TRAVELS OF THE CENTRAL CHARACTER BETWEEN DOMUS AND COSMOPOLIS

TRAVELS OF THE CENTRAL CHARACTER

                   BETWEEN DOMUS AND COSMOPOLIS

A BOOK REVIEW OF THE BOOK ‘WHAT IS ARCHİTECTURE’

EDITED BY ANDREW BALLANTYNE

        The book ‘What is Architecture?’ edited by Andrew Ballantyne consists of ten articles written by ten people from different fields of study. The editor, in his book, tries to make the reader question architecture from various points of views. His aim is not to find a unique answer to that question but he wants the reader to develop an integrated outlook for architecture. From various concepts mentioned in the book, creation of spaces out of places through spatial practices comes to the front in terms of architecture’s undeniable relation with place and space concepts. The way the transformations between place and space shape our life-styles and our built-environments is a very crucial point of Ballantyne’s book.

        The definitions of ‘place’ and ‘space’ concepts are stated in a very clear and comprehensible way in the article ‘Spatial Stories’ by Michel De Certeau. According to De Certeau the elements of place can’t be in the same location, they should have their proper and distinct locations. So place can be related with being located. Whereas space can exist in the intersection of many elements which are deployed with movement. From definitions of De Certeau place can be considered as a static co-existence whereas space is the direct result of existence of mobile elements. When those terms are associated with stories ‘space is like the word when it is spoken’ whereas place is the paper on which the text is written.

The reader experiences the text by reading the words just like the traveler experiences the place by practice and movement. So it can be concluded that space is a practiced place².

        Transformations between place and space can be possible through movement, in De Certeau’s sense through travels. And by those travels the travel stories are obtained which are the spatial experiences that are embedded to a place. This movement can be named as the mobility of the traveler. This mobility is succesfully visualized in Kathleen Anne McHugh’s article ‘The Metaphysics of Housework: Patricia Gruben’s The Central Character’.

The article is developed on the analysis of a short movie ‘The Central Character’ by Patricia Gruben (1977). McHugh presents the movements of a housewife between her house and the woods surrounding it. From the framework of place-space concept the traveler of De Certau in this article presents itself to the reader as the central character. Different spatial experiences of the central character are very crucial to understand the possibilities of a place to contain various spatial characteristics, even the unexpected ones. For example the setting of a table in the woods is not a practice that is expected to be realized in that specific place. This is the direct result of associating certain activities with ceratain places. But McHugh, with this dramatic example, tries to ‘dislocate’ the dogmatic way of approaching to the place-space relations. Only with that wider approach, the capacity of place to be defined by various acts can be understood. De Certau stated for place ‘it thus excludes the possibility of two things being in the same location’. So place can gain mobility and include many stories, only when the central character embedd distinct experiences to it. The travels of the central character writes various spatial stories and defines the place with actions and memories.

Another central character can be Martin Heidegger in a different story of the dwelling. According to Ballantyne, Heidegger’s dwelling is strongly associated with spatial practice in De Certau’s sense. For Ballantyne the experiences in Heidegger’s dwelling transform place into space and this is their common point with De Certau but when compared to the emphasis on mobility in ‘Spatial Stories’ Heidegger has a very different stand. He sees dwelling as the spatial practice of being-in-place. This idea of rootedness³ in Heidegger excludes the possibilities of a place to accomodate unexpected stories. This is the crucial point that puts Heidegger apart from the central character of Patricia Gruben, as I mentioned above.

