Architecture in Everyday Life Author(s): Dell Upton Source: New Literary History, Vol. 33, No.

4, Everyday Life (Autumn, 2002), pp. 707-723 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057752 . Accessed: 14/08/2013 09:22
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Architecture

in Everyday Life

Dell Upton
FOR AN ENTERPRISE THAT EXALTS THE CONCRETE, the of

Study

its object. The everyday vague everyday Or it is "a set of activities."1 comprises "seemingly unimportant functions which connect and join together systems that might appear to is leftover, which falls outside of or runs be distinct."2 Or it is that which to the scrutiny of power or officialdom. counter It is an Other of some about sort, better defined by what it is not than by what it is. same vagueness the nature of everyday The about
architecture. after one has For one architect, all "The specialized eliminated everyday activities."3 is that which According

life is remarkably

life plagues
remains to an

such defined and physically other, everyday space lies "in between definable realms as the home, the workplace, and the institution, [it] is the connective tissue that binds everyday lives together."4 But what is this can we find it? How do we recognize connective tissue? Where it? Of what is itmade? concrete is inescapably Architecture and it forms the fabric and the to of life. setting everyday Consequently, approach everyday life through
architecture?architecture est sense to encompass with the a entire lower-case material a, understood world (or in "cultural its broad land

to be forced to pin down, scape") that people make and think?is the precise ways ways too often lacking in theories of the quotidian, which everyday life is experienced and the specifics of its relationships
other aspects of life and landscape. So architecture's materiality makes

in in to
it

a natural conduit to the specificity of everyday life. Over the last decade, theories of everyday life have contemporary a to A?the realm infiltrate Architecture with of high begun capital one corner of the and that forms small of world design theory larger and homog commodification increasingly pervasive and the extreme life and landscape social stratification seem poised to devastate both the cultural associated with globalization and the architectural As the architect Steven landscape profession. Harris noted, "The consideration of everyday life as a critical political enization of
construct represents an attempt to suggest an architecture resistant to

architecture.

The

this commodification/consumption come to dominate contemporary

New Literary History, 2002, 33: 707-723

a paradigm that has paradigm, architectural (EA 3). practice"

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708
Architectural

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

of Henri

of everyday life is closely allied to the work exploration the theory of the everyday squarely in Lefebvre, who planted architecture's bailiwick. furnish clothing, "Everyday life is sustenance,
ing, homes, neighbourhoods, environment. . . .Call it material culture if

the issue," he wrote {EL 21). In particular, you like, but do not confuse his fascination with the spatial nature of social life resonated with a long established of a claim that space should be the defining element Thus architecture's of modern Architecture.5 Lefebvre follow discovery of The Production of Space (1991) publication ing the English-language a to after of the postmodern rehabilitate space quarter-century helped
elevation of representation and language over space and materiality.6

his interest in space and the everyday as part of his to examine the meaning of modernity, and modernity? lifelong project to be modern, what a modern Architecture what itmeans might be?is Lefebvre framed
also In a central current strain in twentieth-century history, theory, architectural and practice, discourse. then, discussion architectural

of architecture and the everyday takes place at the intersection of life human and of Architecture?of the study of the material settings concerns In the of this of professional first the narrower part design. some ways that theories of the everyday have been essay I will examine of used in the study and making of upon goals and practices architecture. The idea of the everyday has pushed architectural thought new directions, in important but those directions have been limited in the original theories and by misreadings both by weaknesses prompted In of Architecture. and preoccupations by the intellectual history to reflect
theories of the everyday have reinforced an Architectural

particular,

and hierarchical habit of dichotomous thinking about the have fit their architectural writers addition, thinking about Architectural into the discourse model that has dominated of the I In second the essay will present an part thirty years. these of thinking about the everyday that transcends of landscape and by grounding drawing on the materiality in bodily practice.

landscape. everyday

theory alternate way problems everyday

In life for

by life

I
critics or who the works, actions,

Unlike,

say,

literary

sociologists,

study

and values
everyday

of other
life. This

people
means

at a distance,
that architects

builders
must

intervene
examine

directly
their own

in

as well as those of the people professional practices and social identities This of build. habit for whom self-scrutiny long antedated Architec they so called. Since the beginnings of in the everyday, tural interest

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ARCHITECTURE

IN EVERYDAY

LIFE

709
two centuries ago, architects

European-American

professionalization

that term to include landscape architects and urban design (expanding have themselves from builders and clients ers) struggled to differentiate and to establish a clear social identity that would give them the cultural authority
the

to dominate
They

the building
have failed.

market

and control

the shaping
clients,

of

landscape.

Many

nonarchitects?builders,

to claim some authoritative critics?continue of the field and knowledge to grant architects decline the absolute authority they seek. Many of the architects in the United first professional States worked for speculative
builders, turning out standardized work for row-house speculative plans.7 and storefront turning contemporary Many standardized tract-house architects and builders, plans. out

office-building

tell us that professionalization that one Sociologists always requires define and control a unique body of expertise that is acknowledged by outsiders.8 As Lefebvre put it, "Architects have a trade. They raise the question of architecture's 'specificity' because they want to establish that to claim trade's that legitimacy. Some of them then draw the conclusion
there are such things as 'architectural space' and 'architectural produc

tion'

(specific,

of course). Whereupon
discourse turns on a set of

they close
dichotomies

their case"
between

{PS 104).
Architec

Architectural

ture and its lesser Other meant to distinguish architects' work from the routinized tastes spatial schemes, standardized imagery, and hackneyed of non-professionals. The fundamental distinction between Architecture and "mere building" was first voiced in the nineteenth century and
encapsulated bicycle ture."9 demic" or modern popular works shed, Other or "art" design aesthetics, are credited in Nikolaus "a Pevsner's and memorable Cathedral, building," binaries derive architecture practices art versus with a Lincoln from versus versus craft. self-conscious a between comparison "a of architec piece one: or "aca "high" progressive versus elite designed and

this original vernacular architecture, traditional In every case, or folk

ones,

sophistication,

professionally a

subtlety,

depth quently
constitute

that are defined

lacking by what

in other kinds of building, which are not. they Professionally designed

landmarks in a vast expanse of the

are

conse

structures
ordinary.

