Henri Lefebvre gave suggestive hints at a theory of urban form that have inspired those involved ... more Henri Lefebvre gave suggestive hints at a theory of urban form that have inspired those involved in the design and planning disciplines. His search was for an urban praxis that opened potentials for new forms of social relations and to this end he proposed a ‘metaphilosophy’ designed to engage with the open-ended material relations of cities and societies. This contradicted however his Marxist commitment to a ‘finality’ of man and society and his association of technology with alienation. We try here to rethink technology as intrinsic to human and social life: not as means to realise thought in the materialisation of spaces and societies, but as medium and source, in processes of historical realisation, of orders that comes before thought in human practice. We relate this to ‘worlds’ of practice which are the technically and historically constructed ‘metaphilosophical’ ‘totalities’ within which we are enabled and act. This pluralises and technologises ‘world’, and Lefebvre’s ‘urban form’ becomes a construction of multiple material-technological ‘worlds’, each perceived, conceived and lived as wholes. These articulate with one another and evolve historically. It is the articulations and interfaces between spaces rather than the spaces themselves which locate the places of productivity and vitality in the city. The question of an open urban shifts subtly from one of resistance to the abstract rationalities of ‘planning’ or an ‘authoritarian state’ to one of the maintenance of open relations between different spaces each with their necessary technical or abstract rationalities.
Henri Lefebvre gave suggestive hints at a theory of urban form that have inspired those involved ... more Henri Lefebvre gave suggestive hints at a theory of urban form that have inspired those involved in the design and planning disciplines. His search was for an urban praxis that opened potentials for new forms of social relations and to this end he proposed a ‘metaphilosophy’ designed to engage with the open-ended material relations of cities and societies. This contradicted however his Marxist commitment to a ‘finality’ of man and society and his association of technology with alienation. We try here to rethink technology as intrinsic to human and social life: not as means to realise thought in the materialisation of spaces and societies, but as medium and source, in processes of historical realisation, of orders that comes before thought in human practice. We relate this to ‘worlds’ of practice which are the technically and historically constructed ‘metaphilosophical’ ‘totalities’ within which we are enabled and act. This pluralises and technologises ‘world’, and Lefebvre’s ‘urban form’ becomes a construction of multiple material-technological ‘worlds’, each perceived, conceived and lived as wholes. These articulate with one another and evolve historically. It is the articulations and interfaces between spaces rather than the spaces themselves which locate the places of productivity and vitality in the city. The question of an open urban shifts subtly from one of resistance to the abstract rationalities of ‘planning’ or an ‘authoritarian state’ to one of the maintenance of open relations between different spaces each with their necessary technical or abstract rationalities.
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Papers by T. Jonauskis