HOW SPACE IS EMBEDDED IN THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE?
Space and Language
The language of space is not abstract at all, but it is essentially
human one.
Bryan Lawson, The Language of Space
We as human constantly belong
in space, either consciously and unconsciously, both in natural environment as
well in man-made one. Space omnipresence is inseparable within our concept of
reality, but at the same time we do not only passively exist in space but
rather we actively act in it, we dwell. As quoted from George Herbert Mead, on
his later published writing, “The environment must lie in some sense inside the
act if the form is to respond to him.”[1]
Though almost never
explicitly enunciated, space and human are communicating continuously throughout
time. The language of space is essentially
non-verbal. We do not express such things in words because they are based on
implicit knowledge.[2] This
implicit manner does not imply that the language of space is communicating
intangibly, it has the capability to situate, posit, force its inhabitant tangibly
and unnoticed.
As
we dwell and communicate with and within space, form is acting as the most
appealing quality perceivable through our senses. Even in the case of having an
almost permanent and static physical qualities, one form could trigger vastly
different qualities towards people. According to Hertzberger, form has an
accommodating capacity or ‘competence’, which allows it to be filled with
associations and thus brings about a mutual dependence with the users. He
further explained form can be vested with meaning, but can also be divested of
it by the use to which the form is put and by the values that are attributed and added to it,
or indeed removed from it – all depending on the way in which users and form
interact.[3] Clearly described that the
decisive matter between man and space is not about the importance or dominance
of any parties, rather what is crucial is the interaction between the two.
Human and Place
To be in a place is a requisite
condition for human to exist but simultaneously it also means human bodily takes
or occupies the locus, which is generally defined as location (or stance). Unlike
location, position is defined towards its relation to the otherness in its situation,
this relational concept is characterizing the place both physically and
socially.[4] A place therefore is
created by and within its surroundings including every stakes or parties
localized in its relation. Thus every place is considerably a situation which
has its structure and its own logic on constructing its particularity. This
particularity is tangibly inscribed in its physical qualities, it further
determines physical space into social space.
In another scale, the place
occupier as well, may be characterized by his or her place where he or she is
situated more or less permanently. In every moment within a society, one has to
deal with a set of activities or of things which are determined and
characterized relationally in spatial and social context. Human in that context
as a social agent is pre-molded by his/her location (place taking), position
(relational concept), and disposition (habitus), on acting or behaving in the
most diverse domains of practice.[5] Clearly, there is a direct
determination between physical and social space, as Bourdieu puts it, spatial
distances on paper are equivalent to social distances.
Being in a particular place,
human fundamentally never lives in a social vacuum, indisputably human always
is situated in a structured social context which Bourdieu calls “fields.” He
further explains that fields are competitive arenas of struggle over different
kinds of capital, fields offer constraints and opportunities independent of the
resources brought by the actor in his/her situation.[6]
Building and Dwelling
As
Hans van der Laan beautifully depicted our mutual communication with space, as
follows, “The ground being too hard for our bare feet we make ourselves sandals
of softer material than the ground, but tougher than our feet. Were they as
hard as the ground or as soft as our feet they would give us no advantage, but
being just hard enough to stand up to wear and yet just soft enough to be comfortable,
they bring about a harmony between our tender feet and the rough ground.”[7] Sandals are assigned here for
describing the role of architecture, especially in its relation with nature.
Hans van der Laan made a stance that architecture is not an entity derives within
itself, but rather an entity required to exist for communication, as a platform
of interaction between human and natural space.
With its role between man
and natural space, architecture has started long before its bodily appearance,
and end sometimes long after they have gone, as slowly fading images in their
former dwellers’ minds.[8] A building is constructed,
planned, designed, discussed, desired, needed much earlier than the appearance
of its physical presence, only by then its existence has a position in its
context both physically and mentally. A building existence is therefore much
more complex than only to serve its labelled function, because its emergence as
a ‘need’ (before it was built), was located in its dwellers’ life. Accordingly
a house is not similar than a home, its physicality and its notion is weaved
and embedded to its dweller’s life and within the context which it exists.
