Introduction
This chapter explores the spatial contexts of creative practice as active agents in processes of design, and, conjointly, how processes and practices of design impact upon their spatial setting. The con-text for this exploration is a wider reflection on the processes of creative practice as research under the auspices of the Architecture, Design and Art Practice Training-research (ADAPT-r) Marie Curie Initial Training Network. This network, and the programme of events undertaken over the years of its operation (2013-2016), not only provide a context through posing questions about how best to develop and support creative practice research. The other cat-alytic element of the programme toward creating new knowledge of creative practice is in the bringing together of a diverse array of international creative practitioners as an active network, and supporting them to open up access to one another’s processes and understandings of creative endeavour.
The aim of this text is to contribute theoretical insights in terms of possible understandings of the relationship of creative activity and spatial context, and models of conceptualising creative practice in terms of social-material networks and activities. The purpose of this contribution is to provide a basis for an understanding of how place and network matter for the production of knowledge through design and other creative practice.
Creativity within a network
In the interests of providing a sure footing for the journey I wish to lead the reader on, I will begin with a very brief discussion of creativity and its role within the city and society, as I am inter-ested in using and exploring the term from a critical and politically emplaced perspective. As Edensor, Leslie, Millington, and Rantisi argue clearly in their discussion of the creative city and vernacular
Chapter 2 Spaces of Creativity Claus Peder Pedersen, Siv Helene Stangeland and Anna M. Holder
In what follows I will focus firstly on building an understanding of the role of space and location in social action, drawing on both practice theory and architectural theory. Subsequently I will use this theoretical understanding of the role of space in social action to discuss instances of creative agency within creative practice research, with particular attention to the ways in which creative practitioners ‘read’, understand, use and change different spaces and territories within their work.
A focus on practices rather than individuals
Practice theory, as a model of understanding social action, focuses attention on social practices – routine behaviours which incor-porate specific knowledge, knowhow, knowledge of values and motivations, together with bodily activity, and material resources (things and their uses).13 It offers an alternative to the understand-ing of human action as guided only by individual intention and private gain, or the contrasting understanding of action guided by collective consensus and social rules.
To describe one unified ‘practice theory’ is of course a simpli-fication, drawing together understandings from social theorists Giddens and Bourdieu among other cultural theorists and philos-ophers, and the wider ‘practice turn’ in the humanities and social sciences.14 But I believe it is helpful, within this discussion of crea-tive practice, to position practices as a unit of analysis, particularly within a model of creative practice research which relies on reflec-tive practice and can become firmly entrenched in conceptions of individual agency. Taking Reckwitz’s definition of a practice, from an ideal type bringing together different approaches to practice theory, we can see how a practice brings together existing ways of knowing and acting, and understanding of why and how to act in certain ways:
A practice – a way of cooking, of consuming, of working, of investigating, of taking care of oneself or of others, etc. – forms so to speak a ‘block’ whose existence necessarily depends on the existence and specific interconnectedness of these elements, and which cannot be reduced to any one of these single elements. Likewise, a practice represents a pattern which can be filled out by a multitude of single and often unique actions reproducing the practice
13 (Reckwitz 2002, 249)
14 (Giddens 1986; Bourdieu 2005; Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina, and Savigny 2001)
of liberal or revolutionary educational development, from Rudolf Steiner to Paolo Freire – have tended to insist upon the ‘ordinary’ case.”10
Tracing a historical and geographical spread of accounts of cre-ativity divided between these positions, Pope arrives at the current understanding from psychological and educational research, draw-ing on Michael Howe’s account of Genius, whereby, the mental processes of genius and ‘ordinary’ thinker are shown to be qualita-tively alike.11
My own approach to the study of creative practice, focussing on architecture, and following my experiences as a practitioner in architecture and landscape and urbanism practice, and my subsequent research into practice, follows an interest in creativity as emplaced and embodied activity that occurs within relational networks. Architecture is made in places, by complex assemblages of people, things, processes, technologies, materials. Till in his 2009 work ‘Architecture Depends’ calls for a recognition of the contingency of architecture, that many more things are connected to and influence architectural production than what goes on in the architects’ studio, than the weight of their hand on the pen (or stylus, or mouse).12
Paying attention to the means by which architecture is made, and to creativity within a set of material and social practices, neces-sarily acknowledges also a distributed creative production. Archi-tecture is made: in local policy plans, in funding bid documents, in planners’ offices, in property boundary lines (going back centuries), in random conversations, in sustainability policy, in the shiny tower blocks of ’big’ players, and the shiveringly-cold community halls of the public meeting. It is made in the words of the foreman who
’translates’ the plan pinned on the wall to his group of carpenters.
