Walking barefoot

Walking barefoot through the city is a wonderful, liberating experience. I do it sometimes on my short walk home between the Cass at Aldgate at my flat in Bethnal Green. It all began one day when my sandals broke when I was half way down Brick Lane, and I was left with no choice but to walk home along the tarmac, concrete and paving slabs with only my very own skin for protection.

It was a warm day and I discovered for the first time the range of temperatures underfoot. Where the surface is dark and smooth and has been in the sunshine, the heat radiates at around body temperature, and feels like the warmed marble surface in a hammam. In deep shade the ground is cooler, but not cold on a sunny day, since every part of the street is exposed to sunlight and the ground has a substantial thermal mass. As well as temperature, texture becomes all-important when walking barefoot through the city. Cobbles feel satisfyingly fulfilling and smooth when fitted exactly into the arch of a foot and I had never before noticed how rough and stony the road surface is, compared to the pavement. It must be both for economy, and to provide traction for car tyres.

With feet unaccustomed to walking without shoes, the road is sharp and prickly, and it is a relief to return to the velvety smooth surface of a concrete paving slab.The various signs and signals for blind people were also suddenly much more apparent. The bobble paving slabs to warn of a pedestrian crossing, and the stripy ones to warn of the entrance to a tube. I wonder if there is a code amongst the which as a sighted person you never need to engage with? [Yes there is! I found it here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/289245/tactile-paving-surfaces.pdf]

Without shoes, I began to instinctively think through my feet, and connect lots of different experiences of materiality, economy and society. It brought to my attention the difference in quality of road surfaces in different places - more affluent streets with more tourist value have fewer tarmac repairs on which to catch and scuff toes. Smaller paving slabs in posher streets have more spaces that could conceal glass, but at the same time there is less likely to be glass or other rubbish there. Is this because richer people drop less rubbish and smash fewer glasses, or is it because the council cleans the more affluent street more thoroughly or more frequently? But in general the streets of London are fantastically clean. I can walk for a mile without shoes through central-ish London, being moderately careful, and get home with feet that are just a little bit dusty – no injuries, no vile substances. I wonder how many other cities of 8 million people could boast the same thing?

The experience of shoelessness impacts on the mind and the eyes - mine are usually staring ahead while I think aimless thoughts, or at other people, or at shops. Without shoes my concentration is focused on the street surface - where is most pleasing to tread, where is warm and soft or smooth, is there glass, or unidentified wetness, or vomit or dog shit to avoid. I can’t watch other people to see if they have identified my lack of shoes, my focus on my own feet pleasingly clears my head of other thoughts. It’s a meditative, grounding experience, which reconnects me to the earth… albeit through the many urban layers of city surfaces.

Depth II

All the books say not to do it, but I have no choice... there isn't another word which means what his one means, so I am using a new and previously unused piece of terminology: 'depth'. I have blogged about 'depth' before, and as was probably apparent then, I have spent the past two years grappling with what it actually is. But now the time has come. I am writing up. And I need to nail my colours to the mast: what the hell is 'depth', and why am I using it as a central tenet of my thesis instead of all the alternative, perfectly good and usable jargonish words already in the vocabulary of urbanists, sociologists, geographers, and all the other waifs and strays who congregate around the academic study of cities?

First off, it needs inverted commas, so it is 'depth' and not merely depth.  Depth (sans commas) is useful because it gives a general context and meaningfulness to 'depth', but I my aim is that 'depth' will have a specific definition, and not merely be a metaphor - like plain old depth. Depth  as a metaphor refers to intensity (colour or sound), profundity (emotion), and to the unknown and unknowable (the depths). The depths are also the furthest, innermost and most extreme (the depths of despair). It is of course a metaphor born of physical dimensions and movement in the world (the depth of the well is 100m) and in these terms it always refers to things which go down and in or under, rather than up and out or over (eg. the plane is not 5 miles deep in the air, but the submarine is 5 miles deep in the ocean).

In this respect, 'depth' (note the commas) refers to what is below and what is innermost - the supporting structure connecting the apparent structures (with their inherent possibilities) of the city with the basic conditions of the world (eg. time and nature - or physis). This deep structure harbours  'formal' and 'informal' life and allows it to co-exist, for example, in a block adjacent to a high street wherein the structure supports the high street (and vice versa). The deep structure (the structure of depth) is formed of place (part of which is architecture), time, history, civic institutions and institutionalized order, as well as people.

