This article is about a distinction we often tend to overlook: the difference between ‘place’ and ‘site’.
Even if the two terms are both used to denote a territory or a piece of land, I hold – as others have done before me – [1] there is a reduction of meaning in the passage from ‘place’ to ‘site’: a reduction which is not simply a question of scale (a site is generally understood as a specific location, or position, part of a larger place); that reduction of meaning may determine a superficial attitude to or a partial understanding of the complex phenomenon of place, which sites belong to. Historically, that reduction of meaning from place to site follows another, more important, form of reduction: the reduction from place to space, which we have already explored in a few historical articles (see Place and Space: A Philosophical History; see also Concepts of Space Place and The Nature of Physical Existence, and Place, Space and a New Conception of Nature).
A ‘site’ defines a specific area, usually, a recognizable area circumscribed by limits or boundaries. Conversely, ‘place’ is a more generic territorial unit where the site is located; this implies that a site belongs to a place – it is a specific part of it: sites are places, in the end. In many circumstances, when architects and urban planners refer to a specific area for their projects, they use the term ‘site’ and not ‘place’: a ‘building site’, not a ‘building place’, to describe the piece of land where a building is going to be built; a ‘site plan’, not a ‘place plan’, to define the large-scale drawing that shows the full extension of a piece of land or territory subject to development; ‘site analysis’ and not ‘place analysis’ to define the study or survey of a territory or piece of land before starting a project. Traditionally, that specific land or territory – the ‘site’ – denotes nothing but the simple physical location of the area with respect to the surrounding environment, something which can be geometrically and numerically determined by boundaries and coordinates (e.g., latitude and longitude). That is just common sense, which architects and planners rely on. Then, for instance, we have officially protected sites nominated by UNESCO, and not ‘protected places’; similarly, we have a World Database of Protected Areas (WDPA), instead of ‘protected places’. This can be reasonably explained by the fact that places have continuous spatial and temporal horizons and hardly accept any technical, quantitative or legal boundaries; but it can also be explained by considering that, in theoretical, academic or technical discourses, place is very often used as a common-sense term, with a generic, not well-defined meaning.
In this regard, this is the account philosopher Jeff Malpas offers us, in a passage of the book ‘Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography’: ‘many of the discussions of place in the existing literature suggest that the notion is not at all clearly defined. Concepts of place are often not distinguished at all from notions of simple physical location, while sometimes discussions that seem implicitly to call upon notions of place refer explicitly only to a narrower concept of space’.[2] Fundamentally, place, in the current, traditional state of understanding, is an elusive concept; as such, it is not amenable to quantification or technical scopes, unlike other spatial concepts, e.g., ‘area’, ‘site’, or even ‘space’. Therefore, we are not surprised when we read mathematician Bertrand Russel saying: ‘The idea of “place” is only a rough practical approximation: there is nothing logically necessary about it, and it cannot be made precise.’ [3]
The fact that place is, more often than not, considered a loose term or an elusive concept, far from quantitative determination, possibly goes back to its initial history with the definition given by Aristotle – place (topos) is the first unchangeable limit of that which surrounds – [4] which was immediately contrasted by his adversaries. We have considered that question in many previous historical articles, some of which are mentioned above. It was also because of the limits intrinsic to Aristotle’s definition of ‘place’ that it was soon replaced by the term ‘space’ and, later, by the even more abstract term ‘site’. However, in this way, by those replacements, we have lost sight of the originally generative, qualitative, and active characters of place (as we find them in Aristotle’s notion of topos, or even in Plato’s conception of chōra), which were eventually misplaced for and substituted with quantitative, passive, and positional characters through the concepts of ‘space’ and ‘site’ as simple location.
