Sana Murrani | Plymouth University (original) (raw)
Papers by Sana Murrani
Social & Cultural Geography, Mar 23, 2022
, with a background in Architecture and Urban Design. Sana's research highlights the impact of tr... more , with a background in Architecture and Urban Design. Sana's research highlights the impact of transient conditions of war, conflict, and displacement on people's creative spatial responses to sudden changes in their built environment. She uses participatory action research, co-design approaches and creative mapping techniques that rely on spatial thinking, memory mapping, and imaginative/cognitive drawing. She is the founder of the Displacement Studies Research Network and co-founder of the Justice and Imagination in Global Displacement (JIGD) research collective, working at the intersection between displacement, design, imagination and justice.
Culture and Psychology, Sep 2, 2019
The loss of home as a consequence of war, conflict and displacement urges us to question the conc... more The loss of home as a consequence of war, conflict and displacement urges us to question the concept's very construction. Although existing spatial and cultural studies on the subject have explored the immaterial characteristics of the construct, they have overlooked its connection to the consciousness and agency of the displaced, which are quintessentially contingent. This article presents a theoretical inquiry into the influence of the processual ambiguity of our cognitive system on the positioning of the concept of home between the temporality of its construct and the plasticity of its agency. Using connections between cognitive plasticity (based on Catherine Malabou's concept of the freedom of the brain) and spatial plasticity (influenced by Vilém Flusser's notion of the freedom of the migrant and the construction of the concepts of home), it establishes that the plasticity of migrants' agency in displacement is an instrumental process in encoding new spatial practices of home-making.
The 21 st century's conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan have led to an unprecede... more The 21 st century's conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan have led to an unprecedented rise in the numbers of displaced people: the United Nations Refugee Agency (2015) records that approximately 34,000 people were forcibly displaced each day in 2015. This figure has driven the largest forced migration crisis in Europe since the Second World War. Spatial disruption to mobility has become the main concern of more than a million people who have embarked on arduous journeys, 'drifting' to Europe by land and sea. As they make multiple attempts to traverse the borders, what 'right to drift' have they? Can protracted urban displacement generate what Lefebvre terms the 'blind field'? This Chapter explores the creative potential for spatial navigation that emerges from denial of the right to drift
This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood ... more This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognize that its copyright rests with its author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without the author's prior consent.
Interdisciplinary debates focusing on the cybernetic and biotechnological advancements of semi-na... more Interdisciplinary debates focusing on the cybernetic and biotechnological advancements of semi-natural systems in architecture have contributed a great deal to the creation of new design imperatives and theoretical discourse in the field of experimental architecture. This paper explores interim stages of such advancements theoretically and practically derived from biology and cybernetics, based on the writings of Francisco Varela and Sanford Kwinter, as well as the work of Marcos Cruz and Steve Pike. The paper will exhibit and illustrate through a simulation elements of autopoietic system behaviour. This research establishes that such principles and processes in biology have a direct impact on the creation of generative situations in architecture. Furthermore, it illustrates the difference between the being of architecture as an outcome of the process of design and the becoming of architecture as a generative and collective process of situations. Situations as opposed to mere forms ...
Journal of Refugee Studies, 2020
This is an unusual book. Combining social science fiction, utopianism, pragmatism, sober analysis... more This is an unusual book. Combining social science fiction, utopianism, pragmatism, sober analysis, and innovative social theory, the authors address one of the biggest dilemmas of our age – how to solve the problems arising from mass displacement. As early versions of the solution proposed by Robin Cohen and Nicholas Van Hear filtered out, their vision of a new, networked, transnational archipelago, called Refugia, was immediately denounced or met with scepticism by established refugee scholars. Others were more intrigued, more open-minded, or perhaps just holding their fire until this book was finally published. As it at least has the virtue of originality, why not judge the proposal for yourself? Read it and craft your own critique. The authors have initiated an openly pro-refugee vision that all can help to shape. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to scholars, students and practitioners, as well as to an informed public ready to engage with this pressing issue.
