*The famous quote from, Animal Farm by George Orwell
"Social space is a social product……the space thus produced also serves as a tool of thought and action….in addition to being a means of production it also a means of control, and hence of domination, of power."(1)
Lefbve argued that 'social space is produce and reproduced in connection with the forces of production (and with the relations of production).' These ' forces…are not taking over a pre-existing, empty or neutral space, or a space determined soley by geography, climate, anthropology…' (2).
Social space includes: 1)lived spatial practice 2)conceived representations of space and 3) perceived representational spaces. Dialogues and contradictions exist in nodes and intersections across different spheres of life: culture and nature, abstraction and reality, past and future, form and inform, the abstract and real.
He acknowledged the overriding predominance and power of capitalism in the west and he compared this with the production of 'abstract space'. Amidst all the cacophony that is produced in many governments to curb or not to curb spending to reduce the financial recession, one cannot help but be reminded that capitalism is alive and kicking and there is no way back. This is because with the ' contract that we signed ' with the government to administer the countries economies through democratic elections, we have to give up our own personal space and give in to the abstract space - obliged to live in obedience. This is also the space whereby both bureaucracy and the attendant instruments that felicitate the running of the country, which includes ownership of the means of production by private corporation, individuals and state, produce fragmentation, homogeneity and hierarchical organisation to divide and conquer society.
What I appreciate through his writings is that while capitalism has brought the disparate world communities together through the forces of globalisation(another abstract space), improve the overall living standards of many countries while pulling not a few out of poverty, like so many people I began to feel a lack of individuality and sense of personal identity. We have become more similar (consumer's society) rather than different (tribal festival) through our daily diet of American culture (coke, Mcdonald's, Friends, Lost, Hollywood movies, Apple), standardization (supermarket-packaged products, a familiar line of car brands, )and alienation (urban sprawl is a worlwide phenomena not just American).
In fact, modernity as we know it and to which the term 'progress' is associated, left very much to be desired. Progress mirrrors the quest for great happiness and essence of life (was die Welt im Innersten zusammenhalt) pursued by Faust. Architects, like Faust, are constantly in dilemma whether to promote independent thought ,integrity, idealism, sustainability and ethics to advance their career though they might be poor first for a long period. This is a slower but satisfying path(to those who can afford it) through which the end may be murky and in the midst of an economic downturn, would be difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Indeed for those who succeeded to promote a self-aggrandized and socially detached form of manifesto which in itself conceived in abstraction (Frank Llyod Wright and Corbusier are examples), tragedy has become a too common finale.
Of course in order for many to survive, the alternative (driven mainly by the monetary factor) is to work and submit their creative independence to big corporate offices and give what is demanded from them from hordes of Mephistopheles in the form of unscrupulous developers and unethical clients. Thus capitalism dictates that we follow a certain invisible instruction towards progress rather than bucking the trend Previewand be a rebel without a cause. To this end, many cities look like clones and typologies of one unique environment does not differ from another. Urbanisation as we know it has obliterated local culture, history, and natural landscape as spaces of modernity are internationalised, divided into grids of private property, market and labour.
(1)& (2) Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 26 & p.17
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