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All content in this area was uploaded by Liudmila Slivinskaya on Dec 06, 2023
Content may be subject to copyright.
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338 Facing Post-Socialist Urban Heritage
Using Photography to Approach Space and Place in
Mass Housing Estates
Liudmila SLIVINSKAYA
PhD student
TU Dortmund University
Department of Spatial Planning
August-Schmidt-Straße 10
44227 Dortmund
Germany
liudmila.slivinskaya@tu-dortmund.de
https://ram.raumplanung.tu-dortmund.de/team/liudmila-slivinskaya-msc/
ABSTRACT
The contribution reflects on the potential of photography as a research method to investigate
the spatial experience and perception of urban space in prefabricated mass housing estates. It
does so by drawing upon the discourse on space and place, which spans geography, urban
planning, social sciences, urban studies, and architecture. The notion of place allows capturing
how we establish our relations, create attachments, and conceive and project meanings onto
space. Often the place also serves as a remedy against dreadful monotonous urban conditions,
of which prefabricated mass housing is often accused. Mass housing appears then as an
ambiguous ground in search of a place. On the one hand, it is portrayed as a placeless
anonymous site lacking in identity and human scale. On the other hand, no less often it stands
for sites of nostalgia, memories, symbolic meanings and heritage of failed modernist promise,
making them places with very strong character. No less ambiguous is the nature of space in
housing estates, as from being conceived as separated and programmed under functional
imperatives, it often comes to life as a non-discrete void. Photography opens up important ways
to capture such ambiguities of space and place in mass housing estates, as it shares two
fundamental aspects with spatial experience therein. The act of framing photographic space
could approximate the process by which we conceive of certain spaces as places while
disregarding the rest, how we differentiate space when it has no affordances, distinct features
or clear physical borders to do so. Further, photography could capture atmospheres and convey
a sense of being in, or portraying places in such a way as to open an insight into the perceived
dimension of it. The reflection will be grounded on a case study of Marzahn housing estate
(Berlin), as a side project accompanying PhD project focused on space and place in housing
estates.
KEYWORDS
Space, Place, Photography, Housing Estate
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1. Introduction
Ubiquitousness and unrestrained proliferation of photographic images nowadays
become a commonplace statement. Photography appears in many capacities: as a
practice and occupation, as an art medium, as an aid to preserve personal memories,
and many more. Due to its ubiquitousness the scope of its uses could hardly be
contained. Photography has also pervaded scientific discourse and has been
integrated as a research method into a wide range of disciplines, including social
sciences [Heng, 2016] and geography [Crang, 2010]. On the one hand, photography-
based methods such as photovoice, photo-diaries, photo-elicitation interviews, and
many more, have yielded new ways of obtaining knowledge within the above
disciplines, including on place [see for ex. Bijoux and Myers, 2006; Beckley et al. 2007;
Briggs et al. 2014]. On the other hand, it remains undertheorized as compared to the
extent it’s been employed, which leads to underutilization of its potential and hinders
its reliability in the research context [Langmann and Pick, 2018].
This paper aims to contribute to methodological discussion around the use of
photography in the interdisciplinary context revolving around space and place. The
terms ‘space’ and ‘place’ refer us to spatial disciplines, such as geography and
planning. In such a disciplinary context, the debate around those two terms revolves
around how we conceptualise space and place, and what epistemological implications
it brings with it. Space, as rightfully stated by N. Thrift, “is not a common sense external
background to human and social action” [Thrift, 2003], but a manifold concept that
requires rigorous theoretical attention. Among numerous schools of thought, which
problematize space from different perspectives [Massey, 2013; Lefebvre, 1991;
Harvey, 1993; Hillier and Hanson, 1989], a very broad perspective could be
distinguished as approaching space through the concept of place. Such a perspective
is rooted in human geography [Tuan, 1979; Cresswell, 2014], and demarcates an
abstract geometrical notion of space from a ‘lived’ human space as perceived,
experienced, and endowed with meanings, defining the latter as ‘a place’ in the most
general sense [Cresswell, 2004]. Space and place are also addressed within
architecture and urban design domains [Hillier, 2005]. Despite the terminological
inconsistency, the interchangeable use of the two terms, and even addition of new
ones [Peterson, Littenberg et al., 2020], it still resonates broadly with the above
distinction between an abstract geometrical view of space and a more human-oriented
‘platial’ view of space.