extraordinary

The
lemicists of the

dichotomy
sometimes uncorrupted,

has not
praised unaffected,

always favored
the

Architecture.
Other

Modernist
as an

po

non-professional even spontaneous world of

creativity design.

exemplar in the lost For ex

over-refined,

over-sophisticated

professional

ample, Rudofsky's Architecture without Architects, the record of an at New York's Museum exhibition mounted of Modern Art in 1964, an eclectic of of architec array presented photographs "non-pedigreed" ture as evidence of the intuitive genius of builders who sought only to accommodate the values and everyday lives of their "primitive" or Bernard

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710
"traditional" communities in a direct manner.

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

The

influential

critic

Reyner
professional

Banham

expected

Rudofsky's

book

to provoke

"a real orgy of

self-abasement."10

the architects A few years after Architecture without Architects appeared, and Denise Scott Brown held the architectural Robert Venturi profes
sion up to another standard, for that short?found of the popular along architecture its automobile of strips capitalist America?"Pop"

in a suburbs. They argued that architects working to in of be the lower needed commercial "reality" grounded society American aesthetic values. Close middle-class study of the existing for today which are more offer "formal vocabularies landscape might more tolerant of the untidinesses relevant to people's diverse needs and and in its mass-built of urban Modern
was "a way

life than the architecture."11

of being

formal orders of latter-day 'rationalist,' Cartesian To be in touch with authentic popular values
for an architect."12 Now the Other had

revolutionary

moved
tract

from
houses

the distant
that surrounded

shores

of Africa
architects'

and
own

the Mediterranean
home towns.

to the Lefebvre,

Everyday-life
for and example, the "Modern."

theory
made an He

is permeated
elemental also contrasted

with
distinction the

congruent
between alienated,

binaries.
the

"Quotidian" "terror colonized,

to the unalienated, natural life of life of modernity ized" everyday societies as well as to his highly and Mesoamerican ancient European So of the preindustrial romanticized peasantry. European portrait to bifurcation of the endorse longstanding everyday theory appeared the British In and the Architecture Architectural Everyday, categories. the professional and Jeremy Till describe architects Sarah Wigglesworth and self-referential the "self-contained world as "an island" defined by
languages tecture's of island architecture." is the everyday Surrounding mainland, the an rarefied important terrain and of Archi necessary

a different territory.13 But theories of point for architects, but architectural life also thought a step beyond Architec pushed everyday di modern/traditional, architecture, ture/vernacular high-style/folk to the in demonstrating that professional chotomies belong designers as well as to the elite world of Architecture. For earlier everyday world reference
generations, meant lands the to traditional, be surveyed, the vernacular, and the catalogued, analyzed, were popular and mined exotic rather

in our "the agony emphasized in famous the firm's her of formulation, popular acceptance pop":14 In the end, she landscape was "almost [but only almost] all right" {LV6). than inhabited. Denise Scott Brown
wrote, use reason; "we these but are other for a part of a high art, as reason not others as well. a folk have or traditions, social popular before art, us, is a tradition. for social an We artistic for

. . . There

need

architectural

high

art to learn from and relate

to folk and pop

traditions

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ARCHITECTURE

IN EVERYDAY

LIFE

711
in the city" {PO 37). is that Architecture
everyday world, not

if it is to serve its real clients and do no further harm The idea of the everyday forces us to acknowledge
part of architecture, that designers are a part of the

explorers
to cities. Nevertheless,

from a more

civilized
theories

society or detached
have yet to

doers for clients

reveal to architects

and
a

everyday

because satisfactory way to inhabit the everyday world professionally in the theory while overlooking the ways architects focus on the dualities that allows the categories blur. Despite a certain looseness of exposition one to read the everyday as an Other?as is outside, that that which which is omitted
of the in

or escapes
asserts everyday Lefebvre's and

from

the regimentation
and are They sides "two

of

the modern
incom and more

world?Lefebvre pleteness connected,

the mutual

dependence the modern.

individual simultaneous of a reality

formulation,

{EL 24-25). amazing than fiction: the society of which we are members" on which way Which was primary and which was secondary depended
you turned the single, entwined ball: each "responds and corresponds"

lines is to that blurs the categorical of of defining the everyday precisely, acts it what through particular processes to define the everyday more precisely, the undifferentiated and negative realm Like the those and vernacular, pop. occupied by tradition, previous is something that accuses Architecture the everyday landscape Others,
of most its failings. eloquent For architect advocates Margaret of the Crawford, everyday, one "Everyday of the space earliest stands and in

to the other {EL 24-25). To insist on a complementarity the problem raise once more its what saying qualities are, and and is acted upon. By failing architectural writers leave it in

contrast cities"
Steven

underused

carefully planned, officially designated, in most American spaces of public use that can be found One brims the other is a failure. For with (IEU 9). possibility,
"It is anonymous, its anonymity derived from its undated

to

the

and

often

Harris,

and apparently
The word Architectural pression of

insignificant
dichotomy,

quality"
for

(EA 3).
it evokes another Architecture rote processes of time-honored as the ex

anonymous

is critical, between creative minds

name-brand and the

discrete

unnamed

vernacular
communal

or
rather

traditional
than

builders

guided
values. The

as well
everyday,

as constrained
like the vernacu

by

individual

is outside the purview of "specialized lar, is that which activities," That is both its virtue and its failing. It cannot including Architecture. even be encompassed of representation: the media by professional Friedmann lamented "the of authen real difficulties very planner John the city of everyday life. . . .The codified tically representing languages
of maps and statistics are, in the event, quite useless. For meanings are