For the notion of home is
deeply weaved in a person or in community and the need of its existence has
existed much before its physical appearance, therefore the process of its
emergence is as well grow within the context. “Building and settlements are the
visible expression of the relative importance attached to different aspects of
life and the varying ways of perceiving reality.”[9] The notion of home, is in
itself, surpasses beyond its physical entity, it is not mere a physical building,
it is a social structure, and moreover it is perspective of dwelling.
Habitus
To be in a particular
position in a structure and to dwell along with certain logic of practice in a
long period of time in a place, human will develop an incorporated structure or
a practice notion known as ‘habitus’. Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist
introduces the notion of ‘habitus’ as he explained it in his lecture in
University of Oslo, ‘habitus’ are structures incorporated into appropriated
physical space as generative and unifying principles which works as cognitive schemas,
systems, principle of vision and division in a particular place. Applicably it
generates and organizes practices and representations than can be objectively
adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an
express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them.
Further explained ,in
practice this notion will generate sort of the “reasonable”, “common-sense”,
behaviors which are possible within the limits of these regularities, and which
are likely to be positively sanctioned because they are objectively adjusted to
the logic characteristic of a particular field, whose objective future they
anticipate.[10]
As part of the party who
influences habitus, spatial quality stands as one of the most influential yet
invisible. So as the implicit manner of language of space, as it performs on a
social agent it molds, shapes and situates him/her in daily practice. Spatial
impact will imply the pace of a day, the logic of the environment, the pressure
and recess of agent’s situation, and moreover, the context or background of any
daily practice, which further on will determine the value of the daily practice
itself.
The structure of place is
constructed by its physicality which also possess and signifies its greater existence
as a being. This duality of space are impactful to its user only by means of experience
within the context along the everyday life. Descriptively human acts within the
structure, by then he/she will get to understand of how the things would work
in itself and within its situation, afterward the logic of the structure will
tangibly be experienced and practiced by him/her (with/without consciousness practiced).
As the logic is repeatedly practiced, it will be inscribed as a bodily pattern
or traces on the actor’s practice.
Property appropriates its
owner, embodying itself in the form of a structure generating practices
perfectly conforming with its logic and its demands.
Pierre Bourdieu. Structures,
Habitus, Practices (p. 282)
Matter and Consciousness
Before proceeding further towards
implication of habitus, argument about the nature of human mind towards the
environment must beforehand be established, to be able to describe the whole
process of space (built environment) in human’s consciousness. According to
George H. Mead, as he observed kids, an object arises in consciousness through
the merging of the imagery from past experiences of the response with that of
the sensuous experience of the current stimulation, by then he/she could
achieve an objective character in his/her consciousness. Hence existence of an
object in one’s mind is in practice dependent on the subject’s cognitive quality.
In this sense a similar understanding of an object or a matter among human
sounds like an insensible idea, since there will be unlimited differentiation
of the perception towards the matter.
As Bergson further explained,
through differentiation, the immediate data of consciousness of being temporal,
similarly as the concept of duration. In the duration, there is no
juxtaposition of events; therefore there is no mechanistic causality.[11] Duration as introduced by
Bergson is a perspective of qualitative multiplicity of grasping things. In
contrast with quantitative multiplicity which is evaluating matters through
freezing time and considering spatial difference, for instance, we are able to
count a flock of birds flying, though they are similar from a distance but we
could evaluate one to another because they occupy different space. Qualitative
multiplicity freezes spatial dimension and works with time. As he depicted it
with the act of drawing a continuous line mimicking an elastic band, the
trembling line which is made along making the whole continuous line is a
qualitative multiplicity in duration and spatially it is united as a line. Therefore
to encounter this concept Bergson further introduce his method of intuition.
Unlike the normal way our
intelligence work, which reconstructing of a thing by synthesizing the
perspectives which later will yield the concept of things, but never the thing
itself, intuition reverses the procedure which is interested and analytic.
Bergson himself considered his thought as “the true empiricism.”[12] Intuition is an act
entering into ourselves seizing ourselves from within and self-sympathizing heterogeneously
into others, using one’s own duration to comprehend other duration, because one’s
duration is a real part of the duration itself. Considering one-self authentic
perspective to be able to comprehend the world freely and authentically
therefore in its disposition it is absolute.