The above terms, however, do not entail narrow and strict disciplinary boundaries
of spatial disciplines, as ‘spatial agendas' have entered nearly all social, urban, and
even media studies domains [Warf and Arias (Eds.), 2008]. Respectively, space and
place also feature prominently in those discourses as human, social, and even digital
phenomena, thus enriching their ‘spatial’ disciplinary counterpart readings a great deal.
Another field where the topic of ‘place’ is currently on the upswing is GIScience
[Wagner et al., 2020; Purves et al., 2019]. Further, the increasing focus on place opens
new ways of conceptualization and representation of platial information while building
on advances in digitalization of spatial disciplines [Mocnik, 2022]. This allows for novel
types of concepts (e.g., platial rhythm [Romm, 2023]), forms of inquiry (e.g., integrating
place and urban morphology [Slivinskaya and Westerholt, 2022]), bridging qualitative
and quantitative domains (e.g., in terms of statistical spatial analysis, [Westerholt,
2019]), and reflections on the role of technology for the spatial sciences (e.g., regarding
immersive technologies [Klippel, 2020]).
The scope of this contribution will address the challenge of approaching space
and place in particular urban settings of prefabricated mass housing employing
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340 Facing Post-Socialist Urban Heritage
photography. In doing so, the paper will proceed as follows. First, it will outline the
approach to space and place as produced, constituted and practised through actions,
activities and processes that feed into spatial relations. Second, one particular parallel
will be drawn, bringing together photography as an act of spatializing and framing with
the way how we conceive places in urban settings, arguing on potential of such
integration for exploring spatial composition of housing estate through a place lens.
2. Making Space and Place
Space and place could be conceptualised as spatial and social praxis performed
and re-enacted by multitudes of actors and their actions [Thrift, 2000]. The
performative nature of space, it is argued from such a perspective, requires a non-
representational approach to it, since all representational approaches would effectively
substitute actual lived phenomena and shift the research focus to abstracted reflection
[ibid]. Place in such a view comes to life through practice, and could not be captured
beyond it without losing its essential nature. It is constituted by human actions and us
as active spatial agents, who by re-enacting or performing our day-to-day routines in
space, constantly create and recreate places in certain permanent or temporary
settings. ‘Practised’ places are given to us through our direct experience, thus the
performative approach enters into the dialogue with the phenomenological approach
to place [Buttimer and Seamon, 2015].
Space as a product of social activity on a larger scale is conceptualised
prominently by the critical geography school [Dorsch, 2013], in which authors contest
‘reification of space’, foregrounding practices and processes (such as social,
economic, institutional, etc.) that spans from global down to local scales and effectively
comprise the actual substance of space. Within this discourse, space is favoured or
even takes precedence over place [ibid]. However, overcoming this terminological
discontinuity, many of its conceptual premises open important insights into ‘lived’
spatiality imbued with social meaning (as opposed to the abstract notion of space),
whether it is termed ‘space’ or ‘place’. Another critical spatial thinker, Michel de
Certeau, takes the most local-scale individual spatial routines and actions as a ground
level to theorise social and spatial realms as rooted in praxis. De Certeau defines
space as “a practised place” [De Certeau, 1985], making a distinction between place
as an established ‘proper’ order, or compositional arrangements of static things in
locations, and space as what comes out when we act on it in time [ibid]. De Certeau
too subverts the terms ‘space’ and ‘place’. Reversing it, one finds that de Certeau’s
‘place’ as an abstract imposed order corresponds to the abstract instrumental notion
of space as planned and organised, while his ‘space’ corresponds to lived, reenacted,
and experienced spatiality, which we refer to here as ‘place’ (in a human geographical
vein).
De Certeau’s reading opens an insightful perspective if we are looking into ways
to conceptualise our relations with material settings of places and the built
environment. There, the opposition of strategies and tactics [De Certeau, 2013] gives
us an instrument to unveil our ways of acting on space beyond direct physical actions
such as design or material changes. In De Certeau’s terms, strategies impose spatial
order by institutionalised means, while tactics realise our individual agency to act on
space, often against the totalizing ‘proper’ spatial order. This distinction between space
and place also runs across modes of representation available for each, which de
Certeau marks as ‘map’ and ‘route’ [ibid]. Whereas map embodies a static flat
representation, substituting non-traceable acts for trajectories, route, which is a
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narrative of our movement in space, does better justice to representing space (which,
again casting aside terminological opposition, we refer here as place in its human
geographical understanding).
