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 - I N T R O D U C T I O Nprescription environmental tools that can support and bring about a desireddevelopment. By this, we can identify aspects of intended functionalityembedded in different patterns of architectural characteristics. When societaldevelopment is analyzed through successive sequences of architecturalproduction, some essential aspects of the interrelated dynamics betweenarchitecture, ways of life and societal development elude analysis:Somewhere between those historical situations where new patterns inarchitectural production can be observed as architectural manifestations ofsocietal development, changes in ways of life develop within the urbanlandscape by way of changing patterns in individual ways of thinking,choosing and acting. Without bringing about a change the actual architecture,individuals can for instance move to another place, they can seek activitiesand places outside their neighbourhood, they can use architecturalenvironmental facilities in their neighbourhood in other ways than they weredesigned for, and they can express their dissatisfaction or preferences innumerous other ways. This brings us to an overall important question: inwhat ways are aspects of the tangible, architectural environments involved insocio-cultural processes of change?Architecture and analyses of socio-cultural urban transformationIn current urban theories that are based on empirical studies of processes ofurban socio-cultural or socio-economic transformation, the processes of arein general understood and investigated as something taking place almostindependent of architectural space. One example of this is the quitecomprehensive literature on gentrification. Here two main explanatorymodels have been applied in studies of how previously run down workingclass areas in many European and North American cities, have changedfunction, role and image related to new inhabitants, users and activities:In the rent-gap model the architecture of the areas in which new patterns inurban ways of life emerge are in general treated as an almost arbitrarybackdrop: The areas in which these phenomena appear “happens to” havecertain architectural characteristics since they were built at a certain time, andthe many synchronized processes of gentrification going on are explained bya long time suffer from disinvestment, representing a “rent gap” in relationto their central location in the urban landscape.In the life style-preference model the observable architectural changesrelated to gentrification is treated as a product or reflection of the life stylepreferences (i.e. aesthetical preferences, consumer preferences and preferredconducts and practices) of the new middle class inhabitants and users of theareas. The recognizable architectural “symptoms” of gentrification are relatedto a globalized culture and economy, and the architectural transformation isdescribed and understood as an imprint or a product of new ways of life that7