Bergson’s general idea in
Matter and Memory is affirming the reality of the dualism both of matter and
spirit, but more than this realism and idealism, our knowledge of things, in
its pure state, takes place within the things it represents.
There
is no hidden power in matter; matter is only images. The image of a material
thing becomes a representation. A representation in one’s mind is always in the
image virtually never physically, it never reaches human consciousness as a
whole object. There is a transition from the image as being in itself to its
being for me. This process adds nothing new to the image, in fact, it subtracts
from it, we generally while experiencing or grasping external world tend to
attain of what does interest bodily functions in relation with necessity. The
conscious perception of a living being therefore exhibits a “necessary poverty”
(Matter and Memory, p. 38).
“Intuition is not
perception, it is memory”, through memory and continuous heterogeneity of
duration, the notion of duality becomes a monism in one’s reality. By the
course of perception, it indicates that representation of an object is
different than image, image is less than the thing but more than a representation.
Perception is therefore a continuous process through and with the images of
matter. Accordingly, Bergson is re-attaching perception to the real.
Spatial Form and Spatial Practice
It is undeniably true especially with today’s technological
advances we could evaluate space thoroughly. We could calculate, simulate, and predict
even reconstruct spatial form with its similar physical qualities, however
those advances are methods to quantify and evaluate space in its technical
manner, though its impact on space production and creation is extremely
influential. In the other point of view, those advances do not change
fundamentally how space communicates to us. “Space, and consequently that which
encloses it, are much more central to all of us in our everyday lives than
purely technical, aesthetic, or even semiotic interpretation would suggest.”[13]
As Bryan Lawson put it, not even aesthetic argumentation, understandings, and
interpretations of it are taking crucial role in the course of human to be in
space. Only by practicing within the spatial form throughout everyday life, a
space would receive and reveal its characteristic.
Whatever space and
time mean, place and occasion mean more. For space in the image of man is
place, and time in the image of man is occasion.
Aldo
van Eyck
Before
modern and industrial movement each object was linked to some “style” and
therefore, as a work, contained while masking the larger functions and
structures which were integral parts of its form. In contrast, a modern object
clearly states itself for itself, of what it is, its role and its place.[14]
This different perspective and method of production is creating or at least
appeals with different way for object to represent itself. However still
fundamentally this transformation does not change the relationship of form to
function to structure, though it speaks differently but the fundamental manner
of language is unchanged.
As
container of things, space in the same time along with the existence of the
things is also possessed with the ideas and systems behind the things. Space is
able to contain ideas, systems, and therefore possibilities. Those
possibilities are not only available in the space but also creates the space.
As it able to convey ideas thus space is most of the time a complex matter,
because it could contain several things and hence bunch of ideas.
As Christine Frederick, the
lady behind the modern household described her perspective on her practice in
home-making, “You men simply don’t understand anything about work in a home.
One day a woman sweeps and dusts, and he next she irons, and the next she
bakes, and in between-times she cares for babies, and sews, answers call bells
and phones, and markets, and mends the lining of her husband’s coat, and makes
a cocoa-nut cake for Sunday!”[15] A house especially the
kitchen, plays a very crucial role on the process home-making, which was in
general practiced by a housewife. It includes as well requires a lot sort of
things and set of skills in its practice. There are a lot of variation of
kitchen spatial planning available, but in any case the main spatial practice of
a kitchen is always about food.
Through her process of
practicing the whole kitchen ‘set of spatial practices’ in her everyday pattern,
it becomes part of her way of dwelling and her practice of everyday life. She
learns, situates herself, tries to be able to do the practice and simultaneously
the practice itself keeps on shaping her along the practices.
The
everyday can therefore be defined as a set of functions which connect and join
together systems that might appear to be distinct. The concept of everydayness
does not therefore designate a system but rather a denominator common to
existing system.[16] The
notion of everyday is a personal quality, a notion which is embedded from
person to person, for instance, from knowing what a knife is, when and why
using it, trying to learn on how to use it, using it carefully and with full
attention, keep on using it without doubt, getting faster on using it, until singing
along while using it. As explained by Lefebvre the everyday is not set of
system applied on acts, but instead it denominates the activities into mere bodily
pattern without the consciousness of doing it, which is banal. By then, “the act
is only graspable as a surface of projection (or a ‘veil’ as I prefer it).