It is made in eighteen facade options churned out for an indecisive oligarch. It is made in an expensively rendered collage telling us what this bare patch of ground will look like next.
This is not to diminish or belittle the individual as creative actor: I wish to recognise the importance of the experienced crea-tive practitioner, building a solid base for innovation and creativity through practice. However, I emphasise that the creative practi-tioner operates within and is responsive to a wider network.
10 Rob Pope, Creativity: Theory, History, Practice (London; New York:
Routledge, 2005), p. 53.
11 (Pope 2005) 12 (Till 2009)
Chapter 2 Spaces of Creativity Claus Peder Pedersen, Siv Helene Stangeland and Anna M. Holder
of understandings of their creative practice.19 These included: the scale of the operations of their practice; the emphasis on creative activities of the studio, rather than the industrialised mode of the office; the method of dividing and managing activities within a creative workforce; the materials with which a practice was work-ing; the shift towards working as a practitioner-researcher.
It could be argued that this reference to the places of creative production is simply a visual ‘shorthand’ to represent ways of work-ing, and the recurrence of workplace images is something that practitioners learn from attending the presentations of one another, merely a ‘scene setting’ move. However, the challenge within cre-ative practice research of explicating knowledge from practice, much of which is tacit, suggests that the places of creative practice production might indeed merit attention for the development of creative practice research.
Do space and place determine actions?
The question as to whether, or to what extent, spaces can deter-mine action is of course a critical line of argument and positioning in architectural theory and practice. Attributing deterministic capabilities to the built environment was the basis for Modernist approaches to design and planning, what Heynen refers to as the understanding of ‘space of instrument’, the underlying belief by which new spatial forms are introduced to enact social projects.20 However, this spatial determinism has been largely discredited by the failure of many of such projects to achieve their intended pro-grams or effects. Outside of the design disciplines, spatial context has been conceptualized as having no decisive role in shaping these processes, though they may leave their mark upon space.21
Heynen proposes a third way, that of ‘space as stage’, as an integrative model for the previous seemingly diametrically opposed pair. The model of ‘space as stage’ brings together theoretical approaches which recognize both the shaping forces of the social
19 Examples were noted while attending the presentations of Norwegian archi-tect Siv Helene Stangeland, UK archiarchi-tects Deborah Saunt of DSDHA and Tom Holbrook of 5th Studio, Danish designer and academic Martin Tamke and Belgian architect and academic Jo Van Den Burghe at the Practice Research Symposia held at RMIT Europe, Barcelona on 28-30 November 2014, and PhD by Practice examination of James McAdam of London- and Moscow-based practice McAdam Architects, at ETSAB, Barcelona, 28 November 2014.
20 Hilde Heynen, ‘Space as Receptor, Instrument or Stage: Notes on the Inter-action Between Spatial and Social Constellations’, International Planning Studies, 18 (2013), 342–57.
21 (Heynen 2013)
[… It is] a routinized way in which bodies are moved, objects are handled, subjects are treated, things are described and the world is understood.15
We might see our actions – in making, designing, fabricating, inhabiting, buying, re-using… – as unique instances. Yet, just as they are connected through our own repetitions, within and across different projects for example, these actions are also connected across time and space to other versions of this particular ‘block’.