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712
formed life. But
with

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

and are shared in the small talk of everyday through experience and engineers."15 As this talk carries little weight with planners
and Scott Brown's pop aesthetes, the makers and users of

Venturi

the everyday
professional

landscape
categories.

live a

life that

is simply

too

large

for petty

This way of thinking study of the everyday of the man proletariat,

that Lefebvre feared the lapses into the populism life might the life of the become, "magnifying in the street?of how to enjoy who knew people

themselves, how to get involved, take risks, talk about what they felt and nature of the Quotidian the complementary did" {EL 37). For Lefebvre mean and the Modern that neither power or sphere monopolized or a innovation. life is both colonized banality Everyday powerlessness,
setting of oppression, banality, routine, passivity, and unconsciousness

and the locus of an ultimate there

lower of

liberation: reality and a source of potential is "something extraordinary in its very ordinariness" {EL 37).16 It is "a
meaning" that requires elevation above the ordinary to

sphere

but it is also a place where "creative energy is stored achieve its potential, new in readiness for creations" {EL 14). For Michel de Certeau, another read closely, everyday practice theorist of the everyday whom architects and of modernity but is a "multifarious lacks the "organized discourse" a less that might silent 'reserve' of procedures" eventually undergird
oppressive society.17 In his most moments, expansive as Rob has put Shields who, man," Lefebvre it, lived wrote "life of the oeuvre, liberated a work "total of art

as an

mind"

of both body and and reconciliation that required the full investment the premodern human being inhabited {LL 71). This complete life because all life was there was no everyday where countryside, even the quotidian; the unified: "nothing had yet become prosaic, not {EL 29). Total men and prose and the poetry of life were still identical" women and an unalienated way of life would be recreated through the
act of revolution, when modern men and women "are no longer able or

willing

to live as before."1^
is inherently conservative. With rare exceptions, archi

Architecture

tects prefer
rather than

to build
the

rather

than

to tear down,
order

to create
than

the enduring
to break it. Le

ephemeral,

to enforce

rather

Corbusier
gesting

once
that

posed
Thus

the question
architectural

"Architecture
writers have and

or Revolution?"
avert studiously oppression revolution?

sug

Architecture?"amelioration"?could

"catastrophe."19 insistent Lefebvre's

claims

that

the

alienation

ignored of every

day life in the modern

ary change.

world

could only be resolved

through

revolution

itmakes hierarchies because threatens Architecture's argument to life incompatible. Lefebvre declines and unalienated Architecture This

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ARCHITECTURE

IN EVERYDAY

LIFE

713
as a kind of the totem or aide as m?moire. We

allow have

on us to to everyday hang a choice, he wrote, between concept, an object of

life

intellectual

retaining sentimental

everyday

a cherished or abolish

contemplation,

ing it. Either we "refute philosophical,

and practical,

the distinctions and

and

between spiritual
and

superior
culture

inferior,
ignorance,

philosophical and material,

. . . undertake

and non theoretical

a radical

transformation and sociology,

Kierkegaardian to overthrow"
meaning are mies untenable.

not only of the state and politics, economics, jurisdiction but also of everyday life; or [we] revert to metaphysics, strove anxiety and despair and the liberalism Nietzsche In a specifically the architectural context, {EL 14-15).
challenge Art-architecture is even more for strives provocative: the extraordinary, the dichoto some

of Lefebvre's

thing that would at the least transfigure everyday life symbolically, while Lefebvre demands not transformation but the eradication of the distinc
tion between the the extraordinary and the ordinary. There can be no

Architecture,
are parts of

only architecture.
the same landscape,

Lincoln
fragments

Cathedral
of one

and
whole.

the bicycle

shed

to relinquish the distinction and the everyday or the position between Architecture this distinction Sarah and Till them. wish to avoid While grants Wigglesworth Jeremy the "an alternative aesthetic based on reifying everyday by delineating do they want "to get caught within the binary it," neither trap of to immersed in This would lead the of the disavowal remaining ordinary. So far architects have chosen not architectural
associated with

knowledge
the

and

creativity
structures

alike?knowledge
of power and

because
expertise,

it is

repressive

creativ

ity because
not Revolution.

it is associated

with uncritical

genius"

(EVA 7). Architecture

As a result, when architects the everyday into their try to incorporate literal and decorative. work, the results tend to be embarrassingly They
design acceptable aesthetically to the pleasing powers that carts be, or for they street create vendors small to make public places them on

leftover bits of land, or they design a house whose form is taken from the reflection of vegetation in a pond on site, or a building meant to disrupt or to mimic the routines of perception of everyday the messiness
existence.20

In its commitment life most everyday

strategy?or a tactic,

to old confidently
to use

and new
de

uses Architecture dichotomies, as a and most rhetorical effectively

Certeau's term. Certeau described

Michel

space as the "proper"

through spatialized

{propre) domain
"strategies." That

of power, which manifested

is, power, "a proprietor, an

itself
enter

prise, a city, a scientific

order characterized by

institution,"
"organizing

manifests
discourses."

itself in a visible
Where

territorial
saw

Lefebvre

everyday

life as a colonized

space, Certeau

imagined

it as spaceless

and

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714
formless space, practices employing without organizing tactics?short-term an discourse. raids on