Itself visible, it has the effect of making invisible the operation that made
it possible. These fixations constitute procedures for forgetting. The trace
left behind is substituted for the practice. It exhibits the (voracious)
property that the geographical system has of being able to transform action
into legibility, but in doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be
forgotten.”[17]
Unconscious Practice
Based on Anthony Giddens
classification of consciousness model in human, most of our knowledge about the
world can be seen as knowledge we are practically conscious about. We are able
to do things with certain knowledge without being able to report about it. “Actors
possess this knowledge without being able to give account on it” (Lippuner et
al, 2009, p. 42) which they call it tacit knowledge, of which in it we depend
most of our social action in everyday life.
As we move, with the bodily
poses and gestures, we are progressively inscribed through body with the
structure of social order. Social structures reconverted into physical
structures playing in tension between the duality fluctuating, influencing one
to another.
The tacit knowledge as
Giddens puts it, is a form of social and spatial practice, it insists the
knowledge to be passively recorded in contrast with positivist materialism
which is constructing the knowledge and as well contrasted with intellectualist
idealism which proposing system of structured. But Habitus is constituted in
practice and is always oriented towards practical functions. Habitus is inscribed
within the everyday life, within real activity in particular place, as a practical
relation to the world. To be actively present in the world through which the
world imposes its presence, with its urgencies, its things to be done and said,
and things made to be said, which directly govern and deeds without ever
unfolding as a spectacle.[18]
A rigid structure is
implicitly applied in constructing the character of place, defining the
objective relationship or signifying the way to live within, and here goes the
role of the dwellers to act within the structure, along with his/her self-tendency
maintaining between the two, not to be entirely driven by the structure and not
to fall to subjectivity, for the later does not always favor the necessity of
social world. The merge will happen in the realm of practice, the meeting point
of the objectified products (opus
operatum) and the incorporated products of historical practice (modus operandi); of structures and
habitus.[19]
Practice as it is performed
with tacit knowledge it conducts very little consciousness, purposive
orientation, and rational calculation. The actor is carried out by the
practice, a tacit, informal, and taken for granted degree of awareness. Habitus
along with its unaware practice is also localized and spatially diverse, for it
is the reflection of the life within the structure.
Reality Determinant
In the scale of everyday life
therefore a long term repetition, the applied structure and the bodily pattern
of dwelling prompt principles of vision and division, differences between
practices, goods which are possessed, opinions which are expressed, those in an
extent become symbolic differences and constitute a real language, which
ultimately the character of a society and as well the place. Habitus in
practice contributes into a very practical detail of the actors, what to eat,
the way to eat, the cool attire, the undiscussable topic, the dream of the
kids, the song stuck in the head, segment of friendship, notion of good and
bad, wrong and right, and so on and so basically is the background of one’s
reality. Any of the notion applied derive from the practicing process, which
triggered or situated within another system of how to run the practice and
another system of how to express them, which is in this sense where spatial
property is very crucial and influential on constructing reality.
Assuming the practical world
which is now embedded with the notion of habitus, as a system of cognitive and
motivating structures, would be a world of already realized ends. The world
along with its inherent value expressing what to do, what to enjoy, what to
expect, what to wish for, moreover with objects endowed with “permanent
teleological character”, in Husserl’s phrase is an institution. An institution
is objectified not only in its things, actors and field but also in the
disposition to recognize and comply with the demands in the field.[20]
Possibility and Power
Habitus is embedded in one’s
dwelling practice is carved through the course of time, it is determined
whether it has been practiced and habitually inscribed in one’s life. It is
therefore established by past experience and it is continuously altered. In the
other hand where this notion becomes vital is in the time of considering the future
and therefore the now. Habitus is in itself a universe of probabilities, a set
of yes’s and no’s, good and bad, do and don’t, which establishes both consciously
and unconsciously the ‘possible now.’
The ‘particular case of the
possible’ is situated through the perpetual relationship between dispositions (habitus)
and conditions, the ‘possible now’ is yielded without rational calculation or
conscious estimation of the chances of success, it is processed through the
immediate correspondence between ‘the probability’ flavored on an event and ‘the
post probability’ of which are established on the basis of past experience.
