In September 2014, I participated in the 5th Global Conference on Space and Place, at Mansfield College, Oxford, UK. The conference was organized by Interdisciplinary.net
, a former British Association for Interdisciplinary Research and Publishing. My paper, titled From Space to Place, A Necessary Paradigm Shift in Architecture, was included by the organizing committee in the ‘Rethinking Space and Place’ section, which inspired the name of this website. In that paper, as an architect with an interest in both practical and theoretical aspects of a discipline closely related to questions of space and place, I urged for a reconsideration of the traditional interpretation of the two concepts to find a better correspondence between architecture and the current epoch. We are in the background of a clash between abstract and concrete modes of thought, for which space and place are perhaps two of the most representative concepts. In an epoch in which, with the affirmation of virtual and hybrid domains, the barrier between reality and the representation of reality is definitely falling down, I believe the right balance between concrete and abstract modes of thought is crucial for our future, the future of our cities, and the future of the natural environment. This future – our common future – strongly depends on the way we think about space and place, the way we plan and organize them, as well as the way we take care of existing places.
Since that presentation, I have been devoted to studying the two concepts to clarify their meanings by relying on different disciplinary sources. To paraphrase the sense of an expression used by the American thinker and polymath Charles Sanders Peirce, it has never been in my intentions, or in my power, to study anything – philosophy, physics, biology, ecology, the social sciences, arts, linguistics… – except as a study of the relation and influence that those disciplines have, might have, or might have had on architecture, by means of the concepts of space and place. Architecture is my direct field of competence, so my position on the subject – the concepts of space and place – is inevitably biased by my profession. Nonetheless, a serious study of such universal concepts inevitably transcends any disciplinary boundaries, and conciliation between different perspectives is necessary, based on a transdisciplinary approach to knowledge. I created this website to delve deeper into many important questions that I mentioned in that paper and to share and confront my thoughts on the subject with other scholars from different backgrounds, hoping to gain new insights and extend my knowledge on questions of space and place.
As for the structure of this website, I have decided to introduce my reformed understanding of the concepts of space and place (i.e., place as a system of processes) through a synthetic definition in the article What Is Place? What Is Space? In the following articles, I have tried (and I will continue to try in the future) to pick out and summarize those readings and considerations that led me to adopt such a reformed understanding for those ubiquitous notions. I will also add new items from time to time, inspired by more recent readings or events, without losing focus on the subject: rethinking the concepts of space and place.
To get an overall sense of the theoretical argumentations of this website, I suggest the reader start by reading the articles I posted first and progress through the more recent ones. In the menu, under the heading ‘INTRO’ you will find the article Preliminary Notes, which is a general introduction to the main themes that I am going to discuss at RSaP – Rethinking Space and Place; under the heading ‘BOOKS’ you will find the presentation of books and/or my commentaries on books that I consider especially important for the spatial debate in general, as well as for elucidating my specific perspective on questions of place and space.
About Me
I am an architect and an independent researcher from Milano, Italy. I graduated with honours from the Politecnico di Milano School of Architecture, where I spent some years as a Teaching Assistant before collaborating with other architects and firms. Eventually, I began working on my own projects under the name Alessandro Calvi Rollino Architetto. If you click on the name link, you can find some of the awarded and published projects I designed in the past. Currently, my focus is on developing a place-based implementation framework that can help architects better understand the relationship between architecture and the environment – physical, biological, ecological, sociocultural and symbolic environments as a seamless whole. I refer to this seamless whole as ‘place’.
If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact me via the Contact form. Thank you.
Featured Image (source): Mansfield College, Oxford, UK, https://www.mansfield.ox.ac.uk/
3 Comments
daniel zhou
A very good web space here, where nobody left with a word place.
EmtudoBuilder
Can we trace the origins of the concept of ‘space’ in architecture to a specific point in history, or is it a more complex and nuanced development that evolved over time through various cultures and epochs?
Alessandro Calvi Rollino
Interesting question. The concept of space in architecture and urbanism (i.e., three-dimensional space initially understood as the interior volume included between the bounding surfaces of a building/box and, later, extended to the exterior volume that surrounds buildings and objects) had a specific time and place-related origin: we must go back to the German-speaking area in the second part of the XIX century. I’ve talked about that in the Appendix of the article ‘On the Ambiguous Language of Space’, giving some references to trace back that specific intellectual journey. Of course, after the initial intuitions that formalized the specific extent of that concept, it was further refined, elucidated and assimilated by other cultures. Finally, it became a common domain, extended to all cultures and places, since the second part of the XX century – ‘the epoch of space’ as Michel Foucault once epitomized our modern epoch. That is a traditional Western vision, which is anyway heavily influenced by the vicissitudes that happened to the ‘general’ concept of space, I mean the ‘physical’ concept attributed to Newton (absolute space). In turn, Newton’s conception of space was influenced by… We can continue the chain of influences back to the origin of Western thinking, where the first speculations on spatiality aired, after Anaximander (apeiron), the Atomists (to kenon), Plato (chōra) and Aristotle (topos), to name some of the most relevant spatial notions of antiquity. All these notions, in one way or another, contributed to the definition of the modern concept of space and, consequently, to the definition of the modern conception of space in architecture. So, to sum up, both answers are possible to your question.