Ideas
FROM AN EXCITING OBJECT TO AN OBJECT OF EXCITEMENT
- A reflection of interior urbanism in the public buildings
Public buildings are and always have been one of the finest dishes to be served on the plate of an architect. The open attitudes and the fluid conditions emerge from the necessity to capture the spatial forms of everyday living, systems of production and communication, and the topographical conditions of the city .... or is it? Libraries, municipal buildings, public schools, hospitals etc. are meant to be internally what every society provides externally on the streets, the neighborhoods and the media... Many of us (the unique species that the rest of the world calls designers), try to establish urban connections based on programmatic bridges. Is it possible to take a step ahead and propose a building that brings the city in its interior through its concept? Can we as designers provide a concept such as interior urbanism (a value that is one of the main drivers when designing a public building) yet, we mainly see it only in malls, the big train stations or airports? Or is the only choice of a public building a big entrance hall with stacked floors around it?
As a definition, interior urbanism is (or can be) the spatial momentum that interrupts internally the urban routes.
In this way, rather than trying to mimic the architectural tradition, how about connecting elementary dots of how the space itself emerges from the creative mechanism of stable and unstable flows of knowledge, history and design? Trying to escape from the trap of creating an exciting object, we can drive our lines into creating an object of excitement that adapts “future oriented values” and leads towards an in-depth experience of the society.
Public buildings are and always have been one of the finest dishes to be served on the plate of an architect. The open attitudes and the fluid conditions emerge from the necessity to capture the spatial forms of everyday living, systems of production and communication, and the topographical conditions of the city .... or is it? Libraries, municipal buildings, public schools, hospitals etc. are meant to be internally what every society provides externally on the streets, the neighborhoods and the media... Many of us (the unique species that the rest of the world calls designers), try to establish urban connections based on programmatic bridges. Is it possible to take a step ahead and propose a building that brings the city in its interior through its concept? Can we as designers provide a concept such as interior urbanism (a value that is one of the main drivers when designing a public building) yet, we mainly see it only in malls, the big train stations or airports? Or is the only choice of a public building a big entrance hall with stacked floors around it?
As a definition, interior urbanism is (or can be) the spatial momentum that interrupts internally the urban routes.
In this way, rather than trying to mimic the architectural tradition, how about connecting elementary dots of how the space itself emerges from the creative mechanism of stable and unstable flows of knowledge, history and design? Trying to escape from the trap of creating an exciting object, we can drive our lines into creating an object of excitement that adapts “future oriented values” and leads towards an in-depth experience of the society.
WHOSE BUILDING IS IT ANYWAY?
My profession has brought me to many design and building events. Lectures, public & private discussions, meetings with city officials, developers, design studios, architecture schools, presentations and debates, workshops etc. are only the 5 % of our work. Though the topics change through the years and the interests, one thing always stays the same. The thirst for innovation and realization of "THE" idea of "THE" project. If that is a success, the architects, urban designers or planners, developers, project managers, city officials and whoever might be involved gets proud of the achievement under the cloak of "MY" project "MY" building or of "I DID THAT". Is it true though? Even if we (as designers) win a distinction, there is always because of the jury, they let it happen. Even when there is a significant (significance, as a term for social value) project there is a team or teams of people that "THEY" made it happen. This brings me to Rotterdam and the Central Station of the city. The building of the station which was quiet recently finished has a monumental form which touches the highest levels of a Great Infrastructure Project. In this project, there are at least 4 big architectural offices (excluding the architectural department of the city or of the Dutch railway) involved, which transformed the area completely in and out of the station. Yet, there is an undefined rumor that the "idea" of this monumentality, more precisely of the steel sloping roof for the entrance, was of an intern in one of these offices - probably during his design exercises. It is a rumor, but not really far from what happens in other projects as well. I wonder though, did he go around saying "MY" project or "MY" building? What about the user though...the users? Are they confident enough to say "MY" building and to be proud of it? Except when we refer to the owner of a building, the direct user and the idea creator, how can we bring the common users to really feel proud of their environment, their building, their idea that "THEY" had?
living on top of a train station
- The successful story of Amsterdam densification politics
Coping with growth intentions of population in urban areas, what is happening in the Dutch cities is a growth of need for housing. Politically is decided that the transportation nodes & hubs are the best place to do that. Stations themselves, are generally central to urban areas. The Central station of Amsterdam is the really exception to the rule, due to politics and plans that were decisive for the position of the station in the city, though a more central position, would mean a whole different urban agglomeration, a completely different Amsterdam as we know it today. Stations around the city like Sloterdijk, Amstel or Zuidas (the other option for the central station in the 19th century), only are planning to facilitate the urgent need for new homes. With plans to regenerate the whole area and not only better and cleaner connections, while maximizing touristic policies, the process has housing and spatial quality consequences that can be achieved in a more mixed used developments adding value to the station itself. A good example is the Amstel tower where a mixed program of middle rent housing with a hotel and a shared working space, worked as the backbone to regenerate the station and add commercial value in the whole area beginning the debates for a "clean and clear" node of infrastructure. The Zuidas station area is now moving towards an integrated functional mixed use area and Sloterdijk station, a forgotten place for many years, is slowly making the move towards the "greenest" living and working area of the city. Until 2040 the government's plan is to grow by 800.000 households around the country and the areas around the stations are the first ones to facilitate these numbers. What does that mean for the years to come is an amazing construction process putting the pressure to the public space and the green areas, especially where that is needed the most. The real challenge now is how to densify the urban green.