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

It works power as

in

time

not to

opposed

strategic assaults from long-established positions. itself into the other's place, fragmentarily, without ... It has at its no base." entirety. disposal Everyday
in this sense: they are "victories of the 'weak' over

insinuates over it in its taking are tactical practices

the 'strong', . . . clever

"A tactic

tricks,
Everyday matter

knowing

how

to get
in

away with
the they interstices aim

things"
that to be,

{PEL xix,

35-36,

48).
no

operate practices how all-encompassing

power's strategies, cannot master. Everyday

life raids totalizing

to make some scratch. links

institutional fortresses, undermining ambitions. So architecture employs

raids guerilla or to build on some the new modern ones, but

and challenging their the trope of everyday life

to perhaps reconstruct to redraw it from

landscape, never

This
Ockman's

seems
call

to me
for a

to be
"minor"

the

import
and a

of architect
"major"

and "defined

theorist
that

Joan
would

architecture

coexist

in critical
of new

tension.
cultural and

Minor

torialization,
assemblage "territorial,

intensified

political
forces," conservative

architecture, consciousness,
would of the status serve quo,

and
as or

by deterri the anticipatory

check on the major

apolitical,

normative"

is major is constantly architecture. "[T]hat which to that which is minor, and that which relation or hybridizing that which challenging potentially
close to Certeau's concept of strategies and tactics.

itself in redefining is minor is always is major."21 This is

Major architecture is

and so must adjust its premises subject to raids by the minor constantly and its strategies to account for them. The use of the everyday as a kind a politically of of rhetorical device that grounds charged critique
Architectural process further echoes Certeau's vision of language as the

principal battleground In a similar mood, Margaret touch with everyday life that could help channel frustrated desires a political that would "make a new set of personal language
collective demands on the social order. Therefore the practices

on which

strategy and tactics clash. an Architecture Crawford envisions

in into and
of

everyday abstract political concerns specific individuals

Nevertheless,

urbanism

not via lead to social change, inevitably from outside, but instead through imposed ideologies of different that arise from the lived experience should in the city" (IEU 13).
Crawford's arguments nor Ockman's nor in

and groups
neither

those of any architectural theorist of the everyday, give adequate to the physicality of everyday life or to the materiality of attention "makes everyday that language Architecture. Lefebvre warned life, is it behind and conceals the ornaments it, hiding everyday life, disguises
of rhetoric and make-believe, so that, in the course of everyday life,

deed

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ARCHITECTURE

IN EVERYDAY

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715
life" {EL call for a
theirs

denials of everyday language and linguistic relations become advocates of the everyday the architectural 120-21). Although
practice remains grounded a rhetorical in "reality" rather than rather an than action-based in "abstract model. theory,"

ii

Architecture

took

its

curious

turn

toward

rhetorical

models

around

Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Denise Architectural Form, Robert Venturi, Scott Brown, and Steven on form for its low Izenour attacked the modernist and space emphasis readers to the Las Vegas strip to see an "level of content." They directed 1970.
architecture that was "antispatial... an architecture of communications

In their seminal

over bodied
Las

space"
of

{LV 6-8).

Good

architecture,
conventional

they
signs,

claimed,
most

drew

on
em

vocabulary

long-established, one

effectively

in architectural
was of the

decoration,
first of a

to convey
thirty-year

its message.
succession of

Learning from
treatises that

Vegas

From the theory on linguistic analogies. to use semiotic models of the 1970s, through occasional attempts to of the 1990s, Chomskian the deconstructivists grammar, generative to demonstrate that architects, theorists, and some historians struggled buildings might be thought of as a kind of language, or as "texts" or tried to build architectural
"representations."22 or One by one these efforts foundered, for in the end

no one has ever established

social messages that architecture or ("eat

what

it is, beyond
here," Even there

the simplest
"I'm where is no rich,"

commercial
"I'm in the incor message

know") porates intended.

here," "sleep communicates. qualities,

architecture necessary

imagery

"iconic"

architectural theorists of the everyday still work within Contemporary a significant, the linguistic model, if secondary, strain of overlooking nature that the material of life. ordinary everyday-life theory emphasizes to consider Some of the first philosophers and aestheticians the every and their aesthetic Dada and Surrealist contempo day, the Pragmatists raries, insisted on founding everyday life and its reform in practice, or what is now termed "embodied action." In Art as Experience, the Pragma tist philosopher in the John Dewey argued that "Art is thus prefigured of living": it is grounded in ordinary life through the very processes of the with the material with aim of world process grappling producing an object. the "Every art does something with some physical material, or or use outside the without of with the body something body, a to and with view of tools, visible, intervening production something
audible, or tangible."23

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716
While recent architectural

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

theory offers little basis for a materially of grounded analysis everyday life, there are clues to be found in art. As Architecture took the linguistic road, some artists, notably the Minimalist
sculptors, moved toward a rigorously material understanding of experi

presence away by stripping notions of empathy, narrative ("relation") and, by exten iconography, sion, discourse.24 As the critic Charlotte Willard noted at the time, these explored
sculptors "explored typically architectural concerns of 'space, volume,

ence.

These

artists

artifactual

movement,
equally

light,'" and,
issue

through
of

their choice

of scale and

setting,

the

architectural

corporeal

experience.25

In a famous exchange the sculptor Tony reported by Robert Morris, Smith told an interviewer that he hadn't made his six-foot cube Die a monument" nor had he (1962) larger because he "was not making
made it smaller because he "was not making an object."26 Either choice

would have diminished human the immediate

contemplation. not looked up to or down on. He gave it a kind of to be confronted, to which to respond. The point, as the viewer was forced subjectivity a Michael Fried famously noted in hostile but perceptive article, was that was was a it the Minimalist "theatrical": that, by its presence object human
by viewers

the effect he sought by removing his work from realm and reducing it to an object of distanced as as a it person, Smith made Die a work By making high