We make places by not only routine actions and daily activities that happen to be
in certain settings and locations. The very creation of place is also an act of our agency
on space. Such agency could also be read along the lines drawn by De Certeau,
coupling it with the conceptual framework borrowed from Martina Löw’s work on the
sociology of space [Löw, 2016]. Drawing parallels with De Certeau’s distinction of
strategies and tactics by types of agency towards space (institutional vs. individual),
Löw also distinguishes two fundamentally different processes of space constitution.
Those are ‘spacing’ as the collective institutional practice of ordering physical things in
space, and ‘synthesis’ as an individual act of conceiving them in their unity. The
process of spacing as defined by Löw includes ‘erecting, deploying or positioning social
goods, people and their ensembles’ [ibid.]. However, this alone does not suffice, as an
operation of synthesis is required for the constitution of space. By synthesis, ‘goods
and people are amalgamated to spaces by way of processes of perception,
imagination and memory’. [ibid]. Those are acts of a different nature than the physical
arrangement of things in their spatial order. As such, they could not be directly
projected outside by means of visible direct traces left in the spatial realm. Then, in De
Certeau’s terms, what kind of ‘route’ could we trace for such actions in order to access
the tacit knowledge that goes into such a process of synthesis?
Photography in its two capacities, those of a representation and an act, enters
into a conceptual dialogue with the outlined considerations. Photographic means of
inquiry might be employed in its representational capacity of how we act upon space
in a fruitful way. Such is for example a study conducted in the context of domestic
space in the high-density environment of Hong Kong housing estates [Rooney, N.,
1997], which examined how people took pictures of their homes. As such, the study
focused specifically on the representation of domestic space, thus staying in line with
the representational nature of photography as a medium. However, drawing upon
insights from a performative approach to place, we might attempt to approximate the
act of synthesis that goes into creation of a place. This could be attempted through
‘narrating the route’ in De Certeau’s words, which in our case would mean tracing the
trajectory of how a place is framed as such by us in its spatial extent.
3. Towards a Method
The suggested methodology for photography-based inquiry into our relations with
spaces of mass housing estates is proposed to be built upon the analysis of the
process of taking pictures by the residents. This brings the method closer to walking
interviews, where residents are asked to take pictures on the site. Photography has
been widely used in this capacity, including in housing estates in particular [Klaniczay,
2021], which offers a rich source to draw upon. The contribution of the suggested
method lies in proposing a distinct mode of using photography and interpreting the
resulting outcomes.
In particular, photography is proposed to be employed to mediate the process of
conceiving space of housing estates as meaningful and contained within certain areas.
Composing photographic space by framing the shot can be read as doing exactly that.
Instead of inquiring about conceiving space in an abstract way, the residents are asked
to tell about the concrete action of taking a picture of a particular area. This frames the
conversation about space by anchoring it to the subject matter that might seem less
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342 Facing Post-Socialist Urban Heritage
detached. Whereas we form places by meaningful engagement with our everyday
environment, we rarely do it in an intentional and conceptually explicit way, thinking in
terms of theoretical discourse around place. It then requires a certain amount of
abstracted reflection, which might not be necessarily easily and readily possible for
participants, or would require extra time and effort. Part of the researcher’s job in
designing methods which involve communication with residents is to stimulate the
exchange and facilitate the engagement of people in ways that are inviting and almost
intuitive to follow, not confusing and loaded with conceptual terms. Compare asking
the residents “Tell me what area is included in your frame and why?” instead of “How
do you conceive of space here?” In this way pictures lend themselves for structuring
the conversation around a concrete and familiar action, while opening up an access to
gain insights into deeper mechanisms that underlie our relations with space.
Interpreting the photographs taken by the residents for the above purpose then
relies less on visual semiotics and other visual theories which might be evoked for
analysing visual information contained in the picture. Instead, it requires analyzing the
narratives of residents as they reflect on their own actions of taking particular pictures,
bringing it closer to text-based and interview-based qualitative methods. In De
Certeau’s terms, pictures serve us as an instrument of ‘narrating the route’ by helping
us to articulate how we conceive of space. The researcher collects pictures as
secondary artefacts, but the primary data source for the inquiry about place stemming
from the suggested method comes from reflecting on the very process of taking those
pictures. This reflection is steered away from general considerations, aesthetic
qualities or properties of particular objects included or excluded from a picture. The
main objective is to record the process of constructing the photographic space by
means of a frame made by the residents in order to understand better how they
approach this task. It is assumed that this task bears affinity to the way we make sense
out of our surroundings by synthesis in Martina Löw’s terms.
