Morphogenesis and animistic moments: On social formation and territorial production

Article written with Andrea Mubi Brighenti, now published in Social Science Information.

Abstract: This article explores the issue of morphogenesis and metamorphosis in socio-spatial formations. The specific key is what we propose to call the ‘animistic moment’ in form-taking processes. We believe that a conceptualisation of animistic moments might help us to focus better not simply on the coming about of new forms, but also on the power forms are endowed with. The general social-theoretical horizon for the essay is an approach to social collectives as forms of territorialisation and territorial stabilisation. We suggest that an inquiry into the genesis and the transformation of forms through animistic moments might also be employed in the study of an array of processes of social territorialisation. In this article, we look in particular at two examples of the materialisation and animation of social-territorial boundaries: the first relates to the architectural construction of brick arches and walls, while the second relates to urban warfare and the demolition of urban walls.

Rhythmanalysing the urban runner: Pildammsparken, Malmö

This article is written together with Tim Edensor and Johan Wirdelöv, and is published in Applied Mobilities. 

Abstract: In this article we discuss the development of urbanized running culture by exploring how the embodied rhythms of running interact with other urban rhythms in a park. The analysis focuses on the timings, sensations and materialities produced through running, and how the rhythms of running intersect with the materialities and rhythms of others. The investigation draws on interviews, observations and a running diary undertaken at Pildammsparken in central Malmö. Our research shows that while the runner, in endeavouring to align with the rhythms of others, may becoming a more disciplined figure, running in the park is more concerned with practising a sharing of space than moving on auto-pilot. Consequently, running is largely a mobile rhythmic practice that negotiates and adapts to co-produce eurhythmic choreographies in this particular urban location.

Pildammsparken, Malmö (map by Johan Wirdelöv)

MAKING EFFECT - Symposium and exhibition

The Making Effect symposium & exhibition was held at 14–17 September 2017, at ArkDes, The Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design and KTH School of Architecture. There are some videos from the event. Here is the session about "MaterialConditions" with the following presenters: Mattias Kärrholm, Albena Yaneva, Alberto Altés, Catharina Gabrielsson, Jennifer Mack, Emma Nilsson, Paulina Prieto de la Fuente and Jilly Traganou.

Domestic Territories and the Little Humans: Understanding the Animation of Domesticity

Article written together with Andrea Mubi Brighenti published in Space and Culture.

Abstract: Domesticity is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. In this piece, we approach it from the point of view of a general theory of territories. To do so, we attempt to tackle simultaneously the ecological and spiritual dimensions of home by attending the expressive dimension of domesticity. We emphasize that the expressiveness of home inherently includes the register of the familiar as well as that of the unfamiliar (Freud’s unheimlich). The constant negotiations between these two registers can be appreciated as carried out at the limits of control. To highlight this fact, we focus on the case of the “little humans,” miniature humanoid creatures well attested in traditional mythologies and folk tales across different civilizations. Drawing from anthropological and ethnographic literature, yet with a leading interest in social–spatial theorizing, we seek to untangle the relations between humans and the little humans—these “elusive others” living with us—in order to clarify the deep meanings ingrained in domestic territories.

Public and private in Hausmannian Paris (Territorial quote 3)

On territoriality and materiality:

"Second Empire architects also discouraged decorating practices that made domestic interiors resemble streets. In an article whose title – ”Des voies publiques et des maisons d’habitation à Paris” – signaled a conceptual separation between roads and houses, Charles Gourlier noted that within houses, wood parquet floors were replacing ”pavement” [dallages]. Formerly, slabs of concrete, stone, or marble had been used to cover floors inside apartments and to pave streets, but now they began to be confined strictly to the street. The street thus became a mineral realm whose hard, unyielding durability was perceptibly distinct from the more delicate, vegetal ground of the home."

Marcus S, Apartment Stories, City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London, 1999, p. 142 f.

Neighbourhood events and the visibilisation of everyday life: The cases of Turro (Milan) and Norra Fäladen (Lund)

This article, written together with Sebastiano Citroni, is published ahead-of-print in European Urban and Regional Studies.

Abstract

While scholars agree on the reasons behind the current proliferation of urban, small-scale, pre-organised events, the implication of these events for public life is more controversial, and involves polarised debates between enthusiasts and critics. This paper develops an international comparison between one city district in Milan (Italy) and one in Lund (Sweden), in order to explore how the variety of events that took place there between 2013 and 2015 possibly affected the local and on-going everyday public life. In both cases, the observed events aimed to de-stigmatise the broader urban districts in which they were staged, as well as to enhance a vibrant urban life in relatively disadvantaged areas. In the study, we identify three different ways in which these events make the public character of everyday life visible, and even redefine patterns of urban civility. The main argument deriving from our comparative ethnography is that the salience of events in the everyday life that they supposedly disrupt can be analytically addressed by developing a pragmatist approach to public space, discussing it in terms of territorial complexity.

At the Neighbourhood festival 'Fäladskalaset', Lund, 2016.

Temporality of Territorial Production - The Case of Stortorget, Malmö

This article is now published in Social & Cultural Geography (2017), 18, 5, pp. 683-705. 

Abstract: In recent years, we have seen the development of a more relational approach to territoriality. This perspective, which focuses on events rather than space, also opens up for an elaboration of temporal aspects of territorial production. In this study, I investigate the central urban square, Stortorget, in Malmö, Sweden, in order to develop a discussion of a time-space territorology. In 1978, Korosec-Serfaty performed a thorough study of the square, observing its everyday activities. The present study compares territorial productions at Malmö’s Main Square during 1978 with those of 2013. The results of the study indicate a change of time-space production in which temporary territorial appropriations and tactics tend to become shorter in duration, whereas the number of temporary and large-scale territorial strategies has increased and the role of these become more important. The study also shows how these territorial transformations include changes (in pace, rhythm, temporal salience and scale) that seem to vertically stabilise the territorial structure of the square, and thus decrease both territorial complexity and the possibilities for new publics to evolve

Stortorget, Malmö (2013)

Stortorget, Malmö (1978)

Stortorget, Malmö (1912), with the airship Hansa.