Coping with growth intentions of population in urban areas, what is happening in the Dutch cities is a growth of need for housing. Politically is decided that the transportation nodes & hubs are the best place to do that. Stations themselves, are generally central to urban areas. The Central station of Amsterdam is the really exception to the rule, due to politics and plans that were decisive for the position of the station in the city, though a more central position, would mean a whole different urban agglomeration, a completely different Amsterdam as we know it today. Stations around the city like Sloterdijk, Amstel or Zuidas (the other option for the central station in the 19th century), only are planning to facilitate the urgent need for new homes. With plans to regenerate the whole area and not only better and cleaner connections, while maximizing touristic policies, the process has housing and spatial quality consequences that can be achieved in a more mixed used developments adding value to the station itself. A good example is the Amstel tower where a mixed program of middle rent housing with a hotel and a shared working space, worked as the backbone to regenerate the station and add commercial value in the whole area beginning the debates for a "clean and clear" node of infrastructure. The Zuidas station area is now moving towards an integrated functional mixed use area and Sloterdijk station, a forgotten place for many years, is slowly making the move towards the "greenest" living and working area of the city. Until 2040 the government's plan is to grow by 800.000 households around the country and the areas around the stations are the first ones to facilitate these numbers. What does that mean for the years to come is an amazing construction process putting the pressure to the public space and the green areas, especially where that is needed the most. The real challenge now is how to densify the urban green.
heterotopias
- The “other spaces” where place becomes an experience and acquires values
Heterotopias, are places with no clear and immutable geographic boundaries or a fixed physical substance. They are places designated by acts or situations, from experiences or facts. Groups of people generate heterotopias by trying to construct therein or through them a situation ideal. The path is not settled or completely specified. Their practice is the effort to create the conditions that allow the passage to this ideal. These groups of people are certainly not homogenous masses: the diversity of individuals is expressed within the complexity and variety of space. This space becomes a communication code, where each element, combined with the location and function, refers to specific meanings and values.
Introduction
This text examines the role and the contribution of heterotopias, the other spaces, in urban design and city theory. The structure starts with the analysis and the definition of the term heterotopia and the importance of the other places in our cities and societies. In section two, it explores heterotopias through three different prisms and writers. The first prism is that of philosophy, where philosopher Michel Foucault who actually elaborated the concept of heterotopia, explains about the different types and principles. The second prism is that of sociology, where the philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre refers to a trialectics of spatial practices, representations of space and space of representations. The third prism is that of urban design, where city theoretician David Grahame Shane breaks down cities into three constituent elements, describing heterotopia as the most important of the three. Afterwards, the paper discusses how the three perceptions of heterotopia, mentioned above, transform the meaning of space, identity and values. It focuses on understanding the conditions to create heterotopias and to use it in urban design as a tool. Furthermore, the theoretical findings are translated in study cases. Heterotopias will be filtered through reflections of planning, the abandonment of the urban centres and the constant shifts of the social poles. The text concludes with remarks on the other places, where urban design is a challenge for a balanced spatial integration.
Writing on Heterotopias
Foucault and Heterotopias
There are also, and this probably in all culture, in all civilization, real places, effective places, places that are written into the institution of society itself, and that are a sort of counter emplacements, a sort of effectively realized utopias in which the real emplacements, all the other real emplacements that can be found within culture, are simultaneously represented, contested and
inverted; a kind of places that are outside all places, even though they are actually localizable.
(Foucault, 1967, p.17)
Before any in depth examination, we should note that the choice to focus on the other spaces by Michel Foucault, it is not random,
but it comes to meet substantial questions that he had. In the same spirit of time, Foucault, based on the same principles of structuralism, tries to disassemble the whole social reality and to focus into the asymmetric development of social forms of that period of time. In order to explain everything, by its history, he takes the chance to detect the originality of social relations developed in the society. As a result of this, he locates his interest in peripheral – extreme situations (prisons, clinics etc.) where relations develop outside of “normal”. He believes that the constitution of the “other” can be seen clearer inside the “whole” through its dynamic elements.
Foucault defines two main types of spaces that contradict to reality. The first one, the Utopias, created by the denial of the people to compromise to reality, leads them to fantasise a different/ideal order of social relations. This ideal society has its reflection in an ideal city and space. So, utopian places or non-real places having the “ideal” characteristics, exist in a “perfect” society, or in a society turned upside down. On the other hand, there is the existing type of contradicted space.
…even though they are actually localizable.
Since these places are absolutely other than all
the emplacements that they reflect, and of which
they speak, I shall call them, by way of contrast
to utopias, heterotopias.
(Foucault, 1967, p.17)
So to “localize” these realistic spaces, or heterotopias, Foucault analyses the basic principles of this study, described as heterotopology:
i. There is probably not a single culture in the world that does not constitute heterotopias. The first principle describes two different categories of heterotopias. Firstly, there are the heterotopias of crisis, existing in the “primitive” societies, places (sacred, privileged, forbidden) that accept people that are in crisis, like boarding schools for the boys etc. Secondly, there are the heterotopias of deviation, existing in the modern societies, so places where people act out of the normalities of each society, like prisons or clinics.
ii. In the course of its history, a society can make a heterotopia that exists, and has not ceased to exist, function in a very different way. The main example that Foucault gives here, is the cemetery. It is a place that connect with every other place of the society. Until the end 18th century, the cemeteries was placed in the centre, in the heart of the city. Though, the individualization of death gives another meaning to the burial of the body, when death is considered as an illness and from the 19th century onwards and cemeteries are consequently placed outside the cities.
iii. The heterotopia has the power to juxtapose in a single real place several spaces, several emplacements that are in themselves
incompatible. Theatres and cinemas are places of juxtaposition where the stage or the screen are the places where the mirror of other/ different emplacements are displayed. The Persian gardens are the best examples of the third principle, defined by their cosmologic and semiologic reference.
iv. Heterotopias are most often linked to slices of time - which is to say that they open onto what might be called, heterochronisms. Libraries and museums are part of the heterochronistic heterotopias. Knowledge, time, ideas become part of an eternity in a single
place. On the other hand, we have the fairgrounds and festivals, when time becomes temporary and uncertain.
v. Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable. Foucault makes two interpretations. On the one hand, the “opening and closing” are clear and distinguishable (army, prison) and on the other
hand, one can have permission after a process of rites or purifications with a certain permission (Muslim hamams, Scandinavian
saunas).
vi. The last trait of heterotopias is that they have, in relation to the rest of space, a function. The two categories introduced here are the heterotopias of illusion and the heterotopias of compensation. Brothels create the illusion of an orthologic disguise in relation with the sexual normality, outside of them. Colonization, with its “organized and pure” structures come to rise the unconventional other places.