Given the above, this method could not be applied to interpret a vast body of
work, including many excellent photographic projects, which have as their subject
housing estates, such as for example a series of pictures portraying interiors of typical
prefabricated apartments in Eastern Germany by Susanne Hopf and Natalja Meier,
who juxtapose the diverse personalities expressed through home environment and
standardized monotonous architecture which hosts it [Hopf and Meier, 2004].
Photographic projects contribute to unveiling manifold facets of housing estates
as places, at times in beautifully sensitive and insightful manner, which cast housing
estates in a different light from common preconceptions, portraying them as warm,
human, at times nostalgic sites imbued with utopian promises of better life for all, as
for example greyscale pictures of Panelaks (prefabs in Czech) by Jaromír Čejky [Čejky
2020].
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Image credit: Jaromír Čejky
The pictures which feature in these works are ruled by conventions of visual
composition, symmetry, use of geometrical patterns, references to pictorial art,
capturing ‘a decisive moment’ and other artistic tropes, as they are aimed at producing
visually compelling images with artistic message. Repetitive landscape of
prefabricated facades is an example of one of iconic photographic themes and
particular aesthetics of housing estates.
Image credit: Zupagrafika
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344 Facing Post-Socialist Urban Heritage
Image credit: Michael Wolf
In contrast, pictures to be taken for the suggested method are not intended to be
governed by aesthetic or artistic conventions. They look simple and unremarkable in
terms of their composition, as they depict everyday sites of housing estates with ‘a
mundane eye’. Their value lies beyond appearance in their making.
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Image credit: Author
4. Framing Housing Estates with Photography
Mass housing estate [Urban, 2021] is a residential typology with a certain image
(not always fair and unbiased) of hardly the most place-friendly environment [Coleman
et al., 1985]. Conceived within the functional planning paradigm, it inherits its complex
legacy, including mono-functionality, a ‘bird-eye’ approach to spatial composition,
which tends to dominate over human scale perspective, and sparse connectivity, which
challenges easy navigation and wayfinding [Urban, 2021]. Housing estates arguably
don’t lend themselves easily to be conceived in a coherent way as a distinct
environment inviting feeling of attachment and belonging (although in great part this is
also part of the public image for such sites, which often meet a counter-narrative from
long-term residents). They often appear as monotonous, repetitive, and
undistinguishable spaces with a lack of affordances to anchor our perception. Yet,
residents of housing estates still form their places in such conditions. Unveiling how
they do so would require not only a tailored methodological approach, but also a certain
research sensibility, which would navigate the established preconceptions and
contested image of housing estates, and photography can be employed towards these
ends.
Conceiving a place in housing estates through an act of synthesis in Löw’s terms
could not be traced in the same way as, for example, natural movement could be
recorded, or place-ballet could be observed. As argued by De Certeau, the way we act
in space (including conceiving a place in its spatial extent) lends itself to be captured
by narrating it as a route, rather than by means of an abstract flat representation. A
photographic act can be utilised as an instrument for such narration, unveiling how we
perceive the spatial extent of places. It is argued that photography is an act of
spatializing [Elkins, J. ed., 2013]. Taking a picture means bringing out the spatial
dimension of captured things in their relations. Things and space around them are
taking shape in relation to each other, and photographic space created by the picture
exposes such relations. Further, the act of photography is always an act of framing,
that is, of the configuration of objects (in space) within the frame [ibid]. A photographic
frame thus acts as a tool, a border, an invisible container to visibly delineate a portion
of space and enclose it. Photography taken as an act of framing can open an outlet to
trace an otherwise untraceable action of synthesis in Löw’s terms. Here we can
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346 Facing Post-Socialist Urban Heritage
conceive conceptual affinity between the two actions: an act of framing the
photographic space of an image and the act of framing a spatial unit to perceive it as
a distinct and meaningful place. Consciously reflecting on how to frame a picture of
particular spatial settings that we consider meaningful for us as a place, we can bring
to light how we perceive those. It might feel overly abstract to engage in direct reflection
on our perceptions of space in general, and photography of particular spatial settings,
mediating it, gives us a way to be less abstract about it.
Housing estates with their characteristic built and spatial form can be a fruitful
ground to draw upon the above affinity. In housing estates, we are often confronted
with ‘confused spaces' in the terminology of A.Coleman [Coleman et al., 1985], which
lack defined and clear boundaries. Ambiguous and fuzzy place boundaries is one of
challenges yet to be resolved towards better formalisation of place, including
identifying the spatial extent of a place.