That is to say: wider projects of certain intentions, a body of kno-whow passed on through repetitions of the activity or through other means of representation (tacit or explicit knowledge).
As individuals we can ‘carry’ many different coordinated and unconnected practices, through learning and performing them.
This is emphatically not to suggest that our activity is strictly pre-determined by a wider social order. As Shove, Pantzar and Watson show, practices are continually changing; dying out, or coming into being as a result of changing meanings and beliefs, and access to material and economic resources.16 Also, the activities and skills of individuals, as practitioners of a panoply of different practices, vary. The way we enact practices is shaped by our cultural back-ground and tacit understandings of what is needed and accepted to act within certain fields. We may also develop unique capabilities of reading situations, applying bodily and mental knowhow, a “feel for the game” which distinguishes our practice.17
How creative practices take place
In considering how creative practices are performed in space, my interest was first triggered by witnessing the presentations of prac-titioner-researchers communicating, or exposing,18 their practice as research as part of the ADAPT-r network Practice Research Sym-posia, and at examinations leading to the award of RMIT PhD by Practice. One practitioner after another used an image of their studio, workspace or desk as a kind of symbol, to invoke a variety
15 (Reckwitz 2002, 249–50) 16 (Shove, Pantzar, and Watson 2012) 17 Bourdieu, p.66.
18 (Schwab 2014) [The term exposition is described by Schwab as a means by which an artistic object’s identity in terms of knowledge is communicated or shown. Practice is exposed as research through this activity of exposition, which may take place in the act of publication in a journal, or presentation at a conference, or in other forms. The exposition of the artistic work need not resemble the work itself, as it can be a process of transformation, and supplementation which allows a different identity (of the practice) to emerge.]
Chapter 2 Spaces of Creativity Claus Peder Pedersen, Siv Helene Stangeland and Anna M. Holder
your lecture in the middle of some art show with screaming kids and loud speakers spewing out techno music. The result is inescapable: if you are not thoroughly ‘ framed’ by other agencies brought silently on the scene, neither you nor your students can even concentrate for a minute on what is being
‘locally’ achieved. […] Locals are localized. Places are placed.
And to remain so, myriads of people, behind the doors, have to keep up the premises so that you can remain, you along with your students, safely ‘in it’.”23
Latour emphasises here that there is not a fixed set of social ties, nor a structure or set of structures determining our actions within the material world. Also, that face-to-face human interactions, local, and ‘in the moment’ can not be seen to be purely self-de-termining, free from the influence of other actors, other times, or places. Rather, all interactions are heterogeneous, assembled through human and material agencies, through actions performed long ago, and those in the now, and with implications for those in the future. ‘Society’ is a fragile and complex series of interactions, it is constantly performed: “built, repaired, fixed and, above all, taken care of.”24
Paying attention to places of creative practice
What are the implications for this understanding of place for creative practice? In the example of the lecture theatre, the material aspects of these spaces act as mediators, keeping out the noises of the wider world, directing students’ attention through the layout of the space. While the space and its components and furniture are not determining what can occur there, they are connecting the activities which take place to the intentions, work and care of those involved in designing, constructing, programming, keeping, cleaning etc. If we pay attention to the places of creative practice, we might discern the network of agencies enabling them, the array of moves supporting the establishment and continuity of activity, and the ways in which spaces, people and objects interact in the practices of creativity.
Yaneva’s ethnographic fieldwork in the office of Dutch architec-ture firm OMA in the 2000s gives insight into the different activ-ities of design and their spatial patterns and movements within an architect’s office.25 Viewed with the anthropologist’s gaze, design processes were revealed not as inspired acts of creative genius or
23 (Latour 2005, 195–96) 24 (Latour 2005, 204)
25 (Yaneva 2009a; Yaneva 2009b)
on the built environment, and the effects environment can have on influencing social phenomena:
“The difference with the first model — space as receptor — is that the agency of spatial parameters in producing and reproducing social reality is more fully recognized. The difference with the second model — space as instrument — is that the theatrical metaphor is far from deterministic, and that this thought model thus allows for a better understanding of the interplay between forces of domination and forces of resistance.”