Whence this now-common and somewhat improper habit to reduce a place to site, as a simple physical location or mere geographical position? Edward S. Casey, in a passage from the book ‘The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History’, offers us a swift and very clear glimpse of the historical process that reduced place to space and site. In the Chapter titled ‘Modern Space as Site and Point’, we read: ‘We have seen the initial primacy of place posited by Archytas and Aristotle (…) give way to an increasing preoccupation with the supremacy of space in certain later Neoplatonists, many medieval theologians, several Renaissance cosmologists, and a number of seventeenth-century philosophers and physicists. But the very triumph of space over place brought with it an unanticipated outcome (…): the absorption of place into position. (…) It is clear that the groundwork for this (…) was established by Locke and Leibniz in the resolutely relationalist part of their thinking. For if it is true that space is determined entirely by relations, then what matters most (…) is the exact positions of the items related to each other in a given spatial nexus. (…) The primacy of position is thus inscribed in the very theory of space as “something merely relative” and of place as identity of position within a particular group of spatial relations.’ [5]A few passages later, Casey speaks about ‘the clearing away of place to make room for position as the very basis for the supremacy of space’.[6] Then, he continues with some interesting remarks (interesting for architects, especially) which go straight to the point of the present article: ‘Positional primacy manifested itself in diverse forms in eighteenth-century life and culture. (…) Perhaps, most revealingly, in architecture, a whole manner of building flourished around what I shall call “site”. By this term I here mean the leveled-down, emptied-out, planiform residuum of place and space eviscerated of their actual and virtual powers (…). If space and place are both utterly relational (…) they do not retain any inherent properties of encompassing, holding, sustaining, gathering, situating (“situation” for Leibniz does not really situate; it merely positions in a nexus of relations). This loss in turn means a loss (…) of the concrete particularity of place (…) the dissolution in the positional relativity of sites. (…) Site is the very undoing of place, its dismantling into punctiform positions. (…) Site is anti-place hovering precariously over the abyss of no-place.’ [7]
Site is the very undoing of place, its dismantling into punctiform positions. Site is anti-place hovering precariously over the abyss of no-place.
Edward S. Casey
I ask: How does this ‘dismantling’ of place into site happen, concretely? Where is the insidious pitfall behind the expression ‘site analysis’ when architects and planners are going to study or survey a certain territory, a piece of land before making projects? Where is the semantic limit intrinsic to this seemingly innocuous common-sense expression – site analysis? To anticipate conclusions, the risk is to forget the many different processes that happen in a place in the name of what is strictly presented to our eyes, namely, the site as a simple physical or geographical position. Behind that position, there are many different processes that cannot be synthesized by the word ‘site’.
To contextualize Casey’s considerations, let’s keep in mind that ‘site analysis’ is the literal English translation for the Latin ‘analysis situs’, which was the geometric discipline invented by Leibniz, later known as ‘topology’ – the mathematical study of the properties of space. Then, it is obvious that the original connotation behind the expression ‘site analysis’ comes from geometry and mathematics, which are abstract or symbolic disciplines. Then, the word ‘site’ conveys abstract connotations which are at the opposite range of the originally concrete and qualitative sense of place which Casey reminded us of when he spoke about the ‘inherent properties of encompassing, holding, sustaining, gathering, situating’ attributed to place. So, by using that common and seemingly innocuous expression which emerged from an abstract domain, we are actually ‘eviscerating’ place of its multifaceted qualities, which, as I am showing at RSaP – www.rethinkingspaceandplace.com -, are physicochemical, biological, and sociocultural qualities to begin with; to borrow from Casey’s terminology, I am saying that place encompasses, holds, sustains, gathers, and situates physicochemical, biological – hence, ecological – and sociocultural processes, to begin with, while the ‘site’, at best, is an abstract, positional, representation of a physical or geographical domain.
Alongside these considerations suggested by reading Casey, and according to the overarching sense of place I’m advocating for at RSaP – place as a system of physicochemical, biological, sociocultural and symbolic processes – it is reductive to speak about the analysis of a site instead of a more comprehensive analysis of place given that the dynamics which are the subject of our scrutiny, that is the processes that exist in and run through sites, do not stop at the borderline, limit or boundary that defines any site as a circumscribed area: those dynamics, i.e., those processes, greatly exceed it. So, at all effects, what, in common parlance, we call ‘site analysis” should be more appropriately conceived of as a ‘place analysis’: the difference being that the term ‘site’ abstractly refers to a definite area as a simple physical location, while the term ‘place’, in the extended sense we are calling for, refers to the processes that exist in and run through or pass through that area, land or territory; this ‘passing through’ of processes inevitably connects what is here – this site/place – with what stands before and after ‘here’, creating a wider spatiotemporal environment as the real subject of our focus, an integrated system of places substantiated by the same universal processes (physicochemical, biological, ecological…). This is a difference we easily overlook, but behind that difference – place/site – there is an important conceptual shift: from the physical location as an abstract positional or geographical determinant to the processes that exist in and happen (or run) through that location as the place of processes. This change of perspective implies the shift of our focus from form (the site or place as a physical background or mere geographical determinant) to the content associated with that form (the physical background and the processes that create and continuously modify that background; understood in this way the background transforms into a foreground since all of the processes are considered and given equal importance: not just physical determinations or processes but also biological, ecological, sociocultural and symbolic ones).