As we can see, there is no spatial similarity of the different examples referred by Foucault. We can say that, the only element that relates them to each other, is the role that play on the social structures of each society.
Lefebvre and Heterotopias
Beyond Foucault’s research on space, there were the situationists, the existentialists, the phenomenologists etc. One of the theoreticians that places emphasis on space was Henri Lefebvre. As he used to say, he was looking for the “new humanism”, that diversify itself from the humanism of liberal ideology, and at the same time, he opens the road for human emancipation.
He saw the weakness of the system to achieve a full inclusion of people in its structures, leaving “holes” and “cracks” through
which, there could be generated alternative, to the predominant forms, subjectivities. In this vein, when Lefebvre talks about the “right to the city” and the city as a process, basically, he is trying to describe the field on which he can work and express. For him, space does not just reflect the existing (dominant) social relations, but rather, is a continuous challenge where, apart from the domination of the “normal”, we meet the controversy, the resistance and the different, or else the “other”. Lefebvre argued that while the production of capitalist space aims to be homogeneous and abstract (totalitarian), in reality is a process which leaves fragments of differential spaces. These are areas where we do not find a hegemonic central ideology but different forms of social relations. In «The production of Space», he proposes a triadic analysis for the space. Production of space is broken down into three distinct categories:
• the spatial practices (Espace percu): objective space as a physical/empirical reality, formed in a specific context of social relations, needs and relationships, a granted and a neutral space
• the representations of space (Espace concu): the conceived space of the scientists and artists, the mental produced space, the ideologic space
• the space of representation (Espace vecu): the lived space as unmediated experience, transformed from objective and conceived space
Although, he devotes a large part of his research on space, Levebvre makes only a few and scattered references to the issue of heterotopia. In «The Production of Space» heterotopia is used together with the isotopia and utopia, and more specifically as the opposite of the isotopia. For Lefebvre, isotopia is the dominant form of organization of space, the ‘normal’, the centre, while heterotopias are competitive, peripheral spaces. The motives and reasons that led him to use the term of heterotopia differ from those of Foucault. When referring to Foucault, he imputes him an obsession with the analysis of the individual against the collective subject, the abstract nature of the spatial flows. Therefore, while acknowledging that the analysis of “extreme social situations” that Foucault describes, is of particular interest, he argues that this insistence on the “peripheries” ends up despising the “centre”.
Edward Soja, in the same logic as Lefebvre, identifies the so-called double illusion in relation with the debate on space. Based on this line, Soja, considering that we have to think on space beyond this traditional dipole, introduces the term of «Thirding-as-Othering». By that, he tries to describe a condition, which will disassemble the holistic (dipolar) formats that seek to interpret reality in a static, unambiguous way. This circular and dynamic relationship between subject and object, the thirding, should not be understood simply as the “average” of these two poles. The concept of Thirdspace, proposed by him, is the experienced place that gives meaning to space, with an equal and especially reciprocal relationship. Thirdspace rises above the dominant patterns and dominant forms of ownership of space. It is direct, with ‘irrational’ view and is not part of the normal capitalist reproduction. He argues that it is the only category of the three, which can manifest controversies and challenge the social reality. So heterotopias are the Thirdspace, where both the dominant narrative about the place and actual social relationships developed, conduct the “otherness”. Therefore, we should not consider of the Thirdspace (or heterotopias) just as some other/different place but as a radically different way to think spatially. So finally, the heterotopias should not be perceived as a kind of spatial entities with strict boundaries but must be associated with dynamic (both spatial and temporal) relations to space, since they are established through empirical, cognitive and experiential processes.
Following Foucault’s heterotopias and Lefebvre’s “spaces of representation”, Marco Cenzatti elaborates the heterotopias of difference, arguing that the current socio-cultural and economic data have overcome the heterotopias of deviation and are no longer the dominant forms of heterotopia. Particularly, he argues that in the modern societies, the norms (the normal) have become much more flexible and dynamic. Thus, a deviation today cannot be seen as something static and given, but as something that is constantly being redefined. The fights given in the late 60s and onwards, from the various “minority” groups (gay, black, women etc.) claiming the right to difference, set a new social situation, a new model of social reproduction. Capitalism hasn’t failed, but rather reorganized, trying to incorporate these new conditions. In this logic, heterotopias can no longer take the form of a spatially limited institution (prison, clinic, etc.) that contain/exclude specific social subjects with stable characteristics. In the era of multiple identities, we have to treat them as a kind of practice, a form of ownership of certain areas at certain times. When social relations that define a space as heterotopic cease to exist, that space ceases to be a heterotopia. Thus, we may have a given space, with a particular physical configuration, where to acquire ‘heterotopic’ characteristics because of certain relationships that thrive in this specific situation (markets and fairs, public demonstrations, festivals etc.). We can say that, the heterotopias of difference are ephemeral spatial - social situations in places with interchangeable social subjects. In these approaches of heterotopias, we can see an attempt to eliminate boundaries and to deal with them as something diffuse and dynamic into the social reality.