Culture & Psychology, 2019
The loss of home as a consequence of war, conflict and displacement urges us to question the conc... more The loss of home as a consequence of war, conflict and displacement urges us to question the concept’s very construction. Although existing spatial and cultural studies on the subject have explored the immaterial characteristics of the construct, they have overlooked its connection to the consciousness and agency of the displaced, which are quintessentially contingent. This article presents a theoretical inquiry into the influence of the processual ambiguity of our cognitive system on the positioning of the concept of home between the temporality of its construct and the plasticity of its agency. Using connections between cognitive plasticity (based on Catherine Malabou’s concept of the freedom of the brain) and spatial plasticity (influenced by Vilém Flusser’s notion of the freedom of the migrant and the construction of the concepts of home), it establishes that the plasticity of migrants’ agency in displacement is an instrumental process in encoding new spatial practices of home-m...
New Realities: Being Syncretic, 2009
The 21 st century's conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan have led to an unprecede... more The 21 st century's conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan have led to an unprecedented rise in the numbers of displaced people: the United Nations Refugee Agency (2015) records that approximately 34,000 people were forcibly displaced each day in 2015. This figure has driven the largest forced migration crisis in Europe since the Second World War. Spatial disruption to mobility has become the main concern of more than a million people who have embarked on arduous journeys, 'drifting' to Europe by land and sea. As they make multiple attempts to traverse the borders, what 'right to drift' have they? Can protracted urban displacement generate what Lefebvre terms the 'blind field'? This Chapter explores the creative potential for spatial navigation that emerges from denial of the right to drift
Social & Cultural Geography
, with a background in Architecture and Urban Design. Sana's research highlights the impact of tr... more , with a background in Architecture and Urban Design. Sana's research highlights the impact of transient conditions of war, conflict, and displacement on people's creative spatial responses to sudden changes in their built environment. She uses participatory action research, co-design approaches and creative mapping techniques that rely on spatial thinking, memory mapping, and imaginative/cognitive drawing. She is the founder of the Displacement Studies Research Network and co-founder of the Justice and Imagination in Global Displacement (JIGD) research collective, working at the intersection between displacement, design, imagination and justice.
Cultural Dynamics, 2016
Wedged in-between the dense urban grain of Baghdad, blast walls of t-shaped concrete have littere... more Wedged in-between the dense urban grain of Baghdad, blast walls of t-shaped concrete have littered the streets and neighbourhoods since 2003, after the US led invasion. The idiosyncrasy of these walls lies in their exaggerated spatial liminality. They appear, change location and disappear overnight, and on a daily basis, leaving Iraqis to navigate through labyrinths of in-between spaces. This article critically reveals the new social and power structures that have emerged in the context of the city in response to the condition resulting from this unique urban intervention. This uncanny spatial and social condition of permanent liminality will be analysed through Victor Turner’s critical theories of liminality and anti-structure coupled with Edward Soja’s theory of Thirdspace, interpreting, through a series of territorial mappings, a complex liminal condition in a contested and disrupted city.
Culture and Psychology, 2019
The loss of home as a consequence of war, conflict and displacement urges us to question the conc... more The loss of home as a consequence of war, conflict and displacement urges us to question the concept’s very construction. Although existing spatial and cultural studies on the subject have explored the immaterial characteristics of the construct, they have overlooked its connection to the consciousness and agency of the displaced, which are quintessentially contingent. This article presents a theoretical inquiry into the influence of the processual ambiguity of our cognitive system on the positioning of the concept of home between the temporality of its construct and the plasticity of its agency. Using connections between cognitive plasticity (based on Catherine Malabou’s concept of the freedom of the brain) and spatial plasticity (influenced by Vilém Flusser’s notion of the freedom of the migrant and the construction of the concepts of home), it establishes that the plasticity of migrants’ agency in displacement is an instrumental process in encoding new spatial practices of home-making.
Wedged in-between the dense urban grain of Baghdad, blast walls of t-shaped concrete have littere... more Wedged in-between the dense urban grain of Baghdad, blast walls of t-shaped concrete have littered the streets and neighbourhoods since 2003, after the US led invasion. The idiosyncrasy of these walls lies in their exaggerated spatial liminality. They appear, change location and disappear overnight, and on a daily basis, leaving Iraqis to navigate through labyrinths of in-between spaces. This article critically reveals the new social and power structures that have emerged in the context of the city in response to the condition resulting from this unique urban intervention. This uncanny spatial and social condition of permanent liminality will be analysed through Victor Turner’s critical theories of liminality and anti-structure coupled with Edward Soja’s theory of Thirdspace, interpreting, through a series of territorial mappings, a complex liminal condition in a contested and disrupted city.
