Spatial Agency Creative Project

“The illusion of Public Spaces” is a blog for a Spatial Agency Creative Project by Don Lever & Michael Rybin for the required course: Architecture 3850 Human Dimension in Design: Gender and Race - Professor Lisa Henry Benham. 

This blog includes pictures and text regarding the subject of Spatial Agency. 

We welcome your Comments! 

Thank you,
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Copyright © 2013 Don Lever and Michael Rybin All Rights Reserved.

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For context, here is a copy of the assignment
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ARCH 3850: Human Dimension in Design: Gender and Race
Professor Lisa Henry Benham  
Spring 2013

Creative Project: Spatial Agency:

Action depends  on the capacity of the individual to 'make a difference' to a pre-existing  state of affairs or course of events. Anthony Giddens

The relationship  to space  of a 'subject'  who is a member of a group or society  implies  his relationship to his own body and vice versa  Henri Lefebvre

If we take Lefebvre’s redefinition of (social)Space as a starting point to understand spatial agency we must consider several issues: (1) The production of space is a shared enterprise. Although Architects may have a particular role to play, ultimately (social) space acknowledges the contributions of others. (2) (Social) space is dynamic, changing over time and through multiple performances and contributions. (3) (Social) space is political space. It is “charged with the dynamics of power/empowerment, interaction/isolation, control/freedom and so on” (30). (4) In addition the rise of the virtual, as you have pointed out in class, has clear implications for the production of space.

“Spatial agents … are negotiators of existing conditions in order to partially reform them. Spatial agency implies that action to engage transformatively with structure is possible, but will only be effective if one is alert to the constraints and opportunities that the structure presents” (31). There are several aspects which effect agency: (1) Intent, “Agents act with intent but that intent is necessarily shaped and reshaped by the context within which the agent is working” (31). (2) An agent may be empowered or empowering, that is operating through their own knowledge, or operating to empower others, through education and respecting the knowledge and experience of others. (3) “Finally, critical awareness refers to the need for spatial agents to act in a critical manner –‘critical’ here designating not a negative stance but an evaluative one that is aware [and takes advantage] of opportunities and challenges, freedoms and restrictions, of the given context" (33).

The purpose of this exercise is to play with the ideas and images presented and discussed in class to date. We will use the operations of architecture, art, performance and/or visual poetry to engage the course in a creative manner. The project is speculative and experimental;  as such mistakes, and even failure are acceptable as we often learn the most when we take missteps throughout  the creative process.

Process:
First consider the ideas or critical stand you would like to take. This should have some clear relationship to the readings we have discussed so far (up to spring break). Then design a “Visual text” to explore the ideas. Your "text" may take any form. But it must include a minimum of text and image, and it must engage space on some level. Examples include but are not limited to:
A text printed on a (an altered) piece of clothing
A text made into a household item A Joseph Cornell-like box (image) A diorama
A game.
A book or map cut up to make another narrative
A piece of furniture, or a medical instrument.
An instillation in a particular space, a text written into a particular place, or a walk-in text
It may be an UTube video, a blog, a hypertext, a web site, a facebook page, a series of postcards…

Whatever the object or arrangement of objects, consider how form and content are working together in a way that will enhance (or change) our reading experience of the text in crucial ways. If there is a disconnect between form and content, consider why this disconnect is necessary. Images may be taken by a phone camera. Consider issues of sound, image quality.

In what ways has the form of the “text” become truly necessary to its meaning? In what ways does the form allow for multiple voices, if it attempts to do this? In what ways does the form create a kind of closure to the reader? In what ways does it avoid closure? How has it innovated the way this “text’ or “space” can be read? Consider typography, punctuation, font size, the use of columns, the possibilities of marginalia or footnotes, excisions and textual positioning as you imagine how you might guide a reader through—or perhaps keep a reader from entering—your "text/space". What information do you need to be in charge of? What might you want to convey through the look of the text versus through the words themselves? How might issues of class, age, race or gender be addressed through the appearance or punctuation of the text? How might a word’s appearance and its denotation begin to work successfully together—or apart? In what ways might you allow the reader to have his or her own voice enter the text?

You should document your process, if you are creating a performance, something that is fleeting or your final product if you cannot turn in the final due to scale. If you go this route you should turn in a series of images or a film which documents the project along with a simple text document to show the text included in the piece.

For additional  references and examples go to the Spatial Agency wed site: www.spatialagency.net

All quotes come from:
Tatjana, Nishat Awan and Till, Schneider Jeremy. Spatial Agency: Other ways of doing Architecture. New York: Routledge, 2011.

Redefining Space, Grant Herron, Zac Wright, Justin Popa, 2012.

Woman's School of Planning and Architecture, Leslie Kanes Weisman, 1975.


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ANONYMOUS COMMENT POSTING INSTRUCTIONS
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--1--  Find the yellow box with POSTED BY MICHAEL RYBIN ...  
--2--  Click on the link # COMMENTS. 
--3--  Scroll up a little to see the box ENTER YOUR COMMENT... 
--4--  Next to COMMENT AS: click on the SELECT PROFILE  ...
and choose the ANONYMOUS option in the list. 
--5--  Write anything you want.
--6--  Select the PUBLISH button.