Shane and Heterotopias
David Grahame Shane gives another dimension to the meaning of heterotopias while addressing the new challenges for urban planning and design. The cities, he mentions, are made up of fragments (they are no longer understandable in a holistic way) and dealing with them should be made fragment by fragment, in way that intervening in one wouldn’t damage the others. Therefore, he proposes the three elements that an urban or city designer should consider. The first element is that of enclave, single-purpose assemblage space like public squares or other public buildings. The second element is that of armature. The armatures are the communication or transportation networks, usually the streets but also other linear functions like shopping arcades, boulevards etc. but also public demonstrations. The third and the most “crucial” elements of the city, the connecting ones, are the heterotopias. Heterotopia, for him, is any large and complex monument or public institution which combines different urban factors. Normally they “stand out” from the urban fabric and change the city over time. Some urban heterotopias are Centre Pompidou in Paris, Federation Square in Melbourne, London Eye.
In his own words:
Urban actors and designers use heterotopias to combine enclaves and armatures, making new hybrids that they hope will have special advantages and accommodate change or difference in the city. Michel Foucault, the French philosopher who introduced the term to architects in the 1960s, was especially interested in the heterotopias used to bring modernism into traditional societies not based on modern science, organised by custom, magic or belief in different hierarchical systems. Foucault emphasised that heterotopias were often miniature models of an urban ecology, a small city within a city. Also the actors in charge often reversed significant codes inside the heterotopia. If the city was chaotic, for instance, then actors sought order, calm and control within the perimeter of the heterotopia. The other distinguishing characteristic of the heterotopia was its multiple actors, each with their own spaces and codes, all within one perimeter. This contrasted with a modern enclave that tended to be monofunctional – a business park, for instance, without other uses. Multiple actors could interact inside the heterotopia, try new combinations and experiment, without disturbingthe whole urban ecology.
(Shane, 2011, p.37)
Based in the concept of the three elements he also introduces three models of the city design with “recombinations” of the three urban elements. The domination of one of the elements characterizes the model itself. For these new city models, he gives the urban equipment used, but also some examples for us to understand:
• Archi Citta: Enclaves dominate armatures, system must have heterotopic space. Urban equipment are such as the Main Square, gates, markets, temples etc. Some Archi Cittas are ancient city of Pompeii or Timgad
• Cine Citta: Armature dominates system. Urban equipment are such as a highway grid, arcades, malls, boulevards. Planed cities
based on this model are Copenhagen or Upper West Side neighbourhood in New York
• Tele Citta: Heterotopias dominate system. Urban equipment are themed space or district, gated enclosure or historic district, entertainment district etc. The urban design movement of New Urbanism uses the same methods as Tele Citta. Time Square in New
York, Disneyland, Christiania in Copenhagen or even the late Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong are some examples of this model.
While he continuously invokes Foucault’s heterotopias, the new urban “principles” that Shane gives, take them to another dimension.
For Foucault, heterotopia was not a functional space or even a specific place. It was rather a space where alternative social groups (with or without their own intention) gathered, creating these other spaces, usually temporarily, by having different social values. Shane’s heterotopias have to do mainly with diversity, spatially seen in every multi-use structure. He describes heterotopia as:
...what enables the city to maintain itself stably
and urban actors to shift from one urban model
to another or to hybridize the models.
(Shane, 2005, p.227)
In the end, to the three city models, he adds the Net City as an emerging form, a “matrix” of heterotopian nodes.
Understanding the “other” spaces
Heterotopias bring together people who are in crisis with their environment and deal with some everyday problems, having realized
the contradiction among what they would like to have and what they have in actuality. Heterotopic places try to preserve the independence of thought and action, whether this works through conditions, practices or social claims. Of course I am not referring to the personal trace of each individual, but the common features of social networks to which they belong and the specific systems that interact with the space. These people construct places where they apply their own beliefs, a kind of microcosms and urban structures in the city, snapshots of another condition included in the urban space and time. Yet, where the ephemeral urban structures began to grow and reproduce their own sites and links, always within an increasingly technologically developing world, they created their own identities. Identities that repel the city itself and make individual defence mechanisms. Therefore, the existing order is reversed and a new system of social organization is hatched. The other places reflect the everyday, the granted but also the proposal of a turnover life. The format of the premises, their symbolism, the flows inside them and the general operation of them inside the city, express the values of the dominant culture and life, opposing, rejecting or reversing them. These substantial places, besiege the city itself and formulate heterotopias. The recommended way of living, includes the practical expression of the strong forms of collective creation and configuration of everyday life as a process of resolving social contradictions. The entrenched - in a sense - spaces, become haven, within which are applied alternative forms of social organization, grown alternative perspectives, formed human relationships and behaviours, not only liberated but also free.
Groups of people generate heterotopias by trying to construct therein or through them a situation ideal. The path is not settled or completely specified. Their practice is the effort to create the conditions that allow the passage to this ideal. It is a process mainly spatial but also mental, a procedure through the uncertain, pulling the strings of their action. The uncertain is close to both the space of the imagination, (faith in change, in a better condition) and space of reality (looking for the most essential needs). At the same time, the standard elements are remote from the dream (stationary and absolute, and mostly unrealistic), but also from reality (rather than the reality itself, they enjoy a caricature crafted and permanently reproduced by themselves).
Heterotopias, as we know, have no clear and immutable geographic boundaries with a fixed physical substance. They are places designated by acts or situations, from experiences or facts. Their outline may vary, since the action and the various new needs move, transmit and transfer from one person to another and from one place to another. The instability that characterizes them, diversify them from any other place and gives them special interest. The identity is hard to define as it is constantly in a state of flux, which transforms continuously and gets adapted to the nature and circumstances of the environment. The space is homogeneous and yet separated, shattered and yet preserved. The complexity of the environment gives the impression of disorder and arbitrariness, but contains internal (collective) self-organizing rules. I am not referring to the total area of urban or regional planning or the segmented place of architecture. I’m talking about the need that consolidates the functional pieces of a space separated, thereby realizing the homogeneous and shredded character. And this character develops and transforms the social practices within a capitalist (progressing) society showing at the same time its boundaries.