Another signature feature of housing estates is a sparse verticality of high-rise
apartment blocks, and a specific type of seeing-through skyline composed by tower-
and-slab arrangements. Compositions of housing estates are a curious and
picturesque subject to observe on morphological plans, and often they look quite
distinct and even iconic (e.g. Bijlmermeer, NL). However, it is rarely trickled down to a
human-scale environment, which despite top-down compositional variations, often
appears unremarkable and anonymous at the ground level. This creates distinct
visibility conditions in housing estates, and visibility is yet another significant feature
that is being studied extensively in connection with the perception of space [Varoudis
and Psarra, 2014]. It underlies many approaches to space modelling (e.g. Space
Syntax) which are concerned with the perceived notion of space and its workings from
a human perspective. Photography as a visual method naturally associates with
visibility studies, as it lends itself to recording vistas, tracing the sight and capturing
open space where the camera lens can reach. However, it is argued that photography
might also bring a strong added value if we are interested in stepping beyond the
perception of space in general to the realm of place. Creation of place involves our
conscious engagement with space as expressed by Löw’s approach. We are
selectively drawing into our notion of place some things and leaving out others. Similar
selectivity is involved in the act of framing photographic space.
Features of the built environment, which we might perceive or ignore, constitute
another relevant topic, to which the suggested use of photographic image might also
contribute. Reading photographic image not in its representational capacity (e.g. as
simply depicting buildings), but retaining the focus on the act of framing and
spatializing, we might unveil inner spatiality mediated by the built form that made its
way into a frame - and as argued here - into our perceived place.
Finally, one more link will be highlighted before wrapping up the argument for
using photography as a means to approximate space and place in housing estates.
This link is built on another special feature that might be attributed to a photographic
frame, which resonates with the nature of a place. It concerns the ambiguous ability of
a photographic image to cut space while retaining a certain power to project or to
imagine the continuum of a captured site beyond what is cut by frame. The evocative
nature of a photographic frame makes us aware not only of what is inside but what is
out, albeit in a very ambiguous manner. “We cannot draw a neat boundary around
images” [Langmann and Pick,2018] in the same way as we hardly could draw a neat
boundary around any place. Yet, frame, or boundary, is of essence to both
photography and place. “The inherent trait of a place is its differentiating nature, that
is, it’s recognized by means of being different from another place: there is never merely
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one place anywhere; or the minimum number strictly speaking is two” [Casey, 2013].
In the case of housing estates, a framed shot might convey a very characteristic feature
of its appearance which might impede our ability to form places: an impression of
endless monotonous succession of repetitive blocks, variation without difference,
which extends beyond the frame.
5. Conclusions
“Photographs are not neutral evidence and contain subjective meaning instilled
in their make and use; therefore, a photograph is a subjective composition of
observation, production, reproduction and display” [Rose, 2000 as quoted in
Langmann and Pick, 2018]. Employing and interpreting photography in its capacity of
a subjective act of composition, we can gain insights into how we approach spatial
settings of places. Reading the photographic act of framing in the light of Michel de
Certeau’s notion of the route for what M. Löw terms as the process of synthesis, we
can unveil an otherwise invisible mechanism that sustains our very ability to perceive
places as distinct spatial entities.
Performative and embodied nature of place escapes visual representations.
Photography in representational capacity has also been criticized for obscuring the
totality of embodied experience in favor of visual aesthetic [Pallasmaa 2012], and even
accused of partaking in failure of modern architecture (of which housing estates often
named as emblematic) to create inviting and engaging places of human scale [Rosa
1998]. Employing photography to approach place needs to be reflective of these
conceptual incongruences, and using it in a performative way could be a step towards
such reflection. Putting aside visual and artistic qualities of pictures in favor of partaking
in a photographic act itself could be seen as more accommodating to the nature of
place.
It is to be acknowledged that the parallel drawn here between the act of framing
and perceiving spatial settings of a place does not claim to mirror the two acts in an
accurate and clear-cut manner, nor the identical nature of the two. It is sustained on a
high conceptual level of abstraction bordering metaphorical analogy and therefore
should be interpreted as such, making proper concessions to any obtained insights.
Yet, recognizing such conceptual origins of the approach, it promises to yield valuable
insights for the nature of place in housing estates, not in the least because of retaining
sensibility to perceptions and inner workings of mind that reside in such rich and deep
concept as place, which are not easily captured on record in a precise and objective
manner.
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348 Facing Post-Socialist Urban Heritage
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