The temporary in architecture is a state of territorial instability that emerges out of interacti... more The temporary in architecture is a state of territorial instability that emerges out of interactions between transdisciplinary narratives and architectural theory and its practice. This article extends this notion to the socio-temporary, which is a state arising from constant synergies between the social context and worldmaking. Such narratives were originally influenced by the field of cybernetics and later on by second-order cybernetics reflected in the emergent participatory art practice of the mid-twentieth century through transdisciplinary research.
Derived from the theoretical underpinning of this article a simulation is exhibited, which illustrates theoretically elements of Varela and Maturana’s autopoietic system behaviour and its close relation to temporality in the worldmaking of architecture. This is a theoretical article – with an element of practice – that seeks to highlight the temporality of the process of worldmaking in architecture.
Key Words:
Architectural theory, Socio-temporary, Socio-Conscious, Second-Order Cybernetics, Worldmaking, Becoming, Situations
This article in its essence aims to challenge and unfold, each at a time, two different fields of... more This article in its essence aims to challenge and unfold, each at a time, two different fields of methodology – cybernetics and phenomenology – that have direct effects on the product of being and the process of becoming in architectural discourse. Furthermore, this article suggests a third way philosophy for architecture that relates notions of post-phenomenology and technoscience, and considers both to be equally vital to development and speculation within current architectural discourse. First, the history of each of the two fields – cybernetics and phenomenology – will be unveiled with a focus on exploring their impact upon architecture in particular and diverse fields such as other art disciplines, computer science and psychology. Second, a critique of the historic rivalry between pioneers in each of the two fields will be unpacked through their errors and limits. Third, the article will discuss attempts at converging the two fields in order to address the relationship of notions of humanism, machinism and technology. Finally, a declaration of the characteristics of such a convergence that will lead to a third way philosophy for architectural discourse will be asserted.
Keywords: Second-Order Cybernetics, Postphenomenology, Technoscience, Techné, Architectural Philosophy, Being, Becoming
Social & Cultural Geography, Mar 23, 2022
, with a background in Architecture and Urban Design. Sana's research highlights the impact of tr... more , with a background in Architecture and Urban Design. Sana's research highlights the impact of transient conditions of war, conflict, and displacement on people's creative spatial responses to sudden changes in their built environment. She uses participatory action research, co-design approaches and creative mapping techniques that rely on spatial thinking, memory mapping, and imaginative/cognitive drawing. She is the founder of the Displacement Studies Research Network and co-founder of the Justice and Imagination in Global Displacement (JIGD) research collective, working at the intersection between displacement, design, imagination and justice.
Culture and Psychology, Sep 2, 2019
The loss of home as a consequence of war, conflict and displacement urges us to question the conc... more The loss of home as a consequence of war, conflict and displacement urges us to question the concept's very construction. Although existing spatial and cultural studies on the subject have explored the immaterial characteristics of the construct, they have overlooked its connection to the consciousness and agency of the displaced, which are quintessentially contingent. This article presents a theoretical inquiry into the influence of the processual ambiguity of our cognitive system on the positioning of the concept of home between the temporality of its construct and the plasticity of its agency. Using connections between cognitive plasticity (based on Catherine Malabou's concept of the freedom of the brain) and spatial plasticity (influenced by Vilém Flusser's notion of the freedom of the migrant and the construction of the concepts of home), it establishes that the plasticity of migrants' agency in displacement is an instrumental process in encoding new spatial practices of home-making.
The 21 st century's conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan have led to an unprecede... more The 21 st century's conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan have led to an unprecedented rise in the numbers of displaced people: the United Nations Refugee Agency (2015) records that approximately 34,000 people were forcibly displaced each day in 2015. This figure has driven the largest forced migration crisis in Europe since the Second World War. Spatial disruption to mobility has become the main concern of more than a million people who have embarked on arduous journeys, 'drifting' to Europe by land and sea. As they make multiple attempts to traverse the borders, what 'right to drift' have they? Can protracted urban displacement generate what Lefebvre terms the 'blind field'? This Chapter explores the creative potential for spatial navigation that emerges from denial of the right to drift
This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood ... more This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognize that its copyright rests with its author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without the author's prior consent.