The deceptive existence of boundaries, even if they appear to be resilient and temporarily transposable, suggests what might be happening inside heterotopic places. There is thus a particular, special charge, which profess the criteria and actions of groups of people - users who operate in these other places. These groups of people are certainly not homogenous masses: the diversity of individuals is expressed within the complexity and variety of space. This space becomes a communication code, where each element, combined with the location and function, refers to specific meanings. Inside heterotopias, the space generated is independent from the urban mainstream, socially, politically and spatially. These other spaces are immediately distinguishable from the built environment of the city. Therefore, the form of heterotopic spaces, even though freer in its internal organization and a very different aesthetic culture, is entrenched quirky but scrupulously by the urban and social environment. Each element acts as a mirror of the state hosting. The passages function like islands in a different social reality like giant parentheses in space and time. The potential lies in the power of each individual initiative, but also from the overall presence. Consequently, surfaces and micro - environments form a network, create a standalone place, a “reaction” to the urban fabric that has physical dimensions, changes in its structure, its color, its shape and materials of the space, but also changes of the time (change of pace, change of perception of the time flows etc.). The events generated, the relationships realized and the behaviours exhibited cannot be separated from the space in which they take place.
Heterotopias are experiences, so combination of space and time, real and alternate. The space, which on the surface appears to be a collage, is actually a place of coexistence, a conglomeration of heterogeneous elements, a total of micro-environments that overlap and cohabit. It consists of places individual and collective, where the materiality of the space does not enclose the reality. The spatial organization reflects and combines the fantastic, the idea or the dream of social organization, the quality of human relationships in the now, which now was once tomorrow, the dream of yesterday.
Going through an heterotopic space, you can’t be oblivious to the situation that surrounds you. But also cannot depend on it. Formed within or outside the city, being constantly in interaction with it, heterotopias can shape the city, but mainly are shaped by it. Attracted by various activities and are clearly not closed and unaffected shapes, are led to this situation by other factors. They share some internal commons, they accept the same values, and their priorities operate in the same line. As a result of this, it attributed a specific identity, as it happens with general members of any group. If we put it more romantically, these places are spaces of desire, of permanent imbalance. They are bases of ablation of formalism and coercion, creating moments of game and of unpredictable situations. The satisfaction of the basic needs, writes Lefebvre, fails to choke the fundamental unsatisfied desires. Exactly at this point is where the permanent imbalance is reproduced. There is a dynamic state that is controlled by the people involved in this, which varies and is determined by their relations, space and time of actions. It is the experience of continuing experimentation. Space becomes completely terrestrial, any ideas where grown, become a reality. Here the old classical humanism (see public buildings and modernism) is no more recognized. The “human scale” is generated at that same moment. This is what gives value to these other places. Thus, the space formed is far from irrelevance and insignificance and the environment develops its own values.
Conclusions
Even though heterotopias are formally related to space, it seems that the main reference are the social implications of every society. Foucault’s heterotopias are related to the forbidden or temporarily enclosed spaces outside of the “normal” social forms. Lefebvre, even if he tries to escape the spatial boundaries of heterotopic spaces, describing them as places of challenge, controversy or resistance, asking for the right to the city, he implies that every society produces its own social space. The additional work of Soja and Cenzatti on heterotopias, proves the importance of adjusting to the social transitions, elaborating a supplementary third space or adding a new/ different type of heterotopia trying to adjust also in the new social conditions. Shane’s view on urban design through the prism of heterotopias, gives explanations not only on the urban structures but also on the social structures and networks.
Therefore, it is not about heterotopia of crisis, but it is about society of crisis. It is about society of deviation, society of illusion, society of compensation, society of difference and society of values.
Heterotopias, are places with no clear and immutable geographic boundaries or a fixed physical substance. They are places designated by acts or situations, from experiences or facts. Groups of people generate heterotopias by trying to construct therein or through them a situation ideal. The path is not settled or completely specified. Their practice is the effort to create the conditions that allow the passage to this ideal. These groups of people are certainly not homogenous masses: the diversity of individuals is expressed within the complexity and variety of space. This space becomes a communication code, where each element, combined with the location and function, refers to specific meanings and values.
Introduction
This text examines the role and the contribution of heterotopias, the other spaces, in urban design and city theory. The structure starts with the analysis and the definition of the term heterotopia and the importance of the other places in our cities and societies. In section two, it explores heterotopias through three different prisms and writers. The first prism is that of philosophy, where philosopher Michel Foucault who actually elaborated the concept of heterotopia, explains about the different types and principles. The second prism is that of sociology, where the philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre refers to a trialectics of spatial practices, representations of space and space of representations. The third prism is that of urban design, where city theoretician David Grahame Shane breaks down cities into three constituent elements, describing heterotopia as the most important of the three. Afterwards, the paper discusses how the three perceptions of heterotopia, mentioned above, transform the meaning of space, identity and values. It focuses on understanding the conditions to create heterotopias and to use it in urban design as a tool. Furthermore, the theoretical findings are translated in study cases. Heterotopias will be filtered through reflections of planning, the abandonment of the urban centres and the constant shifts of the social poles. The text concludes with remarks on the other places, where urban design is a challenge for a balanced spatial integration.
Writing on Heterotopias
Foucault and Heterotopias
There are also, and this probably in all culture, in all civilization, real places, effective places, places that are written into the institution of society itself, and that are a sort of counter emplacements, a sort of effectively realized utopias in which the real emplacements, all the other real emplacements that can be found within culture, are simultaneously represented, contested and
inverted; a kind of places that are outside all places, even though they are actually localizable.
(Foucault, 1967, p.17)
Before any in depth examination, we should note that the choice to focus on the other spaces by Michel Foucault, it is not random,
but it comes to meet substantial questions that he had. In the same spirit of time, Foucault, based on the same principles of structuralism, tries to disassemble the whole social reality and to focus into the asymmetric development of social forms of that period of time. In order to explain everything, by its history, he takes the chance to detect the originality of social relations developed in the society. As a result of this, he locates his interest in peripheral – extreme situations (prisons, clinics etc.) where relations develop outside of “normal”. He believes that the constitution of the “other” can be seen clearer inside the “whole” through its dynamic elements.
