Space/Place
Lubomir Savov Popov: What is your definition for place? How is place different from
space?
AJ: … we did not work with a carefully operationalized definition when using the term in
the paper, but I can of course share my view on the issue and how I understand it.
… place is a way of emphasizing the experiential in what comes to be socially or
humanly relevant. …difference between a rationalistic, geometrical conception of space
versus a more phenomenological one. I read Streek (2010) citing Cresswell about place:
"Place is about stopping and resting and becoming involved". This is precisely what we
aimed to emphasize in our paper, that whatever practices were involved in getting things
done together in an interdisciplinary group, they involved a process of becoming
involved, experientially, emotionally, bodily, with the materials and currents going on in
a given situation.
I also read Ingold (2011) warning against the difference between space and place in terms
of space being a reality substance and place being constituted by subsequent level of
abstractions. In my view, experience is not about abstraction, but about involvement. And
place is about space as it is refracted in intelligible experience; not about an abstraction
over an objective field, but more related to a perezhivanie in Vygotsky's sense.
LSP: …What is the difference between the process of performing an activity in space and
developing a sense of place? I personally interpret place in terms of appropriation of
space in the process of human activity and the subsequent meaning making which has
existential importance for the individual. The phenomenon of place is on par with the
phenomenon of meaning and placemaking is a process on par with meaning making.
How do you position yourself regarding such conceptualization?
…Who are the placemakers -- the architects or the USERS of designed/created/socially
produced spaces?
AJG: …[the] difference between the process of performing an activity in space and
developing a sense of place would be akin to the difference between an operation and an
action as per Activity theory.
…we must be careful on the distinction between space as a sort of objective geometrical
coordinate, or space as not becoming a part of "an" experience (in Dewey's sense). In the
first sense, the sentence "performing an activity in space" makes only sense when talking
about geometrical practices…BUT still, the experience of being doing such practice, if it
has import to further development in the person, it must be refracted through the person's
experience; there must be involvement, and therefore placemaking. In the second case,
we might think of us performing some activity within taking much of it, without noticing
we are doing. It is in this sense that I do the bridge with operations versus actions.
I would not have many problems in associating place with meaning and placemaking
with meaning-making, although I personally would be careful if doing so, emphasizing
the situational and distributed nature of the process that placemaking attempts to capture.
Larry Purss: [In Alfredo’s introduction, he wrote:]
“In this paper the aim was to consider boundary objects from the perspective of
the participants "bodies" which stood out in our analysis as particularly relevant
[and revealing] for the achievement of cooperation despite lack OF "substantive
agreement.”
I read "substantive agreement" as referring to a shared "subject matter" The ability to
"inhabit" a space and constitute a "place" without agreement on the subject matter at
hand. A different way of "inhabiting this space to form a sense of place. …[a] bodily
way of "knowing" [tacit or implicit knowing that is "not yet" conscious" as PRIOR to
coming to know in a more "substantive" way of understanding…could the focus on
trying to come to an agreement on the "subject matter" before "inhabiting" the space
becoming "place" be counter productive??.
What about the wall that was "banal" [and possibly therefore more neutral uninhabited
"ground"] allowing a "space" to open in which the participants could arrive at a shared
place PRIOR to finding subject matter agreement. … This type of bodily "knowing" and
its relation to the "subject matter" at hand seems to open a space/place for a lively
conversation.
What is forming is an image of the "table" as a metaphor. We gather to
share a meal and wine prior to focusing on the subject matter at hand. The table invites us
to share a space becoming place around the meal. Is this "table" banal or significant in
arriving at a shared place?
RS: I wanted to pick up on your suggestion of the table metaphor because I think that’s
really interesting. I believe you are proposing the shared meal as analogous to the kind of
orientation work… that precedes the task at hand….