Interdisciplinary debates focusing on the cybernetic and biotechnological advancements of semi-na... more Interdisciplinary debates focusing on the cybernetic and biotechnological advancements of semi-natural systems in architecture have contributed a great deal to the creation of new design imperatives and theoretical discourse in the field of experimental architecture. This paper explores interim stages of such advancements theoretically and practically derived from biology and cybernetics, based on the writings of Francisco Varela and Sanford Kwinter, as well as the work of Marcos Cruz and Steve Pike. The paper will exhibit and illustrate through a simulation elements of autopoietic system behaviour. This research establishes that such principles and processes in biology have a direct impact on the creation of generative situations in architecture. Furthermore, it illustrates the difference between the being of architecture as an outcome of the process of design and the becoming of architecture as a generative and collective process of situations. Situations as opposed to mere forms ...
Journal of Refugee Studies, 2020
This is an unusual book. Combining social science fiction, utopianism, pragmatism, sober analysis... more This is an unusual book. Combining social science fiction, utopianism, pragmatism, sober analysis, and innovative social theory, the authors address one of the biggest dilemmas of our age – how to solve the problems arising from mass displacement. As early versions of the solution proposed by Robin Cohen and Nicholas Van Hear filtered out, their vision of a new, networked, transnational archipelago, called Refugia, was immediately denounced or met with scepticism by established refugee scholars. Others were more intrigued, more open-minded, or perhaps just holding their fire until this book was finally published. As it at least has the virtue of originality, why not judge the proposal for yourself? Read it and craft your own critique. The authors have initiated an openly pro-refugee vision that all can help to shape. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to scholars, students and practitioners, as well as to an informed public ready to engage with this pressing issue.
Culture & Psychology, 2019
The loss of home as a consequence of war, conflict and displacement urges us to question the conc... more The loss of home as a consequence of war, conflict and displacement urges us to question the concept’s very construction. Although existing spatial and cultural studies on the subject have explored the immaterial characteristics of the construct, they have overlooked its connection to the consciousness and agency of the displaced, which are quintessentially contingent. This article presents a theoretical inquiry into the influence of the processual ambiguity of our cognitive system on the positioning of the concept of home between the temporality of its construct and the plasticity of its agency. Using connections between cognitive plasticity (based on Catherine Malabou’s concept of the freedom of the brain) and spatial plasticity (influenced by Vilém Flusser’s notion of the freedom of the migrant and the construction of the concepts of home), it establishes that the plasticity of migrants’ agency in displacement is an instrumental process in encoding new spatial practices of home-m...
New Realities: Being Syncretic, 2009
The 21 st century's conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan have led to an unprecede... more The 21 st century's conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan have led to an unprecedented rise in the numbers of displaced people: the United Nations Refugee Agency (2015) records that approximately 34,000 people were forcibly displaced each day in 2015. This figure has driven the largest forced migration crisis in Europe since the Second World War. Spatial disruption to mobility has become the main concern of more than a million people who have embarked on arduous journeys, 'drifting' to Europe by land and sea. As they make multiple attempts to traverse the borders, what 'right to drift' have they? Can protracted urban displacement generate what Lefebvre terms the 'blind field'? This Chapter explores the creative potential for spatial navigation that emerges from denial of the right to drift
Social & Cultural Geography
, with a background in Architecture and Urban Design. Sana's research highlights the impact of tr... more , with a background in Architecture and Urban Design. Sana's research highlights the impact of transient conditions of war, conflict, and displacement on people's creative spatial responses to sudden changes in their built environment. She uses participatory action research, co-design approaches and creative mapping techniques that rely on spatial thinking, memory mapping, and imaginative/cognitive drawing. She is the founder of the Displacement Studies Research Network and co-founder of the Justice and Imagination in Global Displacement (JIGD) research collective, working at the intersection between displacement, design, imagination and justice.
Cultural Dynamics, 2016
Wedged in-between the dense urban grain of Baghdad, blast walls of t-shaped concrete have littere... more Wedged in-between the dense urban grain of Baghdad, blast walls of t-shaped concrete have littered the streets and neighbourhoods since 2003, after the US led invasion. The idiosyncrasy of these walls lies in their exaggerated spatial liminality. They appear, change location and disappear overnight, and on a daily basis, leaving Iraqis to navigate through labyrinths of in-between spaces. This article critically reveals the new social and power structures that have emerged in the context of the city in response to the condition resulting from this unique urban intervention. This uncanny spatial and social condition of permanent liminality will be analysed through Victor Turner’s critical theories of liminality and anti-structure coupled with Edward Soja’s theory of Thirdspace, interpreting, through a series of territorial mappings, a complex liminal condition in a contested and disrupted city.