Foucault defines two main types of spaces that contradict to reality. The first one, the Utopias, created by the denial of the people to compromise to reality, leads them to fantasise a different/ideal order of social relations. This ideal society has its reflection in an ideal city and space. So, utopian places or non-real places having the “ideal” characteristics, exist in a “perfect” society, or in a society turned upside down. On the other hand, there is the existing type of contradicted space.
…even though they are actually localizable.
Since these places are absolutely other than all
the emplacements that they reflect, and of which
they speak, I shall call them, by way of contrast
to utopias, heterotopias.
(Foucault, 1967, p.17)
So to “localize” these realistic spaces, or heterotopias, Foucault analyses the basic principles of this study, described as heterotopology:
i. There is probably not a single culture in the world that does not constitute heterotopias. The first principle describes two different categories of heterotopias. Firstly, there are the heterotopias of crisis, existing in the “primitive” societies, places (sacred, privileged, forbidden) that accept people that are in crisis, like boarding schools for the boys etc. Secondly, there are the heterotopias of deviation, existing in the modern societies, so places where people act out of the normalities of each society, like prisons or clinics.
ii. In the course of its history, a society can make a heterotopia that exists, and has not ceased to exist, function in a very different way. The main example that Foucault gives here, is the cemetery. It is a place that connect with every other place of the society. Until the end 18th century, the cemeteries was placed in the centre, in the heart of the city. Though, the individualization of death gives another meaning to the burial of the body, when death is considered as an illness and from the 19th century onwards and cemeteries are consequently placed outside the cities.
iii. The heterotopia has the power to juxtapose in a single real place several spaces, several emplacements that are in themselves
incompatible. Theatres and cinemas are places of juxtaposition where the stage or the screen are the places where the mirror of other/ different emplacements are displayed. The Persian gardens are the best examples of the third principle, defined by their cosmologic and semiologic reference.
iv. Heterotopias are most often linked to slices of time - which is to say that they open onto what might be called, heterochronisms. Libraries and museums are part of the heterochronistic heterotopias. Knowledge, time, ideas become part of an eternity in a single
place. On the other hand, we have the fairgrounds and festivals, when time becomes temporary and uncertain.
v. Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable. Foucault makes two interpretations. On the one hand, the “opening and closing” are clear and distinguishable (army, prison) and on the other
hand, one can have permission after a process of rites or purifications with a certain permission (Muslim hamams, Scandinavian
saunas).
vi. The last trait of heterotopias is that they have, in relation to the rest of space, a function. The two categories introduced here are the heterotopias of illusion and the heterotopias of compensation. Brothels create the illusion of an orthologic disguise in relation with the sexual normality, outside of them. Colonization, with its “organized and pure” structures come to rise the unconventional other places.
As we can see, there is no spatial similarity of the different examples referred by Foucault. We can say that, the only element that relates them to each other, is the role that play on the social structures of each society.
Lefebvre and Heterotopias
Beyond Foucault’s research on space, there were the situationists, the existentialists, the phenomenologists etc. One of the theoreticians that places emphasis on space was Henri Lefebvre. As he used to say, he was looking for the “new humanism”, that diversify itself from the humanism of liberal ideology, and at the same time, he opens the road for human emancipation.
He saw the weakness of the system to achieve a full inclusion of people in its structures, leaving “holes” and “cracks” through
which, there could be generated alternative, to the predominant forms, subjectivities. In this vein, when Lefebvre talks about the “right to the city” and the city as a process, basically, he is trying to describe the field on which he can work and express. For him, space does not just reflect the existing (dominant) social relations, but rather, is a continuous challenge where, apart from the domination of the “normal”, we meet the controversy, the resistance and the different, or else the “other”. Lefebvre argued that while the production of capitalist space aims to be homogeneous and abstract (totalitarian), in reality is a process which leaves fragments of differential spaces. These are areas where we do not find a hegemonic central ideology but different forms of social relations. In «The production of Space», he proposes a triadic analysis for the space. Production of space is broken down into three distinct categories:
• the spatial practices (Espace percu): objective space as a physical/empirical reality, formed in a specific context of social relations, needs and relationships, a granted and a neutral space
• the representations of space (Espace concu): the conceived space of the scientists and artists, the mental produced space, the ideologic space
• the space of representation (Espace vecu): the lived space as unmediated experience, transformed from objective and conceived space
Although, he devotes a large part of his research on space, Levebvre makes only a few and scattered references to the issue of heterotopia. In «The Production of Space» heterotopia is used together with the isotopia and utopia, and more specifically as the opposite of the isotopia. For Lefebvre, isotopia is the dominant form of organization of space, the ‘normal’, the centre, while heterotopias are competitive, peripheral spaces. The motives and reasons that led him to use the term of heterotopia differ from those of Foucault. When referring to Foucault, he imputes him an obsession with the analysis of the individual against the collective subject, the abstract nature of the spatial flows. Therefore, while acknowledging that the analysis of “extreme social situations” that Foucault describes, is of particular interest, he argues that this insistence on the “peripheries” ends up despising the “centre”.
Edward Soja, in the same logic as Lefebvre, identifies the so-called double illusion in relation with the debate on space. Based on this line, Soja, considering that we have to think on space beyond this traditional dipole, introduces the term of «Thirding-as-Othering». By that, he tries to describe a condition, which will disassemble the holistic (dipolar) formats that seek to interpret reality in a static, unambiguous way. This circular and dynamic relationship between subject and object, the thirding, should not be understood simply as the “average” of these two poles. The concept of Thirdspace, proposed by him, is the experienced place that gives meaning to space, with an equal and especially reciprocal relationship. Thirdspace rises above the dominant patterns and dominant forms of ownership of space. It is direct, with ‘irrational’ view and is not part of the normal capitalist reproduction. He argues that it is the only category of the three, which can manifest controversies and challenge the social reality. So heterotopias are the Thirdspace, where both the dominant narrative about the place and actual social relationships developed, conduct the “otherness”. Therefore, we should not consider of the Thirdspace (or heterotopias) just as some other/different place but as a radically different way to think spatially. So finally, the heterotopias should not be perceived as a kind of spatial entities with strict boundaries but must be associated with dynamic (both spatial and temporal) relations to space, since they are established through empirical, cognitive and experiential processes.
