Anthropology and Architecture. Appropriation of living space
Socio-cultural anthropology is the whole science of man in society and is, therefore, recognised for its emphasis on a holistic analysis with an aim to achieving an overall and synthesised view of society and culture. It takes in society as a whole in which each element is explained through its reciprocal relationship to all others. For this reason Anthropology is necessarily multidisciplinary. The anthropological discipline is, moreover, characterised by its own methodology of investigation for reaching an understanding ot the object studied, by means of observation and participation: field work.
With this tendency towards multidisciplinarity, furthermore. Spatial Anthropology uses the theoretic corpus and methodology which belong to Socio-cultural Anthropology, applying them to the study of inhabited spaces in all their manifestations, types, and scales: corporal space, object space, architectural space, urban space, and landscape space. With the same will to achieve a wide knowledge of society and culture. Spatial Anthropology analyses space as a means by which to arrive: space is considered as the result and the projection of an ensemble of factors: social, cultural, economic, material, perceptive, cognitive, conductive, symbolic, ideologic, etc.
The anthropological point of view is different from that of architecture, as in the latter case the main objective would be project-making and spatial creation, thus contributing to cultural creation in general. The difference between the object of this ambit and the discipline of anthropology is thus to be found in establishing an order of priorities between space and culture.
Space and, specifically, architectural space, is thus a cultural fact which we cannot consider from only one viewpoint, as several different realities or interpretations take part in it: architecture and the discipline of anthropology which respectively represent the creative and the analytical aspect of space. But there is yet another point of view needed to complete the approach to the architectural object: society, that is to say, what represents the practical aspect of space. In each of these three realities, then, space takes on different names and meanings. In the ambit of society, the practical aspect, spaces take on the sense given it by the activities developed there: space becomes place. From another perspective, architecture, the creative aspect, is that which creates and gives shape to these places by means of the project: space becomes architecture. This place, for anthropology, has been an object of study which it has approached from an analytic point of view, with the aim of searching for the sense it actually has for society. But, for the anthropologist, the space of society studied also is a a part of himself and confers its own sense: this is the anthropological aspect.1
Inhabiting and habitus
The appropriation of a space by an inhabitant is part of a process which makes society turn spaces into places. Nicole Haumont says, 'inhabiting is being lodged and appropriating space according to certain cultural models', as it is from cultural models that social practice and representation are generated.2 To explain these cultural models, Pierre Bourdieu uses the concept of habitus.
Conditioners associated to a specific kind of conditions of existence produce habitus, systems of lasting and transferable disposition, structured structures predisposed to work as structuring structures, that is to say, as generating and organising principles for practices and representations which can be objectively adapted to their ends without supposing a conscious search for ends and the express domain of necessary operations needed to achieve them, objectively 'regulated' and 'regular' without being the product of obedience to rules and, at the same time as all this, collectively orchestrated without being the product of organised action by an orchestra conductor.3
Social practice and representation, including spatial practice and representation, according to Bourdieu would be generated and organised by structures of a collective nature called habitus. These structures, however, in no case have a deterministic effect, but rather act as delimiting instruments for practice and representation, both at individual and collective levels. In fact, we are halfway between determinism and freedom: we could be in the ambit of a controlled freedom, a 'conditioned' and conditional freedom, of a set of 'regulated' and regulating improvisations.4 The habitus thus becomes an infinite capacity for generating social practice and form, architectural practice and form, halfway between conditioners which make up a specific historical-social-cultural context and creativity.
The habitus, therefore, is not something static, but rather acquires its whole sense in the notion of change and process of transformation. The different spheres of social life are reactivated and brought up to date by means of a constant process of reviewing, selecting, and transforming existing elements and, at the same time, by means of a process of incorporating new elements. The balance between permanence and change, between imitation and invention, between heritage and novelty, helps the different spheres to keep their validity and their sense and not obstruct the process of appropriation and re-appropriation of reality. The habitus takes on the double role of leader and motivator of change in history itself.
A product of history, the habitus produces individual and collective practices and thus produces history according to the principles (schèmes) engendered by history; it assures the active presence of past experiences which, deposited in each organism in the shape of principles of perception, thought, and action, tend, with more surety than all explicit formal rules and regulations, to guarantee conformity to practices and their constancy in time. A past which survives nowadays and which tends to perpetuate itself in the future by bringing up to date practices structured according to its principles [...] the system of dispositions is at the beginning of continuity and regularity.
