Space as Situated Analysis

My purpose with this text is to recuperate the theme of the spatial condition to the field of architectural theory. The spatial condition has been in general a secondary protagonist in the theory of architecture where, traditionally, the aesthetic and technological appreciation of buildings has by far dominated over their appreciation as spatial structures endowed with symbolic and use values that come from the way space is experienced. This spatial dimension of architecture is acknowledged, and has its performance scrutinized, in the work of different authors, from the end of the nineteenth century on. The work presented in what follows aims at circumscribing what is specific in this architectural knowledge and, moreover, to show that the theories given by these authors present a conceptual convergence, and often coincidence, so configuring today a clearly identifiable line of research. Yet this review has not the ambition of exhausting the variety of literature that has dealt with this subject. In fact, more important than these authors is the way the concepts they have presented, during this last century, have become articulated in the formulation of a theory of space. Moreover the ambition here is to raise in the reader -architect, researcher or student -the curiosity for the knowledge about the way spatiality works in architecture.

Each person has a different perception of the reality surrounding them. The same group of objects, the same spaces are judged according to different reference systems, they are connected differently, they have different meanings. Each person re-creates their own world, by collating different bits of objective reality into a personal space - or a place. Thus, before discussing the qualities of private versus public space, there is a fundamental aspect worth discussing, and this is the concept of space itself. Space - which is considered to be a homogenous and unorganised entity, as it will be shown - has the ability to become a place - a meaningful, organised and well defined entity. Therefore, a large variety of theories has been issued, in order to explain this shift in quality, which defines the process of turning a space into a place. Following the same chain of thoughts, this paper proposes an analysis which will try to match three different interpretations of the abovementioned process - Yi-Fu Tuan’s interpretation of space as movement and place as repose, Edward Soja’s Thirdspace theory, and Doreen Massey’s understanding of space as a process - to a matching number of spatial - artistic or architectural - experiments. The aim of this exercise is to discuss how these three particular theories can be applied or translated into actual projects and how can the projects themselves alter or recalibrate the perception of the space-place relationship itself - be it a public or private one. After all, each theory should find its echo in a practical endeavour.

The theory of architecture has an inquisitory point of view through the design, production or the use of space. Thinking upon the space and its interrelations between other subjects, the main problematic of this research is the space as configuration: how it constitutes itself and relates with human. Thus, the point can be divided into two groups which are the physical formation of the space and the social experience of the person self. Relating these two subjects, the patterns of space and the patterns of culture comes up to the issue. Spatial configuration can be defined as a progressive process which connects the built environment and the human's spatial experience and behaviour. Nevertheless, apart from this connection the configuration of space has also a cultural meaning which relates with the everyday life living patterns. With this regard, firstly the theoretical background is being discussed through examining the physical formation of the space: shape and spatial configuration. Secondly, the social experience of the human is being discussed while understanding human's spatial experience and cultural living patterns. On the third part, the space syntax technique opened up to the issue, reading both the patterns of space and culture. It is aimed to see the possibilities of space syntax in order to understand the social logic of the space. Thus, some plans will be analysed using the space syntax diagrammes and comparisons are being made. The relation between the patterns of space and culture will be investigated. The findings will be discussed upon the space syntax research which defines spatial configuration as the understanding of social dimension in human environment. Introduction Description of the Subject Built form (shape) can be defined as a physical appearance in architecture. Nevertheless, it constitutes a space having configurational properties which also have social and cultural meanings. Spatial arrangements consist of several organizational units in which different living patterns occur. Thus it becomes important to make a connection between the physical arrangements and the cultural living patterns of the space. According to Rapoport (1980), environments are thought before they are built. The design of a space has a prethinking process. Architects configure the space as they use this prethinking and designing process. Then there is a process of producing and using the space as it is presented. Pearson & Richards (1994) examines this as ''We build in order to think and act. The relationship is essentially dynamic and reflexive. Winston Churchill said that-first we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us-''. So we can consider that there is a kind of interaction between the space we built and the built space that effects us. The conception of a space can be shallowly defined as a series of objects that exists and the organisation of them or in other words the way they come together. So the first part of the research subject can be examined the space and the spatial organisation. On the other hand, there is also a human who involve in the space and constitute a new kind of meaning in the space. Heidegger focuses on this point as ''What is being?'' and the word ''Dasein'' which refers to ''Being there''. For Heidegger, a building was built according to the specifics of place and inhabitants, shaped by its physical and human topography (Sharr, 2007). Thus, the second part comprises from the human as involving in the space with its internal experiences. In addition, the human spatial experience lead us to the cultural living patterns. The reason why there is a two-sided relation between the space and the human is that of the patterns of the space which affect the human and the patterns of the culture that influence the space. The third part of the subject is then understanding both the patterns of space and the culture.

2007

This paper investigates the role of spatial structure and “urban narrative” in individual’s experience of a “place”. The spatial structure describes the actual space that individual navigates and occupies through its everyday activities. Whereas the term “urban narrative” describes the factors in urban history and social culture that create an imagined space that evolves through historical time and is navigated through city’s cultural mythology. A main challenge that urban designers and planners are facing is of creating recognisable and valued “places” that people would like to live and work in. This paper deals with the nature of neighbourhood as spatial, social and economic phenomenon and brings to the fore the “sense of place” as its intrinsic characteristic. It is acknowledged that the latter has a long history of investigation. However, to date the research has focused either on individual’s perceptions or attitudes towards geographical spaces or the local design features of u...