This shared meal might of course also be considered designed. Ingold ( *Making*)
actually uses this same table metaphor to demonstrate the facilitation of activity as an
aspect of design - *“Everyday design catches the narrative and pins it down, establishing
a kind of choreography for the ensuing permanence that allows it to proceed from the
moment you sit down to eat. In such a straightforward task as laying the table - in
enrolling into your relation bowl and spoon, milk jug and cereal box - you are designing
breakfast.”*
There is an improvisational quality to the bodily/performative orientation work that is
maybe not captured by the shared expectations of sitting down to a meal. But at the same
time, we can also consider the workspace of the multidisciplinary design team as
designed in the same way that the meal is designed in order to support the objective of
the meeting….
Lubomir, you asked - “who are the placemakers -- the architects or the USERS of
designed/created/socially produced spaces?” I think this is difficult to answer because
both architect and user play a role in the place-making process. The architects embed
possible meanings (if place and meaning are analogous than perhaps these might be
considered ‘place potentials’) that only emerge through the activity of the users. I’m only
thinking through this now, so feel free to elaborate or to disagree!
LSP: I would suggest that only individual consciousness is a place maker. Exception –
the collective consciousness, but this is another aspect. Architects can only facilitate that
process, but they are not the main factors. They believe they imbed particular meanings
of the environment through the process of design. My position is that they only believe.
What they embed as a meaningful physical component or a sign can be and is interpreted
very differently by the building users…. Placemaking is an intimate personal process.
Even the ugliest environment can make a wonderful place for the individuals that feel at
home there, that draw strength from that environment, and really enjoy it.
MC: Lubomir -- Could you elaborate on the following from your earlier note?
“I would suggest that only individual consciousness is a place maker.
Exception – the collective consciousness, but this is another aspect.”
Specifically, this phrasing put me in mind of the circumstance that consciousness is so znanie, co-knowing.
LSP: …I am referring in my previous mail, as you said, to so–znanie , actually
soznanie…a Historical Materialist concept that is difficult to translate.
… Soznanie is not exactly “consciousness” or “mind” but it is somewhere there.
…opposite or complementary to soznanie is podsoznanite (under-consciousness). …
Soznanie is…human ability to create ideal/mental images…of the material world by the
individual, including the mechanisms of this reflection…. In a different way…the
subjective perezhivanie of and reflection on the external world by the individual….
… In psychology they emphasize the psychological activity regarding creating mental
images of reality as well as building plans for action. In sociology the emphasis is more
on the mental life of society….
…Soznanie is a major category of Historical Materialism….adages of Marx is that the
Being/Living/Existance…produces/shapes Soznanie.
Michael Glassman: [The] big issue here that I am trying to grapple with…boundary
objects… relates to the metaphor of the table…. [I]n the museum should the place be set
up as affordances, perceived affordances, or constraints? It seems the museum in the
study has potential affordances for the users. The cultural historical moment (unable to
think of any other word) of the museum sets the context, meaning those walking through
the museum are going to be restricted by the historical and cultural boundaries leading up
to the art work, along with the expectations and needs of the individuals moving through
the museum, but they will come across objects/artifacts that they think meets the needs of
their particular journeys.
…Or should museums should be designed for what Don Norman refers to as perceived
affordances?...The focus goes from cultural history setting a general context…to actually
setting the trajectory of the act….The object offers an opportunity to make
communicative gestures….
Or should museums be designed as constraints. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art…
the rooms are set up very, very carefully, so that in many ways the objects…to constrain
your thinking, so that you are responding to a certain period or school of art,
understanding how it all fits together. The table metaphor fits here as well I think. Does
the table constrain our actions, limiting to certain types of behavior (use only certain
types of forks for certain types of food).
AGJ: I'd like to follow up on Michael's post by asking a question: Are not affordances
presupposed by constraints and are not constraints presupposed by affordances? If so,
…[does] it makes sense to ask whether museums should be designed for affordances and
constraints.
… whatever EXPERIENCE emerges from being somewhere (i.e. being someone at some
time in some place) cannot be INTENDED. And I think this applies both to designers and
users….