This model, draws on the flat ontology of actor network the-ory, whereby non-human actants are understood to have agency, if not intentionality, and thus influence human action. Latour, a key theorist in the development of actor network theory, pays attention to place as an assemblage of material mediators and inter-mediaries within a local site. In Latour’s parlance, interinter-mediaries transport “meaning or force without transformation: defining its inputs is enough to define its outputs” while mediators “transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry.”22 In developing an understanding of the ways activities and practices maintain or disrupt social understandings, institutions and traditions, Latour brings into clear focus the role of all of the material elements of place in enabling or counteracting our intended actions. In particular he points to the asynchronous planning, making and using of spaces, furniture, materials assem-bled from other times and other places, as one way in which our expectations enable certain practices to continue.
Using the example of the lecture theatre, Latour highlights the expectations of the needs for acoustic separation, for a certain room layout, for materials which enable the intended use of that space to be performed time after time, and which have been thought out, prefigured and assembled by myriad workers whose agency is now carried by material and spatial elements:
“Fathom for one minute all that allows you to interact with your students without being interfered too much by the noise from the street or the crowds outside in the corridor waiting to be let in for another class. If you doubt the transporting power of all those humble mediators in making this a local place, open the doors and the windows and see if you can still teach anything. If you hesitate about this point, try to give
22 (Latour 2005, 39)
Chapter 2 Spaces of Creativity Claus Peder Pedersen, Siv Helene Stangeland and Anna M. Holder
things’, a set of ever-expanding connections.28
Beauregard, writing on the micro-politics of spatial or land-use planning as practice, draws attention to the array of places in which planning takes place in order to better understand whose voices are able to be heard within planning controversies and how planners can engage with diverse publics.29 Paying attention to the activities and discourse enacted within a private planning company’s offices, the offices of city and county planning departments, the spaces used for meetings with lawyers, consultants, a public focus group and public meetings, Beauregard notes that places, as contexts for communication, structure the types of discussions and their subject matter.30
In the following section I will pay attention to some of the array of places in which creative practice research is developed and exposed.
Places of creative practice research: workplaces, places of exposition and sites of intervention
Creative work places
The office or studio of the architect shapes creative processes firstly through the resources it affords. This can be in terms of the size and layout – the Euclidean spatial considerations – but also location and other actors who inhabit or have access to the space.
Workplace selection is as much contingent as planned, as economic constraints and the types of suitable space available often meaning that creative workspaces are located in areas which have lower rent as they are undesirable for other businesses or housing. (However, the location of creative workers in these areas is recognised as an established step on the path of gentrification, as amenities and services move in to serve the needs of the creative workers and contribute to change of use and rent increases and rising property values).31
In focussing on activities as they take place in the places of crea-tive practice, we can learn more about the particular practices and how these translate into creative practice research. Faulconbridge, in a study of architecture practices operating at the global scale, describes the architecture studio as a community of practice, and a
28 (Latour 2005, 196)
29 Robert Beauregard, ‘The Neglected Places of Practice’, Planning Theory &
Practice, 14 (2013), 8–19.
30 (Beauregard 2013, 13)
31 David Ley, ‘Artists, Aestheticisation and the Field of Gentrification’, Urban Studies, 40 (2003), 2527–44.
mechanistic problem-solving, but rather a back-and-forth of trial and error, material and spatial manipulations of models from past projects repurposed to address the problems of new schemes, and the moving of representations, drawings and materials around the office between designers. Designs are seen to be produced through
mechanistic problem-solving, but rather a back-and-forth of trial and error, material and spatial manipulations of models from past projects repurposed to address the problems of new schemes, and the moving of representations, drawings and materials around the office between designers. Designs are seen to be produced through