On Space and Human Observation (Over Word Count)

The nature of observation is, traditionally speaking, a passive action. As visual practitioners we aim to understand the nature of space and its inherent communicative qualities further than the average viewer – How does this corner relate to that? Where does light end and shadow begin? How can this be translated by my own hand? However, the assumption of the viewer is inherent to the act of viewing, and it is only with active criticality that we are able to separate ourselves from our previous notions of what it is to see. Perec, G (1974, p 50) summarises this best, stating ‘Nothing strikes you. You don’t know how to see’

            Active visual criticality is, in practice, a series of exercises that one must consistently remind themselves to engage with. The aforementioned Perec, G (1974) provides a guide, for this active form of observation in the form of Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. The reader is here asked to consider the nature of their most mundane and familiar surroundings – ‘The Street’ being the primary source of practical instruction during my own exercises in observation. Here, Perec asks us to consider both the physical and historical nature of our chosen areas – in my own practice, ‘The Good Mixer’, a pub built in the 1950s and billed as ‘a proper London boozer’. Observing, as Perec does his own Paris, one becomes aware of the inconvenient use of space, speaking to the necessity of constant reinvention of a social venue in a city like London. Today, regulars and tourists spill over to isolated on-street tables, gated from the commercial centre of Camden only by portable metal railing sponsored by the microbrewery of the month – a reminder of British romance with the al fresco night out. And yet, as Perec reminds us, ‘You still haven’t looked at anything, you’ve merely picked out what you’ve long ago picked out’ (p50). 

            It is necessary, in order to truthfully see such a place, to observe people. Where Perec advocates for objective recording of the human element of The Street – ‘People in a hurry. People going slowly. Parcels. Prudent people who’ve taken their macs.’ (p52) I find myself observing how they use the space. Here: a man using a windowsill as a cigarette holder. To his right: two women in short skirts huddling under a small canopy from the light drizzle. Across from the pub entrance: A figure with big hair and a bigger coat walking a small, viciously barking dog. And everywhere there is conversation. It overlaps and fills the endless outside air in a way so rarely seen in this city. There are old interactions and new, and this space has made them possible. As people leave, they go their separate ways, they take out phones and earbuds and cover themselves in scarves and gloves – the proximity of the place a seeming necessity to their continued conversation.

            These conversations became the focus of my visual response to these observations – so rare are they now in neutral, bright spaces, that they felt ephemeral enough to be a new way of seeing space itself. I am reminded of the Heideggerian definition for ‘Dasein’ as ‘a particular kind of being manifest in humans’ (APA Dictionary of Psychology, 2022). Dasein is inherently linked to spatiality, and the nature of spaces such as The Good Mixer, or any other ‘Equipmental space’, are a necessity in observing this most human way of being. Through observing the extremities of human emotion achieved within spaces such as this, we become aware of how, as subjective entities, space itself inherently holds no value – without the conversations I have at The Good Mixer, the people I meet, the feeling of human experience, there would be no value in my process of observation. It is only through Dasein that we achieve any emotion relating to observation and spatial critique at all. 

            Moving away from the phenomenological and towards the visual, we see this reflected in Izenour, S, Scott Brown, D, Venturi, R (1972) Learning from Las Vegas, a text that, through the analysis and critique of modernist architecture, celebrates the nature of the functional everyday. Venturi, R et al. argue that ‘the Strip includes; it includes at all levels, from the mixture of seemingly incongruous land uses to the mixture of seemingly incongruous advertising media… These show the vitality that may be achieved by an architecture of inclusion or, by contrast, the deadness that results from too great a preoccupation with tastefulness,’. 

             In theme, Learning from Las Vegas (1972) directly expands upon what I found in my own independent observations – the beauty and value of observing a site can be boiled down to the experiences we see happening there, the Dasein achieved by the experience of being, rather than analytic and numerical observations. The disorder of a site has no impact on the value it holds to its patrons. The Good Mixer may have an odd use of space, and an architectural philosophy only present in long lasting London businesses, however this is not what I took from the site. The value of my observations here were in the community surrounding this space – my observations, and subsequent designs, took recording of human interactions in one of the few places that today actively encourages them. 

            Learning from Las Vegas (1972) and Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (1974) ultimately ask us to consider the value of the ‘boring’. The value inherent in conventionality of experience, be that architectural or human, cannot be understated when observed closely. In recording, analysing, picking apart and recentring the value of interpersonal communication present at The Good Mixer, my visual investigations have asked not that I decide on any one route through which I can create design, but ask questions of how we, as people, move through the world. The experience of deep seeing and recording has opened the possibility of a deeply human method of recording – through conversation, experience and conscious being, we can only hope as designers that we begin to understand the act of observation as a critical and human practice, rooted in interaction and the decision to appreciate not only the grand and the visually brash, but the everyday and often overlooked portions of human experience that are so often forgotten without increased observation and the recording of lived experience as a critical practice.  

Izenour, S, Scott Brown, D, Venturi, R (1972) Learning from Las Vegas. Revised Edition. Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press 

Perec, G (1974) Species of Spaces and Other Pieces London: Penguin

APA Dictionary of Psychology (2022) Dasein Found online: https://dictionary.apa.org/dasein (Accessed 20th October 2022)