The relation to what is
possible is a relation to power; and the sense the probable future is
constituted in the prolonged relationship with a world structured according to
the categories of the possible (for us) and the impossible (of us), of what is
appropriated in advance by and for others and what once can personably expect
for oneself.[21]
Habitus is undeniably
instilled by repetition in practice both actively shaping and being shaped. In
the context of ‘possible now’, this disposition suggests one’s capability and
reliability on dealing with the current, habitus holds latent potential, which
in the ‘possible now’, it is no longer the repetition of practice which matters
but rather its reliability when evoked.[22]
Built Environment and Dwelling Practice
Approaching this perspective
as a whole, it is certain though implicitly that there is a mutual implication
between ‘built environment’ and ‘dwelling practice’, as Rapoport puts it,
“first, in the sense that an understanding of behavior patterns, including
desires, motivations, and feelings, is essential to the understanding of built
form, since built form is the physical embodiment of these patterns; and
second, in the sense that forms, once built, affect behavior and the way of
life.”[23]
Coming
back to Hans van der Laan metaphor of architecture, it suggested that architect
is responsible for ‘the between man and space’, which is the ‘built environment’.
Once planned-spatial-form is realized in the physical world, it would stand and
speak for itself. It will become part of reality, thus it will be practiced, and
therefore it would be embedded in certain context and in someone’s life. In my
point of view this is a very crucial role of an architect, especially being an
architect in a modern and industrialized society which almost has detached entirely
the act of dwelling and building, and also being aware of the capacity and the influential or
even determining quality of space (built environment) toward its user, draw me
to analyze and examine the question of
how built environment is embedded in its inhabitant’s dwelling practice. In the sense of being aware and
understanding what an architect have planned and applied in the context and in
someone’s life, really matters throughout its existence.
The more involved a person
is with the form and content of his surroundings, the more those surroundings become
appropriated by him, and just as he takes possession of his surroundings, so
they will take possession of him.
Herman Hertzberger. Lessons
for Students in Architecture (p. 170)
[1] George
Herbert Mead. Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist
(ed. C.W.Morris). Chicago: Chicago University Press. 1967, p. 245-246.
[2] Bryan Lawson. The Language
of Space. Oxford: Architectural Press. 2001, p. 25.
[3] Herman Hertzberger. Lessons
for Students in Architecture. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. 2005, P. 150.
[4]
Pierre Bourdieu. Physical Space, Social Space and Habitus: A Lecture in
Sociology Department in University of Oslo. Oslo. 1996, p. 10-13.
[5]
Ibid., p. 10.
[6]
David L. Swartz. The Occupational Therapy Journal of Research (vol. 22): The
Sociology of Habit: The Perspective of Pierre Bourdieu. 2002, p. 65-66.
[7] Hans van der Laan. Architectonic
Space. Leiden: Brill. 1983, p. 1.
[8] Lars Lerup. Building the
Unfinished: Architecture and Human Action. Michigan: SAGE Publications. 1977,
p. 152.
[9] Amos Rapoport. House Form
and Culture. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 1969, p. 47.
[10] Pierre
Bourdieu. Structures, Habitus, Practices, p. 280.
[11] Henri
Bergson. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/.
Accessed on January 2016.
[12] Henri
Bergson. The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics. New York: Dover
Publications. 2007, p. 175.
[13] Bryan Lawson. The Language
of Space. Oxford: Architectural Press. 2001, p. 6.
[14]
Henri Lefebvre. The Everyday and Everydayness. Yale French Studies. 1987, p. 8.
[15] Christine Frederick. The New
Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management. New York: Doubleday Page
& Company. 1913, p. 7.
[17]
Michel de Certeau. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press. 1984, p. 97.
[18] Pierre Bourdieu. Structures,
Habitus, Practices, p. 277-278.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.,
p. 282.
[22] David
L. Swartz. The Occupational Therapy Journal of Research (vol. 22): The
Sociology of Habit: The Perspective of Pierre Bourdieu. 2002, p. 63.
No comments:
Post a Comment