Following Foucault’s heterotopias and Lefebvre’s “spaces of representation”, Marco Cenzatti elaborates the heterotopias of difference, arguing that the current socio-cultural and economic data have overcome the heterotopias of deviation and are no longer the dominant forms of heterotopia. Particularly, he argues that in the modern societies, the norms (the normal) have become much more flexible and dynamic. Thus, a deviation today cannot be seen as something static and given, but as something that is constantly being redefined. The fights given in the late 60s and onwards, from the various “minority” groups (gay, black, women etc.) claiming the right to difference, set a new social situation, a new model of social reproduction. Capitalism hasn’t failed, but rather reorganized, trying to incorporate these new conditions. In this logic, heterotopias can no longer take the form of a spatially limited institution (prison, clinic, etc.) that contain/exclude specific social subjects with stable characteristics. In the era of multiple identities, we have to treat them as a kind of practice, a form of ownership of certain areas at certain times. When social relations that define a space as heterotopic cease to exist, that space ceases to be a heterotopia. Thus, we may have a given space, with a particular physical configuration, where to acquire ‘heterotopic’ characteristics because of certain relationships that thrive in this specific situation (markets and fairs, public demonstrations, festivals etc.). We can say that, the heterotopias of difference are ephemeral spatial - social situations in places with interchangeable social subjects. In these approaches of heterotopias, we can see an attempt to eliminate boundaries and to deal with them as something diffuse and dynamic into the social reality.
Shane and Heterotopias
David Grahame Shane gives another dimension to the meaning of heterotopias while addressing the new challenges for urban planning and design. The cities, he mentions, are made up of fragments (they are no longer understandable in a holistic way) and dealing with them should be made fragment by fragment, in way that intervening in one wouldn’t damage the others. Therefore, he proposes the three elements that an urban or city designer should consider. The first element is that of enclave, single-purpose assemblage space like public squares or other public buildings. The second element is that of armature. The armatures are the communication or transportation networks, usually the streets but also other linear functions like shopping arcades, boulevards etc. but also public demonstrations. The third and the most “crucial” elements of the city, the connecting ones, are the heterotopias. Heterotopia, for him, is any large and complex monument or public institution which combines different urban factors. Normally they “stand out” from the urban fabric and change the city over time. Some urban heterotopias are Centre Pompidou in Paris, Federation Square in Melbourne, London Eye.
In his own words:
Urban actors and designers use heterotopias to combine enclaves and armatures, making new hybrids that they hope will have special advantages and accommodate change or difference in the city. Michel Foucault, the French philosopher who introduced the term to architects in the 1960s, was especially interested in the heterotopias used to bring modernism into traditional societies not based on modern science, organised by custom, magic or belief in different hierarchical systems. Foucault emphasised that heterotopias were often miniature models of an urban ecology, a small city within a city. Also the actors in charge often reversed significant codes inside the heterotopia. If the city was chaotic, for instance, then actors sought order, calm and control within the perimeter of the heterotopia. The other distinguishing characteristic of the heterotopia was its multiple actors, each with their own spaces and codes, all within one perimeter. This contrasted with a modern enclave that tended to be monofunctional – a business park, for instance, without other uses. Multiple actors could interact inside the heterotopia, try new combinations and experiment, without disturbingthe whole urban ecology.
(Shane, 2011, p.37)
Based in the concept of the three elements he also introduces three models of the city design with “recombinations” of the three urban elements. The domination of one of the elements characterizes the model itself. For these new city models, he gives the urban equipment used, but also some examples for us to understand:
• Archi Citta: Enclaves dominate armatures, system must have heterotopic space. Urban equipment are such as the Main Square, gates, markets, temples etc. Some Archi Cittas are ancient city of Pompeii or Timgad
• Cine Citta: Armature dominates system. Urban equipment are such as a highway grid, arcades, malls, boulevards. Planed cities
based on this model are Copenhagen or Upper West Side neighbourhood in New York
• Tele Citta: Heterotopias dominate system. Urban equipment are themed space or district, gated enclosure or historic district, entertainment district etc. The urban design movement of New Urbanism uses the same methods as Tele Citta. Time Square in New
York, Disneyland, Christiania in Copenhagen or even the late Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong are some examples of this model.
While he continuously invokes Foucault’s heterotopias, the new urban “principles” that Shane gives, take them to another dimension.
For Foucault, heterotopia was not a functional space or even a specific place. It was rather a space where alternative social groups (with or without their own intention) gathered, creating these other spaces, usually temporarily, by having different social values. Shane’s heterotopias have to do mainly with diversity, spatially seen in every multi-use structure. He describes heterotopia as:
...what enables the city to maintain itself stably
and urban actors to shift from one urban model
to another or to hybridize the models.
(Shane, 2005, p.227)
In the end, to the three city models, he adds the Net City as an emerging form, a “matrix” of heterotopian nodes.