The process of appropriation of architectural space thus makes sense in this balance between permanence and change, imitation and creation, heritage and novelty. The nature and dynamics of habitation is intimately linked to the dynamics of the habitus, as it is one of itsmanifestations. The habitus is the model which generates, perpetuates and dynamises architectural practices and representations. And both the architect and the inhabitant are immersed in their own cultural models.
Practices of space
In the field of Spatial Architecture, one interest has been directed towards analysing the capacity of engendering practices of appropriation of habitation space by the inhabitants themselves, that is to say, the scope of actions by means of which the inhabitant adapts to a space. This is what Henry Raymond calls the inhabitant's practical competence.6 Thus, appropriation becomes a process of mutual adapting between the architectural space and the inhabitant: on the one hand, the space designed by the architect somehow influences the inhabitant, conditions his practice; on the other hand, so as to adapt to this space, the inhabitant tries to overcome imposed conditioners, transforming them formally and conductively. The architectural space, therefore, will be not only the result of the architect's or designer's creative process, but also, and at the same time, at the moment of being inhabited will be the result of a process of creation and re-creation carried out by the inhabitant, a process of adapting and re-adapting between space and society according to some cultural models or some habitus. We would be faced by a dynamics in which space is constantly created and re-created, a dynamics which itself defines the phenomenon of inhabiting.
The reflection on man's existence is what led Martin Heidegger to the idea of inhabiting, through Holderlin's words: 'man inhabits poetically'. The relationship between creating and inhabiting is established again.
'Poetising is what, before anything else, allows the fact of inhabiting to be an inhabiting. Poetising is, properly, allowing to inhabit. However, by what means do we come to have a habitation? By means of building. Poetising, like allowing to inhabit, is constructing'.7
The sense of this 'building' and this 'constructing' includes both creation in the ambit of knowledge and creation in the ambit of knowledge and creation in the material sense, and also refers to both the architect's creation and that of the inhabitant,
'Poetising, insofar as the measuring itself of the dimension of the act of inhabiting, is the inaugural construction. Poetising is the first which allows the entrance of the act of inhabiting by man in his essence.
Poetising is the originary allowing to inhabit'.8
This poetical conception of the act of inhabiting has been picked up by many students of space, both from within and without anthropological discipline. Michel de Certeau speaks of 'everyday artists' and the 'creative abilities of inhabitant-artists' as the result of a practice of handling, personalising, re-using, and poetising the inhabited space, and thus claims author's rights for these inhabitants.'
This process of appropriation of inhabited space by the inhabitant, according to Amos Rapoport, is earned out by means of a process of design:10 taking decisions, preference and selection are some of the mechanisms he considers most important. The inhabitant sets in practice a series of systematic selections among the different alternatives possible from specific cultural models. This selection on the one hand responds to preferences of a personal and individual nature and, on the other hand, also responds to preferences of a collective nature which depend on aspects such as place in the life-cycle, age-group, family make up, socio-economic group, cultural training, religion, ideology, etc. To adapt this set of preferences or needs, the inhabitant sets into practice a creative strategy: selecting, altering, personalising or designing the architectural space he inhabits. That is to say, what he is doing, in reality, is designing or creating a lite-style and an architectural style at the same time. Rapoport thus considers design as a selection among alternatives: what he calls the choice model of design or design as choice.11
The same idea can also be found in many architects, such as Robert Venturi who speaks of what he calls conventional elements13, that is to say, all those anonymous products, ordinary in manufacture, form, and use, linked or associated to architecture and construction. Society is the real creator of these products or this series of elements because they satisfy its needs and help adapt to the environment. According to Venturi, not even architects have the power to eliminate them, substitute them, or avoid them, as they are a creation with a collective scope, and change can only come about in parallel to social change. Change, therefore, needs to take its time, and can never result from just a few individuals. Architects take advantage of conventional elements existing in a specific socio-cultural context, but Venturi also believes they should create new ones, with new significance, and thus introduce their own creative elements. From this point of view, we can see how the roles of architect or inhabitant are not very different, as both intervene in a process of selecting and creating spatial and architectural reality.13
The anthropological methodology called field work is based on a direct knowledge of the object of study. The anthropologist tries to achieve an Emik view, that is to say, a view from within of the culture being studied: as observers, they try to put themselves in the placeof the observed.14 The investigation method used to achieve this is participative observation. When we analyse the ambit of architecture, as in the case of Spatial Anthropology, space itself is made an object of study and defines our research. There is thus a coincidence between the limits of the object of study (architectural space) and the limits of the anthropological field (investigative space), that is to say, between space and anthropology.
