Reading Socio-Spatial Interplay - Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i ...

R E A D I N G S O C I O - S P A T I A L I N T E R P L A Y P A R T 1Lefebvre’s theory of social space (production) is the practice, or theencounter of different practices.Urban transformation expresses the development of society (economicallyculturally, technologically and socialy) in complex physical environments.Urban areas change role and function in different ways: by being rebuilt, bybeing used in new ways by new groups of users, and by that people’s desires,expectations and images of what happens where (in the urban landscape) arechanged through narratives that are communicated either by media orindividuals, but also through people’s different experiences of encounters indifferent socio-spatial situations. While Bourdieu distinguishes homologies ina social space of consumer practices, Lefebvre distinguishes homologies ofencounters in his reading of the rhythms of the city: In his essay on “rhythmanalytic”interpretation of urban life: “Seen from the window”, 173 Lefebvredescribes the different rhythms as differences in the streams of encounters,and as differences in the time-sets of practices: tourists, shoppers,commuters, people passing through, neighbours’ everyday activities,motorized traffic, etc.Spatiality – space-time-practice as rhythmic differences in energy and encountersIn a city people come together in different ways (interaction, confrontation,and just parallel co-use of same space at same time), and in different sociospatialsituations – at different physical places with different spatialconfiguration. Architectural spaces (urban physical form) are designed andconfigured differently in places having or meant to have different functions inthe urban landscape. Different morphological systems (architectural spatialsystems) are, and have been, produced in different urban societies (historicaland geographical variations) in order to serve as environmental tools fordifferent kinds of more or less public or private, culturally differentiatedsocial situations (urban social form, social morphologies). Studies of thesubdivision of our social world and the spaces we inhabit as public andprivate spheres, degrees of exclusiveness and openness, modes of socialencounter and associations with space have been discussed in diverseliterature on how urban architecture and urban design does, could or shouldprovide spaces for differentiated encounters – at different levels. 174Contrary to such studies that present typical, almost universal categories ofelements of socio-spatial situations or urban encounters (although withcultural, historical and geographical variations), Lefebvre presents thecontextual spatial differences (within an urban landscape and also betweendifferent urban landscapes) as rhythmic differences in spatial encounters: The173 Lefebvre 1996: p. 219-227, (1992: 41-53).174 Cf. for instance Madanipour 2003, Gehl 1971, Rapoport 1994, Kostof 1991, Alexander 1977 and 1979, etc.91