The Production of Space (1974, Henri Lefebvre)
Within the spatial practice of modern society, the architect ... has a representation of this
space, one which is bound ... to sheets of paper, plans, elevations, sections, perspective views of
facades ... This conceived space is thought by those who make use of it to be true, despite
the fact that it is geometrical ...
The balance of forces between monuments and buildings has shifted. Buildings are to monuments
as everyday life is to festival, products to works, lived experience to the merely
perceived ... What we are seeing here is a new dialectical process ...
The
Pro
duct
ion
of S
pace
Dialectical Process Spatial Practice ofModern Society
Everyday life
Buildings
Liveexperience
Representation of space
Festival
Monuments
Perceived Conceived space
vs
vs
vs
vs
I. Representation of Space
One might see it (a house) as the epitome of immovability, with its concrete and its stark,
cold and rigid outlines ... Now, a critical analysis would doubtless destroy the appearance of solidity ... of its concrete slabs and its thin non-load-bearing walls ... In the light of this imaginary
analysis, our house would emerge as permeated from every direction by streams of energy
... by every imaginable route: water, gas, electricity, telephone lines, radio ... Its image would then be
replaced by an image of a complex of mobilities ... much more accurately than any drawing
or photograph, would disclose that this ‘immovable property’ is actually ... an active body ...
Rep
rese
ntat
ion
of S
pace
MobilityImmovability
Images are themselves fragments of space. Cutting things up and rearranging them. découpage
and montage ... As for error and illusion, they reside already in the artist’s eye, in the
photographer’s lens, in the draftsman’s pencil and paper ... Wherever there is
illusion, the optical and visual world plays an integral and integrative ... part in it. It fetishizes abstraction and imposes it as the norm. It detaches the pure form from its impure content - from
lived time, everyday time ... After its fashion, the image kills.
Rep
rese
ntat
ion
of S
pace
Error & Illusion of Images
Space
Artist’s eye
Photographers’slens
Fetishized abstraction(Montage)
Audience
Draftsman’spencil & paper
II. Perception of Space
The codifying approach of semiology, which seeks to classify representations
... is quite unable to cover all facets of the monumental. Indeed, it does not even come close, for it is
the residual - whatever cannot be classified or codified according to categories devised
subsequent to production ...In face of this fetishized abstraction, ‘users’ spontaneously turn themselves,
their presence, their ‘lived experience’ and their bodies into abstractions ... The
theoretical error is to be content to see a space without conceiving of it ... without
assembling details into a whole ‘reality’ ...
Per
cept
ion
of S
pace
Theoretical Error
Lived experienceCodifying approach
Without details into a whole reality
Withoutconceiving of it
In nature, time is apprehended within space ... Until nature became localized in
underdevelopment, each place showed its age and, like a tree trunk, bore the mark of the
years it had taken it to grow ... With the advent of modernity time has vanished from social space. It is recorded solely on measuring-instruments, on clocks, that are as isolated and
functionally specialized as this time itself. Lived time loses its form and its social interest ...
Per
cept
ion
of S
pace
Time Apprehended in Space
Monumental qualities are not solely plastic, not to be apprehended solely through
looking. Monuments are also liable to possess acoustic properties ... Silence itself, in a
place of worship, has its music. In cloister or cathedral, space is measured by the ear:
the sounds, voices and singing reverberate in an interplay analogous to that between the most basic
sounds and tones ... Architectural volumes ensure a correlation between the rhythms ...
and their musical resonance. It is in this way, and at this level, in the non-visible ...
Per
cept
ion
of S
pace
Visible Non-visible
III. Suggestions / Pointers
Surely it is the supreme illusion to defer to architects, urbanists or planners as being experts or ultimate
authorities in matters relating to space. What the interested parties’ here fail to appreciate is that they
are bending their demands (from below) to suit commands (from above) ... The real task, by contrast, is to uncover and stimulate demands even at
the risk of their wavering in face of the imposition of oppressive and repressive commands. It is, one
suspects, the ideological error par excellence to go instead in search of specialists of ‘lived experience’ ...
Sug
gest
ions
/ P
oint
ers
From above From below
CommandsCommands
DemandsDemands
Stimulated DemandsBended Demands
Bending Stimulate
Spaces are strange: homogeneous, rationalized, and constraining ... its very passive
acceptance of them ensures their operational impact. The division of labour, of needs
... all pushed to the point of maximum separation ... A monument or architectural project attains
a complexity fundamentally different from the complexity of a text ... what we are concerned with
here is not texts but texture ... texture is made up of a usually rather large space covered by
networks; monuments constitute the ... anchors of such webs. The actions of social practice are expressible ... they are, precisely, acted - and not read.
Sug
gest
ions
/ P
oint
ers
Social Practice
Texture PerceptionActed
Texts RepresentationRead
but not
The user’s space is lived - not represented (or conceived) ... the space of the everyday activities
of users is a concrete, subjective one. As a space of ‘subjects’ rather than of calculations, as
a representational space ... the resulting space would be inhabited by subjects, it
might legitimately be deemed ‘situational’ or ‘relational’ - but these definitions or determinants
would refer to sociological content rather than to any intrinsic properties of space ... The
restoration of the body means ... the restoration of the sensory-sensual - of
speech, of the voice, of smell, of hearing. In short, of the non-visual.
Sug
gest
ions
/ P
oint
ers
Restoration of the Body
Caculations Subjects Sensory-sensual(non-visual)
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