scale or aggressive
as though it were

positioning,
another

demanded
person.27

to be reckoned

with

it was framed squarely in the high-art tradition, the Minimalist is useful for thinking about everyday spaces. The physicality of project with Minimalist and the ways the object the encounter sculpture the architectural space of the gallery to force viewers to manipulates While
resemble respond that constitute sculpture we the kinds of ordinary, When whose everyday experience. a work often confront taken-for-granted, we confront maker wants interactions a Minimalist "to seize and

hold
that

the space of that gallery?not

space."28 The viewer must

simply
or

to fill
fight

it, but
back,

seize and hold

learning some

surrender

in the process. Anthropologists and psy thing about him- or herself a sense concrete of of and offer how this chologists perception cognition their of human and agency. territoriality through investigation happens are territorial, meaning that our daily Like other animals, we humans a relatively limited and predictable round occupies range, and we tend
to maintain sphere or a relatively bubble"?between constant personal ourselves distance?"a and others of our small protective species.29

In humans,
process of

the formation

of this buffer
of our

is an important
forms of

stage

in the

self-definition.

Some

earliest

self-awareness

arise from that extends

our understanding in a space that we are bounded objects self and non-self in this us.30 By differentiating beyond

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ARCHITECTURE

IN EVERYDAY

LIFE

717
of agency, a realization that some but

elementary

way,

we

gain

sense

to our own not all of the events around us can be attributed our their bodies and and deeds.31 Taken protective together,
help to define our selves by giving us an idea of "self-coherence"

thoughts bubbles
as

physical entities with limits and the power to act and to be acted upon.32 fluid. Anthony Cohen makes a useful Yet these limits are remarkably
distinction between borders and boundaries. Borders are facts. The

on the other Boundaries, and divide hand, they only to the permeable imprecise; to. National extent boundaries that they are allowed may be crossed or The ideas, languages, body appears to constantly by people, goods.33 formal line dividing are normally two nations be defined
closer very one fluid

is a border.

by a clear border,
looks, one at the more that. The the

the enclosing
border appears

envelope
to be the a

of skin. But
boundary, as a person body, and

the
a

environment

penetrates

breathes,
boundary, sorimotor

eats, and drinks. More

constantly space" and "exchanging perceptual a

subtly,
matter "receptive

the skin
with field,"

itself

is a permeable
Our within "sen our

energy."34 the areas

immediate
extend our

grasp
selves

and within
into space

reach
much

of
larger

our

perception,
our bodies

respectively,
proper, but

than

to the influence of the architectural and they also make us vulnerable human spaces beyond our bodily boundaries.35 includes explicit and implicit propositions about daily Culture, which raw and amends these It defines the life, shapes possibilities. practical limits of our territory and the social meanings of various sorts of self of space {HD 3; EP 99, 101). The goal, then, is not to colonization
discard language as an element of everyday life. As Lefebvre, inspired by

his early association

bodies of 'users'?are

with
caught

the Surrealists,
up not only

observed,
in the toils

"Living bodies,
of parcellized

the
space,

but also
and

in the web
(P598).36

of what

philosophers
or kinesis,

call
and

'analogons':
rhetoric are

images,

signs

symbols"

Practice,

inseparable. our sense

The
tion of

psychologist
perceptual,

Ulric Neisser
cognitive, and

attempted
cultural

to account
data in shaping

for the interac

of

into five, interdependent "kinds [or modes] of self from the environmental and that range knowledge" purely perceptual to the (almost) purely rhetorical.37 The first mode, the ecological self, is on the sensory data.38 The second, dependent directly and exclusively
interpersonal self, provides access to other people in the same manner

being. He

cast them

self does for the nonhuman that the ecological for certain environment, to to of the be brain devoted appear portions uniquely recognizing other human faces and interpreting their expressions. The three other
modes those knowledge, are thoughts private and or self-knowledge, not the self's which available experiences awareness of encompasses to others; in the awareness extended past and of self the

continuity

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718
future; and conceptual self-reflective mediated,
assumptions" about

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

self-knowledge, "theory" comprising

the

socially given, culturally "awide array of beliefs and

ourselves.39

At one end of the spectrum, then, is the body in primary contact with its environment. At the other is the culturally formed person under as an self whose actions have observable embodied herself standing in but the also as a social being environment, consequences physical in acceptable her more private responses who must modify and mediate
ways.40 Neisser's model offers a way to understand the intersection of the

the social and the cultural in the with sensory and the personal of selfhood, or the sense of individual identity and agency, and formation personhood, or the sense of social identity and agency.41
The of most navigation of our of sensory spaces, everyday and intellectual the ordinary, experiences, unexceptional is the primary sites arena

within

are forged. In the give and take selfhood and personhood of our agency. of everyday life we learn the personal and social meanings and of practices actions become clusters individual practices Repeated which
become social formations. As Lefebvre observed, the "concrete, practi

of everyday life determined the "discreteness cal and alive" experience . . . and This of the social. individual the yet inclusiveness unity is the a is of made of and the all society: foundation individuals, up society a content of his life and the form individual is social being, in and by the of his consciousness"
confront identity only and the agency?but

{CEL 72). Pure discourse

social side?the a materialist

models
life

of the everyday
shapes includes social embodied

ways everyday account that

actors and

the inseparability encompasses of what the philosopher agency,

and example, the we "I-experience" turn might to the

of social and individual Calvin O. Schr?g calls

{SP19). early American republic,

identity the "we

where

experience" an For

cultural

patterns over what struggles

transformed

filled newspa and chewing and spitting?that of the smell of and visual essays, literary images. Journalists spoke streets to in that from smoke the clothing clung polite parlors. cigar streets full of cigar smokers and spitters of all races, Artists depicted pers,
classes, and ethnicities nearly smothering refined passers-by.43 Tobacco

nineteenth-century tobacco usage?smoking

in processes psychological to "the the Lefebvre called right city."42 Early American media were filled with endless accounts of fundamental

represented
one's own

the impingement
social space and

of one's undesirable
identity. It epitomized

urban
the

neighbors
of many

on

unease

elite urbanit?s
American cities.

