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    Lived Spaces Could Not Be Planned, But Were Better Left To Emerge Organically

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    Tina Steiger
    This document discusses the concept of the "lifeworld" and "autonomous spaces" within cities from the perspectives of urban theorists like Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Michel de Certeau, and Siegfried Kracauer. It examines reclaimed industrial spaces in Berlin, Zagreb, and Copenhagen that have become nodes for urban social movements, manifesting their history through art, gardens, and other means. These autonomous spaces emerge organically and allow for creativity and spontaneity outside of top-down city planning. The theorists argue that cities need a dialogue between their technical and social aspects to ensure spaces for improvisation and the "unconscious dreams of modern culture."

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    Lived Spaces Could Not Be Planned, But Were Better Left To Emerge Organically

    Uploaded by

    Tina Steiger
    66 views5 pages
    This document discusses the concept of the "lifeworld" and "autonomous spaces" within cities from the perspectives of urban theorists like Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Michel de Certeau, and Siegfried Kracauer. It examines reclaimed industrial spaces in Berlin, Zagreb, and Copenhagen that have become nodes for urban social movements, manifesting their history through art, gardens, and other means. These autonomous spaces emerge organically and allow for creativity and spontaneity outside of top-down city planning. The theorists argue that cities need a dialogue between their technical and social aspects to ensure spaces for improvisation and the "unconscious dreams of modern culture."

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    This document discusses the concept of the "lifeworld" and "autonomous spaces" within cities from the perspectives of urban theorists like Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Michel de Certeau, and Siegfried Kracauer. It examines reclaimed industrial spaces in Berlin, Zagreb, and Copenhagen that have become nodes for urban social movements, manifesting their history through art, gardens, and other means. These autonomous spaces emerge organically and allow for creativity and spontaneity outside of top-down city planning. The theorists argue that cities need a dialogue between their technical and social aspects to ensure spaces for improvisation and the "unconscious dreams of modern culture."

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    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    66 views5 pages

    Lived Spaces Could Not Be Planned, But Were Better Left To Emerge Organically

    Uploaded by

    Tina Steiger
    This document discusses the concept of the "lifeworld" and "autonomous spaces" within cities from the perspectives of urban theorists like Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Michel de Certeau, and Siegfried Kracauer. It examines reclaimed industrial spaces in Berlin, Zagreb, and Copenhagen that have become nodes for urban social movements, manifesting their history through art, gardens, and other means. These autonomous spaces emerge organically and allow for creativity and spontaneity outside of top-down city planning. The theorists argue that cities need a dialogue between their technical and social aspects to ensure spaces for improvisation and the "unconscious dreams of modern culture."

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    Culture and Cultural Theory

    Copenhagen University Winter 2010


    4Cities Master of Urban Studies

    Lifeworld and Autonomous Spaces

    “A city shall not be a frame around masquerade but around an everyday life that
    appears healthy and natural to the inhabitants.” (Rassmussen in Reeh 252)

    Within the realm of urban studies, the concept of the lifeworld, can be
    approached through the perspectives of Steen Eiler Rasmussen; as an urban
    planner, professor of architectural history and engaged citizen essayist.
    These perspectives are three socio-spatial spheres from which the lifeworld may be
    perceived: from the scale of regional planning, to vertical perspective of a dollhouse,
    and simultaneously the power and experience of the individual user. Like Certeau,
    he identified the importance of viewing the city from both a horizontal and vertical
    perspective.
    Like Habermaes, Rassmussen came to fear the colonization of the lifeworld
    by the system and considered urban space both ‘a field for political struggle and
    bodily experience’ (Reeh: 254) as well as ‘an ever changing articulation of three
    dimensional architecture and multi-dimensional social life’ (Reeh 260).
    Throughout his life, his perception shifted from imagining a city as an
    ‘ordered and planned totality’ towards believing in the more unplanned ‘chaos’
    which enables spontaneity and creativity. Essentially, he came to the conclusion that
    lived spaces could not be planned, but were better left to emerge organically.
    Free spaces, similar to Rasmussen’s Christiania1 which have sprung out of the
    glitches within contemporary neoliberal cities, have allowed for a similar kind of
    spontaneous and seemingly chaotic creativity to emerge. Examples of such
    autonomous spaces appear in urban areas most strongly affected by processes of

    1
    The Christiania at the time of Rassmussen’s writings, ca. 1970s
    deindustrialization, such as the Tacheles in Berlin2, Medika of Zagreb3, or
    Bolsjefabrikken in Copenhagen4.
    These spaces are tactically used by individuals of communities sharing
    ideologies temporally limited, and simultaneously have become strategic localities
    of wider urban social movements. Optically they are similar, in being housed in
    modernist industrial buildings, whose stark and bare surfaces have allowed for
    elaborate ornamentation by the collectives claiming them. See Visuals I, II, III
    respectively.
    The modernist architecture of these reclaimed free spaces, whose lack of
    ornament purely served their industrial functions, have become spaces in which
    urban social movements have manifested their history and memory through
    mediums such as murals, graffiti, gardens, sculptures, etc: signifiers which hint at
    the dynamic activities and ideology of these lived spaces.
    They have become the spatial manifestation of nodes in networks of urban
    social movements. Ever changing, and ever transforming, they are like the modern
    individual in a constant state of movement, of dis- and re-assemblance, spaces
    which allow the dialectic processes of mutuality, the kunstwollen of the modern self
    to emerge. As Perec demonstrates, the modern individual is dreaming of stable
    places-which don’t exist, but through the means of writing and ornamenting, are
    able to commemorate their world and life activity. This manifestation of memory,
    may have allowed for the sensitivities of the wider urban collective, an unconscious
    social memory and to be projected.
    The overarching theme of these urban theorist is the need for a dialogue, a
    strengthened connection between the technical, spatial aspects of cities and their
    social perspective and uses by the individual. Free spaces, which strive to be
    autonomous, which are simultaneously a reaction enabled by and a reaction to the
    system, may be the spaces where the unconscious dreams of the modern culture are
    projected.

    2
    www.tacheles.de
    3
    http://www.pierottijeva11.org/
    4
    http://bolsjefabrikken.com
    As Kracauer has said, “the values of cities is determined by the number of
    places in them which have been left to improvisation”. Therefore we must ensure
    that free places are given space to emerge in today’s cities and those of the future.
    Visuals:
    I. Tacheles, Berlin

    II. Medika, Zagreb

    I. Bolsjefabrikken, Copenhagen
    Works Cited:

    The Urban Lifeworld: Formation, Perception, Representation, Peter Madsen & Richard Plunz
    (ed.) (London: Routledge, 2002).

    Kracauer, Siegfried. History as Autobiography : Last things before last


    Stehbars im Sueden (1925) in Strassen in Berlin und anderswo

    Experiencing Architecture, by Steen Eiler Rasmussen (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT


    Press, 1962 [1959]). Danish original: Om at opleve arkitektur (G. E. C. Gads Forlag, 1957).
    Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, by Georges Perec (London: Penguin, 1997). French
    original: Espèces d’espaces (Paris: Galilée, 1974).

    The Practice of Everyday Life, by Michel de Certeau (Berkeley: University of Cali- fornia
    Press, 1984). French original: L’invention du quotidien: 1. arts de faire (Paris: Gallimard,
    1990 [1980]).

    Ornaments of the Metropolis: Siegfried Kracauer and Modern Urban Culture, by Henrik Reeh
    (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2004/paperback 2006). Danish original: Storbyens
    Ornamenter – Siegfried Kracauer og den moderne bykultur (Odense: Odense University
    Press [now: University Press of Southern Denmark], 1991).

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