Considered in this extended sense, even if the term ‘site’ retains its historical abstract connotation, it may recover the original generative power and sense of place which also Casey called for: ‘site’ as ‘situation’ rather than position – where the ‘situation’ better connotes a processual dynamic (of facts, events), more than the simple position can do. Then, in this extended sense, a physical location – the ‘site’ – is considered as the material and spatiotemporal nurturer of processes (the physical background as a form associated with its content – i.e., the many different processes that happen in place), and not a mere positional determinant. A conceptualization which returns to the concept of place in the reformed sense I’m proposing at RSaP (it cannot be otherwise since ‘sites’ are places). That’s why, in the end, as an architect, I prefer to speak or to think about the analysis of a site – ‘site analysis’ – as the analysis of a place.
Conclusion
We have observed that there is a significant philosophical and semantic difference between ‘site’ and ‘place’. That difference may hold great relevance in the context of current approaches to entangled environmental, social and economic questions given that, when we approach the study of places, we must integrate all of their components: physicochemical, biological – hence, ecological – sociocultural and symbolic. Before than viewing architectures and territories as spaces and sites – terms which carry abstract and neutral connotations that can lead to detachment from reality – it is important to consider them as places – the place of processes. It is crucial, especially for architects and planners, to recognize that a ‘site’, if understood as a simple spatial determinant (a simple physical position), undermines the true nature of the place, which encompasses, holds, sustains, gathers, and situates different kinds of events and processes.
Appendix
One of the first modern architects who understood ‘sites’ beyond simple physical locations and abstract geometrical determinants was Richard J. Neutra, who, in 1951, wrote the book ‘Mystery and Realities of the Site’. I’ve already dedicated an article to Neutra’s spatial vocabulary – see The Third Skin: Survival Through Design – interpreting the spatial expressions used by Neutra in his 1954 masterpiece ‘Survival Through Desing’. In that article, I sustained that Neutra understood ‘space’ as ‘place’, that is: even if he used a common spatial language focused on space (which reflected the spirit of his time) behind that spatial language there was a different approach with respect to his contemporaries, very close to many current interpretations of space as place, in the sense of ‘placial’ integration of different processes constitutive of reality, a hypothesis I am calling for at RSaP. Neutra’s work is still a remarkable point of reference for understanding architecture as the integration of the physical determinants of a territory (topography and climate above all, but also green aspects – the presence of meadows, shrubs, plants, etc. – that is the natural biological components of a territory) with biological determinants – the human adaptation to and modification of places in physiological and psychological sense. ‘Biorealism’ was the term Neutra introduced to give an account of such a peculiar integrative approach.
In ‘Mystery and Realities of the Site’ it is clear that Neutra’s understanding of the ‘site’ is something richer than a simple physical location; in his use of the word ‘site’ there is nothing abstract or simply geometrically determined.
My experience, everything within me, is against an abstract approach to land and nature, and for the profound assets rooted in each site and buried in it like a treasurable wonder.