in the socially mixed,

The choice of tobacco

heavily
as a

traveled
metaphor

streets of the new

for urban social

and personal ingly defined

was deliberate, for the urban elite increas claustrophobia a to themselves ideal of according particular genteel

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ARCHITECTURE

IN EVERYDAY

LIFE

719
that prescribed a narrowly

posture,

movement,

and

space-holding?one

drawn,
every tiguous This

inviolable
other one,

bubble
making spaces. for

of space
the streets

that would
into this.

isolate each urbanit?

of small,

from

a collection

noncon

private concern

Tobacco posture

violated is a manifestation

of

its central

role

in

the

human

system, where it helps to define the self at a particular orienting the perceptual location with respect to environment through aligning
in essential ways. Beyond simple orientation?Neisser's ecologi

systems

to what cognitive scientists call the body cal self?posture is central sense our as transient of bodies the image, they appear to fragmented,
our consciousness. senses emotional Body images of ourselves embrace as our intellectual, sensate, Genteel and three-dimensional objects.44

codes idealized a body drawn in on itself and at rest that enacted self control and stability and created a distinctive and unambiguous iconog perimeters were of the sort most easily raphy of self. Its tight, predictable to the human eye. The carefully limited, closely controlled identifiable on its defenses by sight or touch. genteel body warned against intrusions of The ideal was reinforced its negative: of bodies slouching by images in exaggerated and and dressed ways smoking, all of which extended and violated others' bound bounds space beyond permissible personal was to to aries. The genteel response open up the streets by try forbidding
sidewalks prisons proper and

various
and, when asylums and

kinds

of

informal
able sorts, social

selling
to to

and other

occupations
their nemeses that enforced

of
in

they of various means understand to of

were

incarcerate create spaces

postures can We begin in the interested

interaction. Lefebvre space and and time, Certeau for, were more so than

to

power

why structure

regulating
the

particular
that

events,
form and

it is the power
its component their

to shape society by governing

selves. If one one could could control control

repetitions movements people's

control

interpretation,

their

identities. Thus, we might

of emotions,

conclude
activities and

that the everyday

than a physical actions,

is less a rhetorical
m?lange and

field or
of ideas, half-rote.

a collection sensations,

leftover

heterogeneous half-conscious

The
a

anthropologist
of structuring

Pierre Bourdieu
or dispositions or

saw this clearly. Everyday

he wrote, but a is constituted

life is not
"system in practice of

system

representations

structured,

performances, . . .which

and
system

is always
the

oriented
he went

toward

practical
sense.

functions."45
sense into motor

He
is a schemes

called

this

habitus,

involvement,"

practical on. It is "converted

"Practical

quasi-bodily and body

the "disposition of the (66, 69). Bourdieu emphasized as to and function of deferred repositories body language thoughts that can be triggered off at a distance in space and time by the simple effect

automatisms"

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720
of re-placing the body in an overall posture which

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

recalls

the

associated

(69).46 His goal was to salvage the structuralist thoughts and feelings" to criticisms of culture while of structuralism's concept responding to account for change by stressing that the habitus is only a inability "a present past that tends to perpetuate itself into the predisposition, a to future," way lodged in an actor capable of thinking and proceed so that in "the necessary yet confron making judgments, unpredictable
tation between the habitus and an event," new solutions are improvised.

As both a sensorimotor disposition

improvisatory, rote

and an ideological quality, the habitus is a flexible that allow one to act in a way that is at once habitual and
and novel. It is above all an "art of inventing" (54

56).
And so we arrive at a more concrete sense of the everyday, in every

sense of the word. One definition of everyday life might be "The nexus of and times that spaces trigger bodily habits and cultural repeatedly or liberating, memories?the habitus." Everyday life can be oppressive on the ways it is organized and depending temporally spatially. Everyday life shapes selfhood and personhood and particularly through material, as its is but critical Michel de Certeau time, bodily, practices, quality realized.
bodies the

It is the repetition
habitus. So the

and routine
power to organize

of everyday
space and

life that teaches

time, to articulate

our

Certeau's identified
modern Bourdieu

that Lefebvre "organizing discourse," those qualities of modernity as sources of the banality and alienation of everyday life in the
world, observed, gives considerable "Symbolic power power works to shape self through and the partly society. control As of

recog people's bodies and belief that is given by the collectively to act in various ways on deep-rooted nized and capacity linguistic muscular of behaviour" But the of the (69). patterns unpredictability other
habitus means that no one can control the everyday.

the everyday is, we can also understand how instilled by repeated it works: through bodily memory action in orga nized time and space. This definition gives the everyday a specificity that and Certeau is lacking in the work of Lefebvre and their architectural as and it well small-? architecture is critical to suggests why disciples, So ifwe understand what understanding
It also does

everyday
something

life.
important for architecture itself, reincorporat

ing Architecture
"structured,

into

the

larger and

landscape.
and an

The
"art

habitus
of

as both
also

structuring

disposition"

inventing" as

accounts
change. aspects of

both
It

for pattern
the

continuity
and the

and

for

improvisation

and

reunites experience,

ordinary neither

possible

extraordinary the other, without

inseparable neither deter

mining routine

an understanding of this sort from the the other. In building and ordinary, we can ultimately the concept of the relinquish

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ARCHITECTURE

IN EVERYDAY

LIFE

721
and architectural
without

everyday.
example,

In the small field of Architecture

we can examine the cultural

studies,
to

for
the

landscape

recourse

of high and low that impede understanding and oppositions hierarchies the field for many years into advocates for and and have fragmented
scholars each with of "high" its own and values, "low" architecture, and methods. Architecture and architecture, goals,

University

of

Virginia

NOTES
1 Henri tr. Sacha in the Modern World, Everyday Life cited in text as EL. 1984), pp. 14, 8; hereafter NJ., in Architecture "The Everyday and Everydayness," Lefebvre, Harris and Deborah Berke (New York, 1997), p. 34. Lefebvre, Architecture," in Architecture Rabinovitch of the Everyday,

(New ed.

