What, then, do we mean with the word ‘place’? Obviously, we mean something more than abstract location. We mean a totality made up of concrete things having material substance, shape, texture, and colour. Together these things determine an ‘environmental character’ which is the essence of place. In general, a place is given as such a character or ‘atmosphere.’ A place…
In the article The Identity of a Place: Place-Based Interventions Between Land and Society, I argued for the necessity of a place-based document or report—a tool that could assist practitioners working with places (architects, planners, policymakers, social scientists, and others) in making informed decisions whenever the character of a place must be understood from a holistic perspective—or, as I prefer…
1. Prologue: A New Vision of Nature ‘Since the mid-nineteenth century, many of the traditional certainties of science began to dissolve under the impact of new discoveries in physics, chemistry, and biology… The rigid boundaries separating these disciplines started to blur as a convergence emerged between the physical, biological, and even social sciences. Researchers began to observe striking similarities between…
This article is about a distinction we often tend to overlook: the difference between ‘place’ and ‘site’. Although both terms refer to a territory or land, I argue, as others have before me,[1] that the shift from ‘place’ to ‘site’ involves a loss of meaning, which is not just a matter of scale, as a site is typically a specific…
A few weeks ago, I responded to a call issued by the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in partnership with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their Multidisciplinary Research Project. This initiative seeks to promote ‘new modes for collective research.’[1] In its sixth edition, the program proposed the theme In the Hurricane, On the Land, inviting participants to explore the…