active/ passive, thickness/ thinness) lead to a duality capable of blurring the boundaries? How can the unexpected interdependency of extraordinary spaces create a communal/ symbiotic dialogue?" 

Kazuyo Sejima has been appointed as Director for 12th Venice Architecture Biennale.

Proxemics of Space

In 1957 a doctor named Humphrey Osmond began observing the effects of environmental change on the interactions of patients in a mental hospital in Saskatchewan. From that research he eventually identified two major systems for patterning space. Sociofugal space (gridlike) tends to keep people apart and suppress communication while sociopetal space (radial) does just the opposite. It brings people together and stimulates interaction as routes merge and overlap. Many other researchers followed in Osmond’s footsteps, developing a body of work known as “proxemics” to describe the cultural distinctions between intimate, personal, social and public space. The Hidden Dimension by Edward T. Hall is a classic reference on the spatial aspects of human interaction.

Space & Place - Action & Movement

I came across a concise and well-written book by Tim Creswell - Place: A Short Introduction - a text that introduces the fundamental concept of place, marrying everyday uses of the term with the complex theoretical debates. It traces the development of the concept of place from 1950s through its subsequent appropriation by cultural geography and the linking of the place to politics. Below I listed out some of the key thoughts that could become useful for developing my own perceptions of space and its use. If you know any inspirational sources, list them in the comment box!

* Tuan defines space as an open arena of action and movement while place is about stopping and resting and becoming involved. He argues that through human perception and experience we get to know the world through places. The term 'topophilia' was developed to refer to the 'affective bond between people and places' (Tuan in Topophilia, 1974).

* "To live is to live locally, and know is the first of all to know the place one is in" (Casey, 1996). 

* To say a place is socially constructed is to say that it is not natural and given that human forces made a place then human forces can equally importantly undo it. To say something is socially constructed is to say that it is within human power to change it - to change meaning and materiality (Creswell on Harvey).

* Thirdspace is lived space and it interrupts a distinction between perceived places and spatial practices. Thirdspace is practised and lived rather than simply being material (conceived) or mental (perceived).  In these terms places are never established but produced and producing. (Soja, 1999)

* "To be inside a place is to belong to it and identify with it, and the more profoundly inside you are the stronger is the identity of the place" (Relph on placelessness - where someone goes is less important than the act and style of going...)