Brunswick, 2 Henri Steven 3 cited

Steven

Harris, "Everyday in text as EA.

of the Everyday,

p. 3; hereafter

to Everyday Urbanism, ed. John Chase, Margaret 4 Margaret "Introduction" Crawford, cited in text as IEU. and John Kaliski Crawford, 1999), p. 9; hereafter (New York, 5 Henry-Russell Hitchcock The International Jr. and Philip Johnson, Style: Architecture Since a 1922 (New York, 1932); Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of New as to Look at Mass., Zevi, Architecture 1941); Bruno (Cambridge, Space: How (New York, 1957). tr. Donald 6 Henri The Production Nicholson-Smith Lefebvre, (Oxford, of Space [1974], to cited in text as PS. For an important discussion of Lefebvre's relevance 1991); hereafter see Mary McLeod, "Henri Lefebvre's of Everyday Life: An Introduc Architecture, Critique tion," in Architecture of the Everyday, pp. 9-29. Tradition Architecture 7 and Gwendolyn builders one describes in the struggle between eloquently Wright episode in Moralism and theModel Home: Domestic Architecture and Cultural 1980), pp. 40-78. (Chicago, Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: An Outline of European A Sociological 7th ed. architects Conflict 1977), 1970), in

Chicago, 1873-1913 8 Magali Sarfatti pp. 15-18, 9 Nikolaus p. 15. 10 Bernard 24, 38.

Analysis

(Berkeley,

Pevsner,

Architecture,

(Harmondsworth,

to Non-Pedigreed Architecture without Architects: A Short Introduction Rudofsky, of Nomadism (New York, 1964); Felicity Scott, "Bernard Rudofsky: Allegories and Dwelling," in Anxious Modernisms: in Postwar Architectural Culture, ed. Experimentation Sarah Williams and R?jean Mass., 2000), p. 215. Goldhagen Legault (Cambridge, in print, having defined the exotic realm of "the vernacular" book remains for Rudofsky's Architecture of Architectural teachers and students now. generations Denise Scott Brown, from and Denise Scott "Learning Pop" [1971 ], in Robert Venturi A View from the Campidoglio: Selected Essays, ed. Peter Arnell, Ted Brown, 1953-1984, and Catherine Bickford, (New York, 1984), p. 27. Bergart Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The 12 Robert Venturi, rev. ed. Mass., 1977), p. 3; hereafter Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form, (Cambridge, in text as LV On Venturi for the superior cited and Scott Brown's claims implied several 11 see Deborah of popular The Repre aesthetics, Fausch, authenticity "Ugly and Ordinary: sentation of the Everyday," in Architecture of the Everyday, p. 104. 13 and Jeremy Till, "The Everyday and Architecture," Sarah Wigglesworth in The Everyday

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722 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

and Architecture, no. 134 of Architectural Design cited in text as EVA. 1998), p. 7; hereafter Profile, ed. Wigglesworth and Till (London, the of

to Kenneth 14 Denise Scott Brown, [1971], "Pop Off: Reply Frampton" cited in text as PO. p. 34; hereafter Campidoglio, 15 John Friedmann, "The City of Everyday Life: Knowledge/Power and 8. DISP, 136 (1999), Representation," 16 For a discussion of Lefebvre's notion of the extraordinary embedded

in View from the Problem

in the ordinary, see McLeod, "Henri Lefebvre's of Everyday Life," pp. 13, 19; Rob Shields, Lefebvre, Critique Love and Struggle: Spatial Dialectics cited in text as LL. (London, 1999), p. 71; hereafter de Certeau, 17 Michel The Practice of Everyday Life, tr. Steven Rendell 1984), p. (Berkeley, cited in text as PEL. 48; hereafter 18 19 20 Henri Italics Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, tr. John Moore, in the original. Hereafter cited in text as CEL. tr. Frederick Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, Millar, vol. 1 (London, 1991), p. 182.

Etchells

(New York,

1960),

pp.

23-24. "Street Survival: The Plight of the Los Angeles in Everyday Vendors," "The Giant Revolving Chicken Head and the 136-51; John Chase, (Winking) on Private Small Fountain: Public Land Doggie Making Spaces by Using Drinking in Everyday Urbanism, 110-19; Niall McLaughlin, "Shack, pp. Objects," Commonplace in The Everyday and Architecture, pp. 42-47; Phillip Hall-Patch, Foxhall, Northamptonshire," Urbanism, pp. in The Everyday the Veil," and Architecture, G?nther Behnisch, pp. 36-39; "Breaking in The Everyday and Architecture, pp. 88-95. "Circumstantial Architecture," "Toward a Theory of Normative in Architecture 21 Joan Ockman, Architecture," of the a major to Ockman credits the notion of and minor architecture Gilles 123. p. Everyday, Deleuze 22 On and F?lix Guattari. semiotics: and George Venturi, Baird, Scott Brown, ed., Meaning Folk Housing Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas; and Charles in Architecture (New York, 1970). On generative A in Middle Structural Virginia: Analysis of Historic and Norman

