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 1urban geography, urban topography, architecture and other disciplines. But,while the focus of the structuralism of Lévi-Strauss and Halbwachs is thecoherence of the structure and its transformation, 100 Rossi uses his structuralapproach to explore freedom in the situation of individual architecturalpractice; how the relative autonomy of architectural practice in the urban(social, cultural and architectural) structure represents both a limited freedomof choices reproducing existing patterns, and a limited freedom to exceedpatterns in the existing situation and thereby challenge and transform theexisting urban situation.Rossi: morphological systems, (relatively homogenous) study areas and structural relationsRossi suggests a methodological approach to studies of transformation ofurban areas at two different structural levels: studies of identifiablemorphological characteristics in geographically limited parts of the city(study areas), and structural studies of how such parts relate to thedevelopment of the urban structure as a whole.At the first morphological level, he describes how for instance manyresidential urban areas can be observed and described as characteristic areasrepresenting a particular morphological system: that is architectural systemsof forms that can be related to social system of forms. Identification andstudies of the morphological characteristics of relatively homogenous areascan give access for empirically understanding how a particular type of sociomaterialfield of action, represents possibilities and limitations for individualsocio-spatial practices (in relation to a particular way of life). 101urbain donné.” (Rossi 2001: pp. 27-28), which I would have translated: “But inside the same disciplines ofwhich I have spoken, we can however, at the moment see the development of a kind of broader analysis, moreconcrete and more complete; attaching to the city as to ‘the human issue par excellence’, and perhaps also tothat which one cannot learn in other ways than by ‘living’ concretely a given urban situation.” The Englishtranslation says: “By using those disciplines to which I have just referred, we are working toward a broader,more concrete and more complete analysis of urban artifacts. The city is seen as the human achievement parexcellence, perhaps too, it has to do with those things that can only be grasped by actually experiencing agiven urban artifact”. (Rossi 1984: p. 33)100 Not in general, but as exposed in both Levi-Strauss and Halbwachs’ structuralist studies of societies andtheir environments that is referenced and discussed by Rossi.101 “(…) the study area would include all of those urban areas that have a physical and social homogeneity.(Even if defining what constitutes homogeneity in things is not easy, especially from a formal point of view, itis still possible to define a typological homogeneity: that is, all those areas where consistent models and typesof living are realized in similar buildings; thus the homogeneity of residential districts, Siedlungen, etc.) Thestudy of these characteristics ends up by becoming specific to a social morphology or social geography (and inthis sense the homogeneity can also be defined sociologically), so that the activities of social groups areanalyzed with respect to how they are continuously manifested in fixed territorial characteristics.” Rossi 1984:p.6557