Stortorget, Malmö (1896), the unveiling of the statue Karl X Gustav.

Interseriality and different sorts of walking

This jointly written article about how to investigate different kinds of walking is out now in Mobilities. Written with Maria Johansson, Inês A. Ferreira and David Lindelöw.

Abstract: In this article, we attempt to develop a meta-language for a relational approach to urban walking that is able to account for walking as a mutable, embodied, materially heterogeneous and distributed activity. Following the perspective on walking as developed in a series of articles by Jennie Middleton, we develop a notion of the walker as a socio-technical assemblage. By recognising walking as an ongoing relation of different series of walking assemblages or ‘sorts of walking’, it becomes possible to study the mediation of these series through the focus on objects of passage: things or triggers that transform one walking assemblage into another via the process of appraisal. We suggest interseriality as a concept capable of handling a ‘relation of relations’; i.e. how different sorts of walking relate to one another and how the ongoing transformation of a walking assemblage ultimately also produces a mutable but sustaining walking person. Finally, we suggest a focus on boundary objects. Since walking assemblages cannot help but to transform in order to sustain, walks always include a series of different sorts of walking: the possible co-presence of different sorts of walking thus depends on boundary objects.

Suburbs and interstices

Call for articles to Lo Squaderno, No 46, Dec. 2017 here.

Theme: Suburbs and interstices.

Deadline for contributions: 15 September 2017

Article expected length: 1,500-2,000 words

Editors: Mattias Kärrholm and Andrea Mubi Brighenti

Curating the city

At an UCL-based workshop with the Curating the City research cluster, November 22-23. Nice setting at Here East in the Olympic Park, London.

Sleeping in New York (Territorial quote 2)

On the border spaces of New York:

"The fire-escapes, which were made obligatory for multiple-family dwellings by the law of 1867, are often decorative objects, and their cumulative rhythm has its own extraordinary quality. Many visitors to New York remember the fire-escapes as much as skyscrapers. They were much used for sitting out, hanging washing, talking to neighbors, and sleeping in hot weather."

 Girouard, M., Cities & People, 1985, p. 313.

Three presents: On the multi-temporality of territorial production and the gift from John Soane

By Andrea Mubi Brighenti and Mattias Kärrholm

Published in Time & Society

 Abstract

Territoriality has primarily been seen as a spatial rather than temporal phenomenon. In this paper, we want to investigate how time functions in territorialising processes. In particular, we are attracted by the multi-temporality that is copresent in each process of territorialisation (i.e. processes in which time and space are used as means of measure, control and expression). The article is divided into two main parts. In the first part, we draw inspiration from Gilles Deleuze’s book Logic of Sense, as well as from authors such as Simmel, Whitehead, Benjamin and Jesi, in order to articulate three different types of the present (Aion, Kronos and Chronos). In the second part, we move to a short case study of the collector John Soane and the establishment of his house-museum. The case is used to exemplify how these three presents can be used to discuss temporal aspects of territorialisation in general, and the production of a specific sort of territory – the house-museum as a new building type in particular.

Keywords: Territorial production, temporality of the present, multiple temporalities, Aion, Kronos, Chronos, collectionism, house-museum.

Diagram of the three presents

John Soane's house: Looking up at the Dome from the Sepulchral Chamber (photo by courtesy of Jesper Magnusson).

John Soane's house: The Breakfast Room in No. 13 Lincoln’s Inn Field. A series or mirrors and openings allow glimpses from adjacent rooms and museum spaces (photo by courtesy of Jesper Magnusson).

The Sewers of London (Territorial quote 1)

A small reminder from Michel Serres about the role of smell for territorial production:

"Since the invention of the flush toilet and the sewage system at the end of the nineteenth century in London, it has indeed become difficult and quite unusual to mark our nest with urine."

Serres, M. Malfeasance, Appropriation through Pollution?, 2011, p. 63.

London guide book, 1839

Some interesting facts about how many squares, libraries, gallons of milk, swine, etc. that can be found in London. From the somewhat peculiar guide book Description of London, printed in Gothenburg in 1839 (with text in English, French, German, and Swedish).

In Search of Building Types

In search of building types: On visitor centers, thresholds and the territorialisation of entrances

Now (2016-12-29) published in Journal of Space Syntax

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to contribute to an actantial approach to building type studies through a study of the visitor centre and its role in contemporary spatial production. The article takes its empirical departure in the (from a Swedish perspective) intense urbanization of the Scania region, in the southern part of Sweden. Looking at building types in terms of actants implies that different sets of buildings can be abstracted in different ways (and not just in terms of form or function) depending on the effect they have in a certain situation. The proliferation of visitor centers in Scania is by no means an innocent development, these centers have a part to play in the urbanization process of the region. In this article I discuss this role as a kind threshold actant or type, which I further divide into four different subcategories in order to show connections with other sorts of spaces in the urban landscape. The discussion is then used both to highlight the role of visitor centers in recent processes of urbanization, and to argue for a more open-ended, relational and pragmatic approach to building types studies, with a focus on the role that building types play in society and everyday life.

Keywords: building types, visitor centers, thresholds, material semiotics, territoriality

Domkyrkoforum, Lund (photo: M. K.)