What would define the guide-lines of the investigation would thus be the habitation space itself. Different aspects to be taken into account in the appropriation of space can be the establishing ot several dualities (interior/exterior, front/back, public/private, masculine/feminine, adult/child, pure/impure,day/night, leisure/work,old/new,etc.), fitness for family composition and structure, fitness for an ensemble of models (functional, comfort, lifestyle, quality of life, social, cultural, symbolic, aesthetic, etc.) or adapting according to the degree of provisionality or definitiveness of settlement. It is important to observe the mutual adaptation dynamics between the habitation space and its inhabitants. On the one hand, to observe in what aspects and to what point if is the inhabitants who have to adapt their practices, habits and concepts to adapt to the architectural space. On the other hand, and from the opposite point of view, it is also important to observe what are, and to what degree, the transformations at a formal level introduced by the inhabitants in this space to make it adequate to their practices, habits or models.
It is interesting to observe the appropriation of habitation from the point of view of spatial delimitation. Delimitation of space answers to man's need to understand his environment, of projecting diverse social aspects and their significance, onto the space. These limits become the instruments and the strategies to manifest, remember, maintain, reinforce or even vindicate aspects which quite often respond to the above-mentioned dualities. Architecture, furniture, objects, decoration, as well as behaviour, rituals, language, cultural significants or social rules together make up several means of delimiting habitation space. Often, the lack of adaptation between the inhabitant and his habitation marks a disadjustment between the diversity of social aspects and spatial diversity. While different aspects of social life become diversified and more and more complex, architectural space becomes simpler. Architecture has opted mainly for multi-functional spaces, for reducing the number of spaces to favour more surface for some of them. The inhabitant is thus forced to intervene in this space to introduce delimitations needed for a natural development of his life-style: these adaptive strategics can help us understand the inhabitant's practical competence.
In the methodology of anthropology, the Emic point of view is complemented by the Etic point of view, that is to say, analysis from outside, in which there is a distancing from the object of study from the theoretic corpus and knowledge of anthropological discipline which allow us to reach conclusions of a general nature. One of the interests of Spatial Anthropology is, beginning from material taken in the investigation, the detection and analysis of adjustments and disadjustments between architecture and society, and, more specifically, between the habitation and the inhabitant. This is not only a purely analytical interest, but rather that in tin end what we are trying to achieve is that research results attain a practical application; that they be taken into account in the design process or in architectural project-making. The architect or designer does not only make a project for spatial forms, but also, and at the same time, carries out a social project.
Discourse on Space
The appropriation of space by the inhabitant, however, does not mean only practical competence, but there is also what Henry Raymond calls linguistic competence, that is to say the inhabitant's capacity forelaboraring a discourse on his own habitat. The inhabitant applies his analytic capacity to adapt, or to legitimate, the space in which he lives, the space he feels is his own. His experience as a member of a specific socio-cultural context, as an individual, as well as his spatial and architectural experience in conductive, cognitive, or aesthetic terms, leads him to manifest them by means of his practice and words. The importance of this does not lie in the literality of the inhabitant's discourse, but rather in discovering what is between the lines, coming to a discovery of what conditioners have intervened in making up this discourse. Currently, for example, the social impact of communications media and advertising is very important. It is not the individual discourse which takes the lead, but rather we try to see to what social discourse it responds; we try to separate what is anecdotic from what is transcendent. When someone tells us that they would like the facade of their house to be a bluish colour, it is not important to discover 'why blue?', but rather to ponder the cultural meaning of the facade's aesthetics. It has more to do with the discourse on the fact of inhabiting than on the inhabitant's discourse. This is what Raymond also calls 'words on habitat' or 'social word'.15
In some way practical competence and linguistic competence complement and reinforce one another, conferring a unitary sense to a past, present, and future appropriation. The discourse on current appropriation of habitation space for a family unit must not be considered isolatedly in time, as it can also answer to a discourse on a former model of habitation (real or idealised), as well as a discourse on a future model of habitation (real or idealised).
