theWorkshop Week#02 - Space & Place

W e e k #ďź?2 - A r t i c l e _004

<SPACE AND PLACE> 1. f r o m S pa c e t o P l a c e 2. V i s i b l e : S i g n a n d S i g n at u r e 3. I n v i s i b l e : (H i ) s t o r y i n V a c a n c y 4. P l a c e a n d C u lt u r e

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2017

<SPACE AND PLACE>

1. FROM SPACE TO PLACE Space: [uncountable] an amount of an area or of a place that is empty or that is available for use. [countable] an area or a place that is empty.

Place: [countable] a particular position, point or area. [countable] a particular city, town, building, etc.

Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries (http://www. oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com)

According to general definitions, “a space” seems to become “a place” when specific function or objective is inserted into it.

Understanding this “specificity” just

2. VISIBLE: SIGN AND SIGNATURE as purposiveness has a risk to lead the discussion only to the dimension of economic principles, and far from that of culture and place-ness.

The way humans recognize a place is mainly by the sense of sight, and “sign” and “signature” are the both ends of the same visual axis which identifies a place.

A sign divides and names a space, changing it into a place.

This type of place is either “named as category (entrance, parking, etc.)” or “named properly (Central Park, L’Avenue des Champs-Élysées, etc.)”.

A signature is a name of others engraved in a space.

The space turns into a specific place by its gained uniqueness.

The signature is either by someone

famous (monument, architecture, etc.) or by someone anonymous (graffiti, protest, etc.). In other words, something understood by general public, and something evoking antipathy.

The sign of proper names and the signature of the eminent are sometimes the same, in the sense that they act as determining factors of a place for general users.

Then, how is the relation between the sign of category and the signature of anonymous?

For whom could the place without any specific name become a place?

Brisbane Multilingual Pedestrian Signage and Graffiti in New York.

While signs become more convenient and kind, anonymous signatures seem becoming more aggressive and enigmatic. The difference in character of what someone wants to tell to someone. image source: SEGD (https://segd.org) Un-Motivating (http://www.unmotivating.com)

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3. INVISIBLE: (HI)STORY IN VACANCY The insertion of visual information means that the space is occupied and even maintained by someone.

If so, the definition of the place in the previous chapter could be understood as the state of (semi-) physical occupancy by an individual or a group.

But not only space occupied or owned by someone changes into a place. It happens that a place exists

by owning something, instead of being owned. For instance, a vacant land.

A vacant land is not a space waiting for a specificity given by someone. It is sometimes already filled with something invisible: ideology and memory.

“Ideology” is a collective history, strongly engraved in a place as the common understanding of the society. It is

sometimes so strong that nothing physical is allowed to exist in the place. The outcome: vacancy is specifically named but rarely claims its own name.

On the other hand, “memory” is an individual story.

Since it is socially trivial, it is not capable of changing a space into a place for the society.

The space of memory restrictively becomes

a place only for the individual, and then disappears when absorbed by economic principle.

By the way, ideology and memory are also the both ends of the same axis, not the two discrete categories.

If so, how strongly stands as a place the in-between existence?

How long?

Berlin Wall and ordinary vacant lot in Tokyo: both ends of the axis. image source: Fact Slides (http://www.factslides.com) The Mainichi Newspapers (http://mainichi.jp)

Jewish Museum Berlin by Daniel Libeskind.

This might be a good architectural hint. By planning the main axis as continuous divided voids, the building expresses history not as an authorized dogma, but as united fragments of individual memories. image source: Studio Libeskind (http://libeskind.com)

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2017

4. PLACE AND CULTURE A culture is naturally based on a place.

When a culture is packaged with generic space (as is actually happening now), it is abused all over the world until it dies.

Then, what is the place that incubates desirable urban culture in the age of globalism, where even culture is consumed as commodity?

An easy-to-understand place for everyone is consumed immediately, since it is almost the same as a space in its universality. Places (and landmarks) that global companies and governments are trying to make seem to aim for spreading

all over the world as generic space, instead of staying as specific places.

But anonymous place for individuals is not capable of creating culture, since culture is strongly related with density. There needs the intervention by general public.

From these discussions, we could draw at least the rough silhouette of the strategy on places, especially from the intangible aspect: a) A place is a state of either occupied or occupying.

A place is not n e c e s s a r i l y identified by attribution, but rather independent.

It is a state of occupying. A vacant land as a place of stories expands the possibility of a place, by keeping its center as vacant. b) A place is for general public, but not for everyone.

It is needed to settle personal memories or desires on a place, not as just an agglomeration of contradicted pieces, but as continuous public stories shared by the society, since we believe a place

is strongly related with the concept of public-ness. c) A place doesn’t presuppose eternal identity.

We believe there are no eternal ideologies that should be shared among everyone in 21st century.

We need stories instead, not in the form of fragmented and ephemeral but in the form of united and continuous.

Those stories will keep changing dynamically and telling us the value and meaning of the place time to time.

Two examples that might tell us some hunches on how to realize the criteria in architectural ways.

Micha Ullman, “Library”, Berlin (left) The subterranean bookshelves could accommodate about 20,000 books, which the Nazis burnt on May 10th, 1933 on this place.

Peripheriques Architects, “Pink Ghost”, Paris (right) It is about a “plastic” intervention in order to “transform” the square in an attitude of “preservation”. image source: BTA (http://www.bta.it) Peripheriques Architects peripheriques-architectes.com)

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