Richard J. Neutra
Neutra’s ‘site’ is, at any effect, a place: the site inherits all the processual characteristic aspects of a place, or, at least, some parts of it.[8] For Neutra, any ‘site’ is characterized by mysterious forces – synthesized by the expression the spirits of the place – as well as by pragmatic constraints: the mysterious forces are intrinsic to Nature and determine the ‘moods and the intrinsic values of the site’ (e.g., topography, presence of clouds, breeze, sun’s position, the scent of shrubs and meadows, presence of trees, mountains in the background, etc.);[9] pragmatic constraints – or realistic constraints –, for Neutra, before other considerations, are those intrinsic to men’s psychology and physiology, and determine men’s adaptation to and modification of the site, which is, at any rate, an adaptation to and modification of the natural habitat – an alternative term used by Neutra for ‘site’ (the other term is ‘place’, obviously).[10] From the encounter of Nature – ‘the site’ – and Man – the ‘human responses, organic and social necessities’ –[11] architectures emerge, anchored to the place.
Through the architectural and theoretical work of Richard Neutra, this brief appendix remarks that any site, being a place, should be understood as an integrative structure, and not as a simple physical or geographical position. Many levels of interpretations suggest architects and planners should work with the inner grain and fiber of a ‘site’ or ‘place’, not against it: ‘never work against its inner grain and fiber. You will pay dearly for any such offence’ [12] is Neutra’s conclusive remark on the importance of the site-as-place.
Notes
[1] Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 180-86.
See also Jeff Malpas’s Heidegger’s Topology: Being, Place, World, where in an introductive passage, Malpas says: ‘Indeed, all too often, place is viewed as a function of human responsiveness or affectivity, as a social or cultural “construction,” or else as nothing other than a sort of neutral “site” (perhaps understood in terms of a more or less arbitrary region of physical space), in Jeff Malpas, Heidegger’s Topology: Being, Place, World (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006), 5.
[2] Jeff Malpas, Place and Experience: A philosophical Topography (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2004), 19.
[3] Benjamin Morison, On Location: Aristotle’s Concept of Place (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 160.
[4] We find Aristotle’s definition of place (topos) in Physics, Book IV (212a20-21): ‘That is what place [topos] is: the first unchangeable limit (peras) of that which surrounds. That is the definition we find in: Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 55. See also Aristotle on the Concept of Place.
[5] Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place, 183. In the book ‘Heidegger’s Topology: Being, Place, World’, Jeff Malpas, speaking about Descartes’ notions of space and place, offers a different perspective on the nature of ‘position’: ‘Only within an all-encompassing absolute space can the idea of place as simple position make sense.’ In Jeff Malpas, Heidegger’s Topology: Being, Place, World, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006), 71.
[6] Ibid., 183.
[7] Ibid., 183-86.
[8] While I consider place the most complete structure that we can imagine, a structure which is the emergence of interplaying physicochemical, biological (hence ecological), sociocultural, and symbolic processes, Neutra is primarily focused on the integration of physical and biological processes with a special focus on the individual human experience. Of course, that difference is the result of the different zeitgeist, but the working principle behind Neutra’s approach – the integration of different orders of processes – is similar. This important working principle is the reason why Neutra’s work is still relevant today, containing more or less explicit reference to ecological and sociocultural questions which, nowadays, are so relevant in any architectural discourse. A danger I see in today’s approaches by architects and planners is the focus on environmental or social questions forgetting Neutra’s important teaching: the interplay of the naturalistic aspect of a territory – place or site – with men’s psychology and physiology. The difficult role of architecture today is to integrate past experiences and teachings with new constraints dictated by entangled environmental, social and economic questions.
[9] Richard, Neutra, Mystery and Realities of the Site (New York: Morgan & Morgan Publishers, 1951), 9.
[10] Ibid., 12, 14.
[11] Ibid., 15.
[12] Ibid., 62.
Works Cited
Casey, Edward S. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Malpas, Jeff. Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Malpas, Jeff. Heidegger’s Topology: Being, Place, World. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006.
Morison, Benjamin. On Location: Aristotle’s Concept of Place. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002.
Neutra, Richard J. Mystery and Realities of the Site. New York: Morgan & Morgan Publishers, 1951.
Image Credits
Featured Image, [source] by Michele Cannone, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 at publicdelivery.org
Image 01: Cretto di Burri, Gibellina (TP), ITALY,1984-2015. Bellomo, Sebastiano, photographer.
Image 02: Kaufmann House, Neutra, Richard Joseph, architect; Shulman, Julius, photographer. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10).
Image 03: source on Wikipedia Creative Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