A central theme in phenomenological research is the pre-reflective but learned intentionality of the body, which after French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, has come to be called “body-subject”—i.e., pre-reflective corporeal awareness manifested through action and typically in sync with and enmeshed in the physical world in which the action unfolds. A major concern for architectural research is the taken-for-granted sensibility of body-subject to manifest in extended ways over time and space. One can ask how routine actions and behaviors of individuals coming together regularly in an environment can transform that environment into a place with a unique dynamic and character—a lived situation I have termed “place ballet.” In this presentation, I interpret architectural theorist Bill Hillier’s space syntax theory phenomenologically to suggest how qualities of the designed environment—specifically, pathway structure—might contribute to sustaining or stymieing place ballet.

Mapping Urban Spaces, 2021

Let us imagine a work of architecture at the moment of its emergence, merging design with construction, from the originating idea all the way to the keystone, but still without any imputation of a meaningful purpose, without aligning it with the existing location, and without any presuppositions concerning the time that may have elapsed, which is to say, in relation to a " framework," and in the absence of any internal or external " padding," 1 so to speak: at this point, it becomes conceivable that neither " purpose," nor " place," nor " time" is among the attributes of a building, despite the fact that these factors have, more or less, influenced its realization as " external" factors. The external factors determine the "inner" specifications-those concerning "materials," "construction," "form," "function," and " space"-all of which emerge, in turn, as characteristic attributes of the building itself. The essential work of design and construction also consists, then, in transferring such external conditions, by means of the idea, into the architecture, into the building, inscribing them onto its inner specifications. 2 This is not, however, the time or place to investigate this process further or to reflect upon the significance of the design process, the idea, or this process of transfer: what is pursued here instead is the content of these basic concepts. In the discipline of architecture today, " space" is perhaps among the most controversial concepts, and perhaps the most ambiguous, t oo-but why should this be the case? While in previous eras, disputes over the conceptual and contentual determination of " space" were invested with claims to philosophical and physical authority, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the discourse on space migrated into various disciplines, among them art history, sociology, phenomenology, and psychology, but the natural sciences in particular. Today, the implications of the term " space" and the theoretical model that underlies it are still being negotiated and affirmed in diverse ways within the various disciplines. It appears that only a transdisciplinary history of the concept could provide insight here, one that would bring together the various " evolutionary" threads of understanding and imagination, meaning and content, and theoretical models and synesthetic perception together in a nuanced way. With the spatial turn in the cultural and social sciences that began in the late 1980s, and also with the succeeding revival of an architectural and theoretical discourse on space, spaces, and spatiality 3 around the turn of the millennium, a disciplinary differentiation of conceptual terminology has become evident.

Logos Universality Mentality Education Novelty: Philosophy & Humanistic Sciences, 2018

During the last century, in social and humanistic sciences, the dominant perspective on space was the political economy, focusing on how space relates to macro-social phenomena and minimizing the role of the micro-social ones, by conceptualizing space as a social force, constraining social actions. Despite sporadic attempts to theorize how people could escape the dominance of power by investing spaces with subjective meanings, appropriating spaces through body practices, or anchoring memories and identities into specific spaces, there is still a need to understand how spaces are lived and how daily life spatial contexts become microfoundations for social actions. I conduct an interpretive synthesis to show how social scientists borrowed ideas from philosophers to understand the phenomenology of everyday life by capturing the experience of urban, residential, and domestic space. I explore space through phenomenological lenses to clarify concepts as: the constitution of space through perception, the sensorial and emotional experience of space and the atmosphere of a specific place, the sense of space, the meaning of feeling at home and being intimate with a particular place, the practice of home as a body extension. To nuance these ideas, I use results from four research projects I participated in: Couple living space in Brasov metropolitan area; Hidden faces of homelessness - Measuring homelessness in Europe; Inhabiting urban places and experiencing citizenship; I was a citizen of Stalin town. I conclude by extracting implications for the sociology of space field

The Journal of Space Syntax, 2010

Architecture is frequently considered to be a craft, an art or a technique. This article also holds it to be a science, which allows us to look at places from a specific point of view, one not akin to those of other disciplines. In examining modalities of knowledge, I suggest there has been a change of paradigm in the field in recent decades, one that recovers reflexive-theoretical knowledge. Asserting architecture to be a scientific discipline means not denying, but rather strengthening interdisciplinarity in dealing with questions related to places produced or appropriated by people. In what follows, therefore, I emphasise contributions by authors from other disciplinary fields, who look at places from a morphological point of view. I explore architecture as an independent variable: once ready, it affects people in various ways, the sociological way included. The latter may be encapsulated in the following questions: does formal-spatial configuration (voids, solids, their relations) imply desirable ways for individuals and groups (social classes, genders, generations) to locate themselves in places or to move through them, and consequently desirable conditions for personal encounters and avoidances and for the visibility of one another? Does the type, quantity and relative location of activities imply desirable patterns for the utilization of places, in space and time? 1

Communicating the City: Meanings, Practices, Interactions, 2017

Archidoct, 2022

Traditionally, space and place are positioned as diametrically opposed concepts in which the presence of one excludes the possibility of the other. The axiological content assigned to these concepts follows from this opposition. As place is the site of enriched human experience and significant associations, it follows that space is endless, universal, and empty of human value. This article examines our normative conceptualization of space through considering its relationship with time and human presence. Space, as a situated experience, can be considered to contain a large volume of human meaning activated through embodied structures such as image schemas and conceptual metaphors. The suggestion is that our experience of the built environment should not be considered through diametrically opposed concepts but, rather, increasing, and co-existing, levels of specificity. This article considers space to be a socially rich environment rather than a volume devoid of human meaning when it is examined through considerations of time, situatedness, and embodiment.