Jencks

Glassie, grammar: Henry Norris and Andrew (Knoxville, 1975). On deconstruction: Benjamin, Christopher Artifacts the Kimbell: An What Is Deconstruction? Benedikt, 1988); Michael (London, Deconstructing and Architecture The Architecture (New York, 1991); Mark Wigley, Essay on Meaning of of the Mass., 1993). For a current (Cambridge, example see Sarah Williams characterization of model, Goldhagen's as "intertexts" Louis Kahn's and aesthetic (Sarah buildings "powerful propositions." Louis Kahn's Situated Modernism Williams [New Haven, 2001], p. 5.) Goldhagen, 23 John Dewey, Art as Experience [1934] (New York, 1979), pp. 24, 47. Deconstruction: normative Derrida's Haunt use of a discourse to Stella and Judd" in Minimal Art: A Critical Glaser, [1966], "Questions Donald ed. Battcock 155; 1995), p. (Berkeley, Judd, Anthology, Gregory "Specific Objects" ed. James Meyer in Minimalism, [1965], (New York, 2000), pp. 207-10. Art and Polemics in the Sixties (New Haven, 25 James Meyer, Minimalism: 2001), p. 24. Part II" [1966], in Continuous Project Altered Daily: "Notes on Sculpture, Robert Morris, 26 24 Bruce Mass., 1993), p. 11. of Robert Morris (Cambridge, in Minimal "Art and Objecthood" The art Fried, Art, pp. 116-47. [1967], own a notes historian that Morris's "orchestrated choreographed James Meyer sculpture . . . the Morris movement the work and the gallery. around [work] was to be experienced an ambient and the work itself." (Meyer, Minimalism, that walked around, through, body by The Writings 27 Michael p. 51.) Carl Andre, 28 quoted 64 (1990), 44. Magazine, 29 cited Edward in Anna C. Chave, Dimension 7, 10, 66. "Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power," Arts

The Hidden T. Hall, in text as HD. See also pp.

(Garden

City, N.Y.,

1969),

p.

119; hereafter

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ARCHITECTURE

IN EVERYDAY

LIFE

723

and the "Self-Consciousness and Jos? Luis Berm?dez, Marcel, Eilan, Anthony in The Body and the Self, ed. Jos? Luis Berm?dez, Introduction," Interdisciplinary Eilan and Naomi Mass., 1995), p. 20. Marcel, Anthony (Cambridge, B. Kopp, "Common Diverse Solutions: and Claire 31 Celia A. Brownell Threads, 30 Naomi Body: An 11 (1991), "The Review, 297; John Campbell, Developmental Commentary," in The Body and the Self, p. 34. Body Image and Self-Consciousness," on the of Self," in The Body "An Ecological 32 George Butterworth, Origins Perspective cited in text as EP. and the Self, p. 101; hereafter An Alternative Anthropology P. Cohen, 33 Anthony of Identity (London, Self-Consciousness: 1994), pp. 122-32. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (Boston, 34 James J. Gibson, 1966), pp. 18-19. in Brain and Space, of Space," 35 Jacques "Motor and Representational Paillard, Framing Concluding see Shields, Lefebvre, pp. 71, 76, 155; 82-83. Critiques of Everyday Life, pp. 72-73, 1 (1988), 35-59. "Five Kinds of Self-Knowledge," Neisser, Philosophical Psychology, was borrowed term "ecological" from James J. Gibson, whose work under 38 Neisser's work on selfhood. Gibson of the contemporary and psychological philosophical pins much access to necessary had given animate the ways direct that evolution stressed beings information from sensorimotor ed. Jacques Paillard 36 On Lefebvre's (Oxford, connection 1991), p. 164. with surrealism,

Gardiner, 37 Ulric

is built into human the capacity their environments; (and other beings') or even no cultural to life experience information systems and requires most were structure His drawn from the of it. the world. famous shape examples optical to the environmental visual systems were attuned Gibson showed that animate beings' us to grow larger as in which in front of of appear objects directly "looming," phenomena one as it passes behind to disappear of occlusion, in which object appears approach; of visual images as and of "optical flow," the continuous another; "streaming" peripheral a unique we move self, at space. These map point of view, Neisser's ecological through to Visual Perception The Ecological Approach their intersection. [Boston, (James J. Gibson, 103-4, 227-29). 1979], pp. 78-86, in The Perceived Self: Ecological "The Self Perceived," and Interpersonal 39 Ulric Neisser, we 40 41 42 Sources of Self-Knowledge, ed. Ulric Neisser 1993), (Cambridge, Calvin O. Schr?g, The Self after Postmodernity (New Haven, in text as SP. I borrow Henri p. 4. 1997), p. 61; hereafter cited

and "personhood" from Cohen, the concepts "selfhood" Self-Consciousness. on Cities, tr. and ed. Eleonore to the City," in Writings "The Right Lebas Kofman (Oxford, 1996), pp. 63-181. see Dell Upton, 43 discussion of urban tobacco the For a fuller use, "Inventing in Antebellum New York," in Art and theEmpire City: Civilization and Urbanity Metropolis: Hoover ed. Catherine and John K. Howat Netu York, 1825-1861, (New York, Voorsanger 2000), pp. 33-34. Lefebvre, and Elizabeth 44 and Body Schema: A Conceptual Shaun Gallagher, "Body Image and Behavior, 7 (1986), 546, 548. Journal ofMind tr. Richard Nice 45 The Logic of Practice, Pierre Bourdieu, (Stanford, hereafter cited in text. 46 Physiologists Clarification," 52;

1990),

p.

and anthropologists about have made similar observations the ways or memories as a emotions sensory experiences trigger particular simply the of human brain. See the of for idiosyncratic wiring product Rodney example "Percussion and Transition," "The Role 2 (1967), 606-14; Michael Needham, Man, Davis, in Fear and Anxiety," of the Amygdala Annual Review of Neuroscience, 15 (1992), 353-75. particular

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