De Certau in his article makes definitions for the terms home and journey. According to him home is constituted on the basis of walls whereas journey is constituted on the basis of a geographical ‘elsewhere’ or a cosmological ‘beyond’. These definitions can be related to the critics of Heidegger’s limitations to the mobility of space-place transformations, by Leach in his article. Although Heidegger’s dwelling/domus are mentioned as a spatial practice it is too much dependent on belonging to a specific location,which is also mentioned by Jean-Francoise Lyotard as the myth of the domus in Leach’s article as belonging to soil. So the story of the domus can’t contain traveler of De Certau as a central character but it can only contain dweller.
As an alternative to the myth of Domus, Leach presents another story and another central character which is the wanderer. Actually Leach’s wanderer exactly corresponds to De Certeau’s traveler. The story of wanderer takes place in the utopian cosmopolis. As it is clearly understood from the word ‘polis’⁵ wanderer’s spatial practices are not belonging to soil, to domus. The terms cosmopolis and wanderer are very related to the contemprary society. In contemporary life the way in which we relate to world⁶ has changed a lot. So the notions of place changed too. It is no more place of origin, birthplace or the soil that we relate ouserlves to, but more mobile phenomena like jobs, education or possessions⁷. Everything in contemporary society is based on mobility, for example airport lounge is intersection of many travel stories which are identified by departures and arrivals. This example is very striking in terms of understanding the new place transformations which are too much far from Heidegger’s dwelling. The emphasis on movement, interchangebility and possibilities in places and between places has marked the contemprorary way of life.
This change from domus to cosmopolis can also be related with the concept of ‘dislocation’ by Eisenman mentioned in David Goldblatt’s article; ‘The Dislocation of Architectural Self’. The Architectural Self refers to an architecture of everyday practices⁸  but in a traditional way. So the self that Eisenman aims to dislocate can be associated to Heidegger’s dwelling
From the breakdown in traditional forms of place Eisenman comes to a point of betweeness. According to Eisenman central character is the contained whereas the place is the container, and his concept of betweeness refers to an existence between the contained and the container. Betweeness is related to the capacity of a place to allow possibilites of experiences and this relation is clearly stated by Eisenmann as ‘simultaneity of two traditionally dogmatic states’. This is the point that Eisenman and wanderer of cosmopolis meet, both of them are the actors of a dislocated spatial story. Actually dislocation of the architecture is the dislocation of our dogmatic everyday practices, but it doesn’t set new dogmas; besides it celebrates the simultaneous acts providing the mobility and interchangability as I mentioned above referring to cosmopolis.
‘The very placelessness of contemporary society’ writes Leach ‘has prompted a fresh interest in ‘place’ as ‘difference’⁹. The wanderer is the placeless, he/she doesn’t belong to any specific place, any specific foundation. This is exactly why it is excluded by dwelling as the foreigner and included to cosmopolis as a possible traveler. The very crucial point behind the transformation of domus to cosmopolis lies in the dislocation of the dogmatic place. Placelessness can be interpreted as homelessness regarding the myth of domus. When domus idea is dislocated then the wanderer comes to front as a central Character of the new placeless/homeless/dwellingless story.
When the contemprorary society is taken into consideration it isn’t possible to relate our existence to the dwelling. By the displacement of physical distance with time distance through new means of transportation and also by mobility of jobs and possesions, people no more dwell but they travel, they wander for the possible ways of ‘livings’. It isn’t implied that we don’t live in homes but we live in homes which are not grounded to the soil with a symbolic implication of any identity. The central characters of the contemprorary society may write their own spatial stories by traveling between many possible experiences that new city life provides. We are homeless and placeless but this doesn’t mean a lacking point, on the contrary our placelessness is our wide-spectrum of possibilities to have various spatial experiences in various places. This placelessness ‘let the other voices speak’, when the others can be both interpreted as the excluded wanderer and also the unexpected spatial experiences.
As questioning the definition(s) of architecture the concepts of practices/ experiences/ stories are very crucial because architecture is directly related with space creation. Architects design their buildings with a scenario for a possible story that is clear on their minds; however various unpredictable stories can take place in their buildings by time. A metaphor mentioned by Ballantyne can make the issue clearer. A hammer is designed for hammering nails, but a murderer can use it for hammering skulls¹⁰. So even an object can have unexpected applications. Then how can we deny the spatial possibilities in architecture that is so much dependent on different human experiences in various places? 

Notes:
¹ De Certau, Michel; ‘Spatial Stories’ What is Architecture . Ed. Ballantyne, Andrew. p.80
² De Certau, Michel; ‘Spatial Stories’ What is Architecture . Ed. Ballantyne, Andrew. p.80
^3,4 Leach, Michel; ‘The Dark Side of the Domus’, ‘What is Architecture’ Ed. Ballantyne,Andrew

⁵  polis: city

^6,7  Leach, Michel; ‘The Dark Side of the Domus’, ‘What is Architecture’

Ed. Ballantyne, Andrew (p.95)

⁸ Goldblatt, David; ‘The Dislocation of The Architectural Self’, ‘What is Architecture’. Ed. Ballantyne, Andrew

⁹ Leach, Michel; ‘The Dark Side of the Domus’, ‘What is Architecture’

Ed. Ballantyne,Andrew (p.94)

¹⁰ Ballantyne, Andrew. ‘Commentary: The Nest and the Pillar of Fire’. ‘What is Architecture?’

Ed. Ballantyne, Andrew.

REFERENCES

1) Ballantyne, Andrew. ‘Commentary: The Nest and the Pillar of Fire’. ‘What is Architecture?’

Ed. Ballantyne, Andrew.

2) De Certau, Michel; ‘Spatial Stories’ What is Architecture?’ Ed. Ballantyne, Andrew.

3) Goldblatt, David; ‘The Dislocation of The Architectural Self’, ‘What is Architecture?’. Ed. Ballantyne, Andrew

4) Leach, Michel; ‘The Dark Side of the Domus’, ‘What is Architecture?’

Ed. Ballantyne, Andrew

5) McHugh, Kathleen; ‘The Metaphysics of Housework: Patricia Gruben’ Central Character’, ‘What is Architecture?’ Ed. Ballantyne, Andrew