I think that the big issue that you bring on the table (to continue with Larry's metaphor)
has to do with a difference between physical relations and social relations, and the idea of
MEDIATION. Gregory Bateson noticed that the relations that are the subject matter in
physics are not the same as those that are the subject matter in communication.
…physical relations…transfer energy in direct manners…social relations are not direct,
but mediated.
So, how can design go about this? If we, along with Dewey and Vygotsky, consider
experience to be a unity of person and environment, and we assume as well that this is a
social (not just individual) category, and that how a situation is experienced is also
refracted through the social relations within which we engage, the most designers can do
is to foster social relations go on, giving affordances to processes of signification, without
intending to embed meanings. It is about affordances/constraints, but not about how to
interpret something, but about going about interpreting. I think.
MG: …I think Bateson was arguing with those looking to apply the more
physical/mathematical origins of cybernetics to human or really (pace the pig story) and
system that moves beyond simple physical feedback loops. I think his larger point is that
everything has a response within the larger feedback system that exists but we cannot go
- what Bateson refers to as MIND. Attempts to create and control feedback loops, to try
and design a system for specific types of feedback is a dangerous proposition.
…affordances really can't be designed into an ecology, only a recognition of the context
in which actions are taking place…. if a designer does in some way design that
experience into the action, even without meaning they are taking a large chance, because
they do not know the trajectory it will take. We simply need objects that are part of our
journey, part of the larger context but not designed for purpose, for feedback. There is no
assumption about trajectory.
… it is possible to design objects that meet that need that we are more likely to find in the
moment that we need them. But I think that is very different from the idea of specifically
guiding feedback loops that even take generalized experience in a certain direction. I am
thinking about Dewey, and he makes a similar argument to Bateson with his concept of
transactions. Although he does seem to think that it is possible to create a larger field of
action so we can see at least local interrelationships. But his idea of experience is also
very much one of discovery based on needs at the immediate moment - social relations
act as a vehicle for these discoveries….
I think I disagree with you, constraints are not about the journey but about the road. If
you build a road on the side of the river you are constrained because no matter what, you
cannot turn right. Your direction has already been partially determined by the designer of
the road. But the mistake we make is in thinking that also controls the trajectory of the
individual's journey. The effect of designers on trajectories of action is important, but
limited.
The primary place that designers have influence on affordances it seems to me is by
being able to create a unique context for an individual's and a group's that limit possible
trajectories on an individual's journey. But we should never mistake those constraints for
affordances. I think Bateson might argue it is hubris to do so. Perhaps this is what you
are saying Alfredo.
AGJ: I think we are saying the same things, indeed, or at least more or less. …you can
not intend the outcomes of a system by addressing only its parts as if they were connected
directly, in a linear causal fashion; as if the whole was the sum of its parts.
If I read you correctly, and citing Don Norman (whose work I ignore), you suggest the
possibility that the relations between design intentions and actual experience could be
thought of in terms of different levels? That one thing is to design for what is general, but
that we cannot design for the particular. Is that right? If so, I think that Bateson had a
similar argument on prediction, does not him? That we can predict on general levels (e.g.
population), but not at the level of the particular (e.g., individual). I haven't gone that
way, but seems a promising road to consider this jumps between levels of generality or
scales.
Finally, I am not sure if I get what you mean when you say that we can design for
constraints but not for affordances. I still see that the one presupposes the other; you can
separate them in talk, but, to me, in actual experience, a constraint is an affordance and
vice-versa. I don't see how the road has any inherent constraint that could not be an
affordance at the same time. Of course, if you take the normative stance that roads are for
cars driving through them, you may be right. But if we think of roads as asphalt on the
ground, as yet more ground only of a different shape, texture, and color, how is that a
constraint but not an affordance? Or an affordance but not a constraint? Of course,
culture constrains once you are within the road and you are driving. But then, the
constraint is not in the road, as you seem to suggest, but in the journey; in the journeyman
that carries some cultural way of orienting and affectively relating to its environment so
that particular constrains are taken for granted despite the possibility of being otherwise.