Culture and Psychology, 2019
The loss of home as a consequence of war, conflict and displacement urges us to question the conc... more The loss of home as a consequence of war, conflict and displacement urges us to question the concept’s very construction. Although existing spatial and cultural studies on the subject have explored the immaterial characteristics of the construct, they have overlooked its connection to the consciousness and agency of the displaced, which are quintessentially contingent. This article presents a theoretical inquiry into the influence of the processual ambiguity of our cognitive system on the positioning of the concept of home between the temporality of its construct and the plasticity of its agency. Using connections between cognitive plasticity (based on Catherine Malabou’s concept of the freedom of the brain) and spatial plasticity (influenced by Vilém Flusser’s notion of the freedom of the migrant and the construction of the concepts of home), it establishes that the plasticity of migrants’ agency in displacement is an instrumental process in encoding new spatial practices of home-making.
Wedged in-between the dense urban grain of Baghdad, blast walls of t-shaped concrete have littere... more Wedged in-between the dense urban grain of Baghdad, blast walls of t-shaped concrete have littered the streets and neighbourhoods since 2003, after the US led invasion. The idiosyncrasy of these walls lies in their exaggerated spatial liminality. They appear, change location and disappear overnight, and on a daily basis, leaving Iraqis to navigate through labyrinths of in-between spaces. This article critically reveals the new social and power structures that have emerged in the context of the city in response to the condition resulting from this unique urban intervention. This uncanny spatial and social condition of permanent liminality will be analysed through Victor Turner’s critical theories of liminality and anti-structure coupled with Edward Soja’s theory of Thirdspace, interpreting, through a series of territorial mappings, a complex liminal condition in a contested and disrupted city.
The temporary in architecture is a state of territorial instability that emerges out of interacti... more The temporary in architecture is a state of territorial instability that emerges out of interactions between transdisciplinary narratives and architectural theory and its practice. This article extends this notion to the socio-temporary, which is a state arising from constant synergies between the social context and worldmaking. Such narratives were originally influenced by the field of cybernetics and later on by second-order cybernetics reflected in the emergent participatory art practice of the mid-twentieth century through transdisciplinary research.
Derived from the theoretical underpinning of this article a simulation is exhibited, which illustrates theoretically elements of Varela and Maturana’s autopoietic system behaviour and its close relation to temporality in the worldmaking of architecture. This is a theoretical article – with an element of practice – that seeks to highlight the temporality of the process of worldmaking in architecture.
Key Words:
Architectural theory, Socio-temporary, Socio-Conscious, Second-Order Cybernetics, Worldmaking, Becoming, Situations
This article in its essence aims to challenge and unfold, each at a time, two different fields of... more This article in its essence aims to challenge and unfold, each at a time, two different fields of methodology – cybernetics and phenomenology – that have direct effects on the product of being and the process of becoming in architectural discourse. Furthermore, this article suggests a third way philosophy for architecture that relates notions of post-phenomenology and technoscience, and considers both to be equally vital to development and speculation within current architectural discourse. First, the history of each of the two fields – cybernetics and phenomenology – will be unveiled with a focus on exploring their impact upon architecture in particular and diverse fields such as other art disciplines, computer science and psychology. Second, a critique of the historic rivalry between pioneers in each of the two fields will be unpacked through their errors and limits. Third, the article will discuss attempts at converging the two fields in order to address the relationship of notions of humanism, machinism and technology. Finally, a declaration of the characteristics of such a convergence that will lead to a third way philosophy for architectural discourse will be asserted.
Keywords: Second-Order Cybernetics, Postphenomenology, Technoscience, Techné, Architectural Philosophy, Being, Becoming
Routledge Handbook of Henri Lefebvre, the City and Urban Society, 2019
The 21st century’s conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan have led to an unpreceden... more The 21st century’s conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan have led to an unprecedented rise in the numbers of displaced people: the United Nations Refugee Agency (2015) records that approximately 34,000 people were forcibly displaced each day in 2015. This figure has driven the largest forced migration crisis in Europe since the Second World War. Spatial disruption to mobility has become the main concern of more than a million people who have embarked on arduous journeys, ‘drifting’ to Europe by land and sea. As they make multiple attempts to traverse the borders, what ‘right to drift’ have they? Can protracted urban displacement generate what Lefebvre terms the ‘blind field’? This Chapter explores the creative potential for spatial navigation that emerges from denial of the right to drift and obstructed mobility. The links between frustration and creativity, particularly in art and science, have long been acknowledged, but their connection in terms of their impact on spatial mobility has rarely been examined. This Chapter offers a theoretical exploration of the potential of the Lefebvrian concepts of the ‘right to the city’ and the ‘blind field’ to act as catalysts for creative drifting and navigation of the urban in space and time.