In studies carried out by Spatial Anthropology on the appropriation of architectural space, a very important aspect is the analysis of this discourse of the inhabitant. As we have mentioned before, the anthropological methodology of field work is based on direct knowledge of the object of study, a knowledge we achieve by means of an Emic point of view in which the anthropologist tries to place himself within the object's point of view. The interview is the method which complements participative observation in any investigation.
When the discourse of the person interviewed of the informer, that is to say, the object of study, ought to play the leading role, the interview must avoid as much as possible conditioning this discourse. It must be an interview of an open and flexible nature, with a dynamics similar to what an informal conversation could have. The anthropologist carries this out by means of a non-directive interview. When what is studied is architectural space, the interview is favoured by this, as the scene itself in which it is carried our gives the lead and the guide-lines of the discourse. The inhabitant's discourse on his own inhabiting is produced by the physical presence itself of the inhabited space he is referring to. There is a necessary tie between linguistic competence and practical competence which manifests the existing links between them, and this brings about a complete view of the object of study.
The anthropological analysis is thus not based on a monologue discourse by the investigator, but rather on a relationship established between the anthropologist and the informer produced by means of the dialogue. Every dialogue implies the participation of more than one speaker, which means that the information obtained will always be conditioned by this fact. But this does not necessarily mean an inconvenience; quite the contrary. We must not forget that any analysis is basically a result of interpretation, and that objective knowledge is a utopic mile-stone impossible to achieve. What is really important is that this dialogue exist for a better understanding of the process of appropriation of architectural space, for a better understanding of adaptative practices by a society which lives in habitations whose projects have been carried our by architects and designers. The dialogue between different speakers can come about thanks to a will to an opening, but also thanks to the fact that they are not really so different. Although the inhabitant develops the practical aspect of space, the architect the creative aspect, and the anthropologist the analytic aspect, in absolute terms this is not quite true. Each of them develops the three aspects at the same time, even though we concede a difference in importance and proportion to each. Dialogue offers a possibility to these three realities for transcending the borders which limit their own world, of creating a new reality, of establishing a communication context, a liminal world mutually constructed, a world astride all three which is not, however, the sum of all three, a shared system of symbols, a transcultural, hybrid object.16
The anthropologist's task becomes, basically, a work of translation: an intent to immerse himself in the reality or the object ot study by means of participative observation and dialogue, to understand ir, interpret it and, finally, translate it, with the aim of making it understandable for other sectors of society.17 The anthropologist becomes a kind of messenger or mediator between the inhabitant and the architect, between two characters who share the same spatial reality, but from two different points of view.
The ethnographer is a little like Hermes: a messenger who, by means of methodologies for uncovering the mask, what is latent, obtains his message by caution. Thus, he presents languages, cultures, and societies, with all their opacity, their foreigness, their meanings; also like a magician, a hermeneutic, like a Hermes himself, he clarities the opaque, turns the strange into familiar, gives meaning to what has none. He decodes the message. He interprets.18
Quite definitely, there is an opening of the possibility of establishing a three-banded dialogue between Architecture, Anthropology, and Society; the possibility of jointly investigating inhabited space, and the possibility of beginning the way towards the creation of a new, shared reality.
1. As to interdisciplinary relationships which include Architecture, Anthropology and Society, see Sala (1997).
2. Haumont (l986), p. 190. Nicole Haumont uses the concept of ‘cultural model’ in the same sense as Henry Raymond (Raymond, 1984).
3. Bordieu (1991), p. 92.
4. Ídem, p. 96-99.
5. Ídem, p. 95.
6. Raymond (1984), p. 179-180.
7. Heidegger (1994), p. 165.
8. Ídem, p.1676.
9. Certeau (1990), p. 200-201. For a wider explanation of the practice of the fact of inhabiting, see Certeau; Giard;Mayol (1994).
10. Rapoport (1985).
11. The concepts used by Amos Rapoport are «Choice model of design» and «design-as-choice». Rapoport (1985) p. 259.
12. Venturi (1995), p.66-67.
13. Ídem, p 68
14. As to methodological differences between anthropology and architecture from the concepts of Emic and Epic, seeSala, I 995.
15. Raymond (1984), p. 170-179.
16. The experience of anthropological field-work offers the possibility of widening participation in the dialogue between
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