…I would like to understand your position here better.
RS: …One issue seems to be this tension between the designer's or architect's role in
informing the experience of the user, and the level of intentionality they are able to
impart. Are the decisions of the designers introducing affordances to a setting?
constraints? meaning potentials?
A second theme is about the social practices of orientation, "inclusion," and perhaps the
ongoing nature of these shared performances….
In relation to this first issue...I largely agree. That is, that designers cannot impose
particular experiences on users - that unintended affordances emerge and are inevitable.
However, I don't think that this is inconsistent with the possibility that a designer can
influence the possible experiences of users in meaningful ways. … At the same time, we
could perhaps imagine these designers intending to build a place that supports personal
reflection at a more general level (by controlling the sound, lighting, physical
configurations of the artifacts, etc). The actual "placemaking" is still not realized until the
users actually inhabit this space, but I view the designers as a
fundamental part of this development.
I view the role of designers as more imaginative than predictive. They are imagining
possible experiences, and then building the spaces that hopefully (but not necessarily)
support those experiences.
MG: I think Rolf may have addressed the question of the differences between affordances
and constraints in his post. The way he described the designers as possibly setting up [a]
corner…at MOMA…I think would be considered restraints…All of these were
constraints that canalized perspectives and feelings viewing the paintings….
The painting[s]…though [can be]…affordances, an object at the nexus of [a] journey
through the museum….This [is] something that could not be designed I think because
nobody [can] think [a particular] moment [is] going to happen. So then what is a
perceived affordance…. The designer anticipates a desire to soak in [a] room, to almost
get dizzy in the lights, and include…[a] piece of wood that will have the perceived
affordance for sitting, changing your concept of time and space.
AGJ: … I see now why it may be said that designers can aim at designing for constrains
but not for affordances. I see that this way of talking is part of a designers' way to get
things done, and that it may indeed be an effective way to design for place-making,…
much of what we report in our study is about designers talking about how spatial features
might afford some experiences in the museum while constraining others.
…[H]owever…I still consider the distinction problematic from an analytical perspective
whenever our object of study is experience, situated action, or design as situated practice.
A more correct way to talk is that affordances and constrains are the positive and
negative sides/interpretations of a single unitary category. As an actual and concrete
phenomenon, walking into a musuem implies both affordances and constrains at the same
time, whether intended or not….
In any case, and as Rolf emphasizes, what the designers in our study indeed do is to
IMAGINE ways of being in the museum. Imagination versus prediction may be an
interesting topic emerging here for further inquiry into design work. [[[end to the
“place/space:design” discussion?]]]
Another important (and related) issue that I think is emerging here has to do with the
level of generality at which design intentions can be expected to work…At the level of
generic social processes, and given a particular cultural-historical background, we as
designers may try to make some generic situations more likely to occur than others
(facilitating that more or less people end up together in a given place). However, we
cannot aim at determining any particular situation/experience….
LSP: About affordance and constraints: These categories are used very often in design
research and design thinking…they talk about environmental affordance (as opposed to
social affordance). In that case, affordance means that the environment provides many
possibilities for different actions and/or courses of actions….
The notion of constraint…hinders the action or the course of actions. In design, there is
more attention paid to constraints because they have much bigger impact on the potential
performance of the design object. People rarely take advantage of
affordance/possibilities; people are often affected by the constraints….
MG: …For any affordance in design it is important to put in perceived as a modifier,
because design is by definition in expectation of certain environmental issues that might
be open to specific objects that individuals might be ready to recognize in those
circumstances. But in both cases, affordance and perceived affordance, it is about
individuals moving through the ecology and perceiving different objects as fitting their
needs based on where and when they are.
I think hindering action might be too harsh [to describe constraints]. I think perhaps a
better adjective is it canalizes action, sets it on specific trajectories determined to one
extent or another by the system of constraints within the ecology. Constraints aren't
negative, they just aren't enmeshed with the movement and perceptions of the agent.