Conceived, perceived, experienced

Interpretation

Concept seems to be one of the most overused but also overused terms in architecture. A word abused by architects and students alike. Although it is used in different contexts, we can basically distinguish two main ways of understanding it, with a hard and a soft definition.

Of course, from the outset, to design means to conceive. From this perspective, every project is a spatial concept. As such, the concept is inherent in the design even when it is not strongly stated. This is the 'soft' definition that architects commonly refer to when justifying their designs in discourse.

But there is also a hard definition that is about abstracted space, about design as a laboratory process. In a laboratory process all the environmental factors that actually influence the object of study are removed in order to be able to study a matter in the abstract. From this line of interpretation the concept transposes an Idea ad literally into form. However, this interpretation of the term concept is the most harmful of all because it serves an autistic architecture, disengaged from any responsibility in relation to the social environment or ethical dimension, an architecture in which all that matters is the Idea. In reality, laboratory architecture is not to be found in real space and the architectural object only makes sense in relation to its urban, social or spatial context.

Fetishizing the concept

But to design is not just to conceive. The concept is only one of the spatial components, if we were to interpret architecture through the prism of Henri Lefebvre's spatial triangle, which includes perceived space, conceived space and lived ^space1. In contrast to the perspective of conceptual architecture, from the Lefebvrean perspective, space is produced. And the social production of space is made through the contribution of the three elements: spatial practices, representations of space and representational space, in other words, through the contribution of physical and lived space, not only mental space.

According to Lefebvre, the failure of modernism stems precisely from favoring mental (conceived) space over the other two components. Although mental space is nothing more than a projection, in the case of modernist space, the "representation" of space has become the only variable in the equation of spatial production. In fact, since after the Renaissance, spatial production has completely omitted the lived dimension of space, and the result has been abstract and alienating spaces. Lefebvre gives as an example of the dominance of mental space the Enlightenment utopias conceived by Ledoux or Boulle. Those ideal cities were spatial transpositions of theoretical discourses about the city as an artifact, a fabrication of the mind, and serve as perfect examples of the fetishization of the concept. When social space was neglected, "theoretical practices", those laboratory procedures replaced social practices in the production of space. "Theoretical practice" did nothing but generate concrete spaces on the basis of abstract representations. Mental space was identically transposed into physical space as a "message" for the inhabitants. Lefebvre says that this space is always a conceived space and invariably infused with ideology and power as domination imposed from the top down. When the discourse of space has been favored in relation to spatial practices, the rupture between physical space, mental space and social space has occurred. As such, it was precisely the hegemony of the concept that led to the breaking of the link between real space and ^imaginary space2. The culmination of this direction was probably deconstructivism.

From conceptual to relational art

Paradoxically, the fetishization of the concept has produced much formalism in architecture, as iconic architecture also claims to be conceptual. The term concept has been misused out of an obsession with formal innovation. Unfortunately, as Lyotard also remarked, there is not much room for that anymore, postmodern architecture "is condemned to give birth to small modifications in a space it inherits from modernity and to abandon a global reconstruction of the space inhabited by humanity". But perhaps it is not such a small matter that, instead of producing new expressions, we "only" have the possibility of "learning to inhabit the world in a better way"^3. As Bourriaud explains, the role of art and architecture should no longer necessarily be to generate new imaginary and utopian realities, but to construct ways of life and patterns of action within the existing reality.

Read the full text in issue 6 / 2014 of Arhitectura Magazine

NOTES:

1 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1991, p. 38.

2 Reena Tiwari, Space-Body-Ritual: Perfor-mativity in the City, Lexington Books, Ply-mouth, 2010, p. 30.

3 Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics. Postproducție, Ed. Idea, Cluj, 2007, p. 12.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Benjamin, Walter: "The author as producer", in: Idea, nr. 30-31, Cluj-Napoca, 2008

Bourdieu, Pierre: The Logic of Practice, Pollicy Press, Cambridge, 1991

Bourriaud, Nicolas: Relational Aesthetics. Postproducție, Ed. Idea, Cluj, 2007

Kiib, Hans (ed.): Performative Urban Design, Aalborg University Press, Silkegorg, 2010

Leach, Neil: "Belonging. Towards a Theoty of Identification with Place", in Perspecta, Vol. 33, Mining Autonomy, pp. 126-133, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2002

Lefebvre, Henri: The Production of Space, Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford, 1991

Thrift, Nigel: Non-Representational The-ory. Space | politics | affect, Routledge, London & New York, 2008

Tiwari, Reena: Space-Body-Ritual: Per-formativity in the City, Lexington Books, Plymouth, 2010