Now you see it, now you don’t, is a statement that comes to mind when attempting to characterise ... more Now you see it, now you don’t, is a statement that comes to mind when attempting to characterise the ludic interplay of overlaid conditions between the spatial and the social in participatory architecture praxis. This chapter unthreads these characteristics via a critical discussion into the effects of active perception, network society and participation on the construction and re-constitution of a spatial-technological installation: Overlaid Realities. In everyday life once the spatial and social conditions are enacted in spacetime they reveal, with varying clarity, worlds that are constantly re-presented, re-structured, re-made, re-appropriated and re-interpreted. To borrow Nelson Goodman’s metaphor, worlds melt into other versions of worldmaking, and thus the emerging worlds have relational existence rather than self-existence, i.e. the spatial and temporal position of the created world is nothing but a node in the field of networks of spatial and temporal relations. Simultaneously, the “re” in the re-presentation, re-structuring, re-making, re-appropriating and re-interpreting refers back to the social characterised in the multiple selves and connotations of the body that we encounter throughout our everyday physical, digital, hybrid and augmented participatory experiences. Hence my proposition for this chapter is ontogenic as much as it is ontological. The theoretical context is based on Goodman’s ideology of irrealism and Leibniz’s relational theory, and is realised through an interrogation of the ideas implemented in Overlaid Realities installation. It is through this interrogation that the chapter develops into a triadic enquiry of the overlaid ontological (represented by notions of active perception and cognition and their effects on alternative experiences of the world), ontogenic (represented by the relationship between body/self, spacetime, and social flow), and in return, the behavioural conditions of spatial-technological worlds. This work reveals a new theoretical analysis to the way in which we perceive and conceive of spatial-social and technological installations.
“Liminality, marginality, and structural inferiority are conditions in which are frequently gener... more “Liminality, marginality, and structural inferiority are conditions in which are frequently generated myths, symbols, rituals, philosophical systems, and works of art. These cultural forms provide men with a set of templates, models, or paradigms which are, at one level, periodical reclassifications of reality (or, at least, of social experience) and man's relationship to society, nature, and culture. But they are more than (mere cognitive) classifications, since they incite men to action as well as thought” (Turner, 1969, p.128-129).
Symbols, texts, critical readings and interpretations of situations we encounter in everyday life come together to assemble versions of our environment. Heinz von Foerster believed that cognition is an assemblage of descriptions of descriptions of reality. Reality is relative and “reality is community” (Foerster, 1973). This paper will follow a poststructuralist and anthropological study that is concerned with constructing a version of reality that is akin to principles of critical spatial practice pioneered by Jane Rendell. The paper will focus on the influential theory of liminality adopted from Victor Turner’s anthropological studies, to define a critical construct of spaces through ephemeral interpretations of their perception and cognition. This study will focus on estranged and appropriated sites and situations that are located on the periphery of society acquiring different identities over time within the urban context. Sites that had a particular historical role and since have been re-appropriated (Bletchley Park, Tyneham Village, and the Metropolitan Police Specialist Training Centre in Gravesend in Kent) will be critically discussed in relation to situations that emerged in urban contexts (riot sites in London, sites used by squatters, and the Occupy movement).
The conceptual framework, enunciated through interpretations of texts, will define the characteristic synergies between poststructuralist thought on cognition (spatial: how to view, construct, then view… a world) and anthropological studies of society and culture (social: how to live in a world). Turner acknowledges the liminality of the conditions in which cultural forms are generated; he associates such conditions with our constant reclassifications of reality on a cognitive level, and more importantly, with their fundamental importance to incite people to action. Architecture constitutes a product in process of such cultural forms; therefore, the subject of this paper is relational and relative, cyclic and open-ended as both our conscious and sub/unconscious interpretations of space and society change through time. The spaces and sites selected for this paper act as catalysts for spatial and social assemblages theory for cognition and interpretation in architecture under the influence of critical spatial practice.