Understanding the “other” spaces
Heterotopias bring together people who are in crisis with their environment and deal with some everyday problems, having realized
the contradiction among what they would like to have and what they have in actuality. Heterotopic places try to preserve the independence of thought and action, whether this works through conditions, practices or social claims. Of course I am not referring to the personal trace of each individual, but the common features of social networks to which they belong and the specific systems that interact with the space. These people construct places where they apply their own beliefs, a kind of microcosms and urban structures in the city, snapshots of another condition included in the urban space and time. Yet, where the ephemeral urban structures began to grow and reproduce their own sites and links, always within an increasingly technologically developing world, they created their own identities. Identities that repel the city itself and make individual defence mechanisms. Therefore, the existing order is reversed and a new system of social organization is hatched. The other places reflect the everyday, the granted but also the proposal of a turnover life. The format of the premises, their symbolism, the flows inside them and the general operation of them inside the city, express the values of the dominant culture and life, opposing, rejecting or reversing them. These substantial places, besiege the city itself and formulate heterotopias. The recommended way of living, includes the practical expression of the strong forms of collective creation and configuration of everyday life as a process of resolving social contradictions. The entrenched - in a sense - spaces, become haven, within which are applied alternative forms of social organization, grown alternative perspectives, formed human relationships and behaviours, not only liberated but also free.
Groups of people generate heterotopias by trying to construct therein or through them a situation ideal. The path is not settled or completely specified. Their practice is the effort to create the conditions that allow the passage to this ideal. It is a process mainly spatial but also mental, a procedure through the uncertain, pulling the strings of their action. The uncertain is close to both the space of the imagination, (faith in change, in a better condition) and space of reality (looking for the most essential needs). At the same time, the standard elements are remote from the dream (stationary and absolute, and mostly unrealistic), but also from reality (rather than the reality itself, they enjoy a caricature crafted and permanently reproduced by themselves).
Heterotopias, as we know, have no clear and immutable geographic boundaries with a fixed physical substance. They are places designated by acts or situations, from experiences or facts. Their outline may vary, since the action and the various new needs move, transmit and transfer from one person to another and from one place to another. The instability that characterizes them, diversify them from any other place and gives them special interest. The identity is hard to define as it is constantly in a state of flux, which transforms continuously and gets adapted to the nature and circumstances of the environment. The space is homogeneous and yet separated, shattered and yet preserved. The complexity of the environment gives the impression of disorder and arbitrariness, but contains internal (collective) self-organizing rules. I am not referring to the total area of urban or regional planning or the segmented place of architecture. I’m talking about the need that consolidates the functional pieces of a space separated, thereby realizing the homogeneous and shredded character. And this character develops and transforms the social practices within a capitalist (progressing) society showing at the same time its boundaries.
The deceptive existence of boundaries, even if they appear to be resilient and temporarily transposable, suggests what might be happening inside heterotopic places. There is thus a particular, special charge, which profess the criteria and actions of groups of people - users who operate in these other places. These groups of people are certainly not homogenous masses: the diversity of individuals is expressed within the complexity and variety of space. This space becomes a communication code, where each element, combined with the location and function, refers to specific meanings. Inside heterotopias, the space generated is independent from the urban mainstream, socially, politically and spatially. These other spaces are immediately distinguishable from the built environment of the city. Therefore, the form of heterotopic spaces, even though freer in its internal organization and a very different aesthetic culture, is entrenched quirky but scrupulously by the urban and social environment. Each element acts as a mirror of the state hosting. The passages function like islands in a different social reality like giant parentheses in space and time. The potential lies in the power of each individual initiative, but also from the overall presence. Consequently, surfaces and micro - environments form a network, create a standalone place, a “reaction” to the urban fabric that has physical dimensions, changes in its structure, its color, its shape and materials of the space, but also changes of the time (change of pace, change of perception of the time flows etc.). The events generated, the relationships realized and the behaviours exhibited cannot be separated from the space in which they take place.
Heterotopias are experiences, so combination of space and time, real and alternate. The space, which on the surface appears to be a collage, is actually a place of coexistence, a conglomeration of heterogeneous elements, a total of micro-environments that overlap and cohabit. It consists of places individual and collective, where the materiality of the space does not enclose the reality. The spatial organization reflects and combines the fantastic, the idea or the dream of social organization, the quality of human relationships in the now, which now was once tomorrow, the dream of yesterday.
Going through an heterotopic space, you can’t be oblivious to the situation that surrounds you. But also cannot depend on it. Formed within or outside the city, being constantly in interaction with it, heterotopias can shape the city, but mainly are shaped by it. Attracted by various activities and are clearly not closed and unaffected shapes, are led to this situation by other factors. They share some internal commons, they accept the same values, and their priorities operate in the same line. As a result of this, it attributed a specific identity, as it happens with general members of any group. If we put it more romantically, these places are spaces of desire, of permanent imbalance. They are bases of ablation of formalism and coercion, creating moments of game and of unpredictable situations. The satisfaction of the basic needs, writes Lefebvre, fails to choke the fundamental unsatisfied desires. Exactly at this point is where the permanent imbalance is reproduced. There is a dynamic state that is controlled by the people involved in this, which varies and is determined by their relations, space and time of actions. It is the experience of continuing experimentation. Space becomes completely terrestrial, any ideas where grown, become a reality. Here the old classical humanism (see public buildings and modernism) is no more recognized. The “human scale” is generated at that same moment. This is what gives value to these other places. Thus, the space formed is far from irrelevance and insignificance and the environment develops its own values.
Conclusions
Even though heterotopias are formally related to space, it seems that the main reference are the social implications of every society. Foucault’s heterotopias are related to the forbidden or temporarily enclosed spaces outside of the “normal” social forms. Lefebvre, even if he tries to escape the spatial boundaries of heterotopic spaces, describing them as places of challenge, controversy or resistance, asking for the right to the city, he implies that every society produces its own social space. The additional work of Soja and Cenzatti on heterotopias, proves the importance of adjusting to the social transitions, elaborating a supplementary third space or adding a new/ different type of heterotopia trying to adjust also in the new social conditions. Shane’s view on urban design through the prism of heterotopias, gives explanations not only on the urban structures but also on the social structures and networks.
Therefore, it is not about heterotopia of crisis, but it is about society of crisis. It is about society of deviation, society of illusion, society of compensation, society of difference and society of values.
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