What is 'Depth'?

The title of my thesis is one of many things about my work which I do not yet fully understand.

It is 'The Depth Structure of a London High Street: A Study in Urban Order'. On Tuesday I was required to give a four-minute presentation of my research project, and I realised that I have not yet defined the word 'depth', although I have a good sense of what it means, I need to be able to explain it and define it, so I am not sloppy in my writing and thinking. It is an essential term when one is trying to be an urbanist (Google definition of 'urbanist' is: An advocate of, or expert in city planning):

There are so many ways in which the definitions of 'depth' below are apt. They capture the essence of what depth means when used in reference to the city, but none of them refer to the city, or to any of the structures which comprise urbanity [‘the quality or state of being urban’, but where ‘urban’ is used as Lefevbre uses it in The Urban Revolution, ie. all of society is now urban, it all exists with reference to the city and city-based global economies, even if it does not actually exist within the spatial bounds of a particular city].

Dictionary.com defines depth like this:

depth

   [depth]

noun

1.

a dimension taken through an object or body of material,usually downward from an upper surface, horizontallyinward from an outer surface, or from top to bottom ofsomething regarded as one of several layers.

2.

the quality of being deep; deepness.

3.

complexity or obscurity, as of a subject: a question of great depth.

4.

gravity; seriousness.

5.

emotional profundity: the depth of someone's feelings.

6.

intensity, as of silence, color, etc.

7.

lowness of tonal pitch: the depth of a voice.

8.

the amount of knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, insight, feeling, etc., present in a person's mind or evident either insome product of the mind, as a learned paper, argument,work of art, etc., or in the person's behavior.

9.

a high degree of such knowledge, insight, etc.

10.

Often, depths. a deep part or place: from the depths of the ocean.

11.

an unfathomable space; abyss: the depth of time.

12.

Sometimes, depths. the farthest, innermost, or extremepart or state: the depth of space; the depths of the forest;the depths of despair.

13.

Usually, depths. a low intellectual or moral condition: Howcould he sink to such depths?

14.

the part of greatest intensity, as of night or winter.

15.

Sports . the strength of a team in terms of the number andquality of its substitute players: With no depth in the infield, an injury to any of the regulars would be costly.

At its simplest level (and by definition, depth has many levels), it is  a dimension taken through a city or body of buildings, from one point to another either vertically or horizontally. This dimension is physical, a measurement of things which exist in the world and can be touched and seen. So, for example, the depth of the block adjacent to the high street is its dimension from front to back, and its layered composition, such as: shop front; rear of shop; yard; garden, kitchen, living room, front garden, street.

The dictionary definition of ‘depth’ includes references to seriousness; emotional profundity and intensity, (as of silence, colour, etc.): eg. the depth of someone’s feelings, and to the lowness of a voice. Thus, the word depth is a metaphor; it was born of a physical experience in the world (a dimension through space, an object or a body of objects). But it can also be used to represent ideas that also have this quality. So, the structures that comprise urbanity have a ‘depth’, which refers to their complexity and obscurity, their many layers and to their interconnectedness in all dimensions. These structures are manifold, just a few examples are: economy, society, legislation and government.

However, depth also refers to the unknown and the unknowable, usually as ‘depths’ eg. the depths of the ocean, or to an unfathomable space or abyss, eg. the depths of time. So, by definition, the depth structure of the city is, to some extent, always unknowable. It is impossible to fully know everything about the economy, society, legislation etc. in the medium of words, or in one human mind, or in a diagram or image or essay. This knowledge as a whole exists only in situ, ie. The depth structure of the city IS the city itself. So the praxis of the city, and an interpretation of this, is the way to access depth.

The depths are also the farthest, innermost or extreme part or state, eg. the depths of the forest; the depths of despair. Certainly not unheard of would be a phrase such as the depths of the slum, or the depths of the ghetto, usually referring to a tangle of city and people where undesirable and frightening things take place (which also picks up the definition of ‘depths’ as a low intellectual or moral condition). This relates back to the unknowable nature of depth, and the depths of the city would be a place where there are layers and layers of physical and non-physical structures all collide and mesh and mutually change and affect one another in a complicated multi-dimensional way.

Finally, depth also refers to the amount of knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, insight, feeling etc. present in a person’s mind or evident in some product of the mind, such as an essay or artwork, or the city itself, the product of collective minds. There is knowledge, insight and wisdom required to try and comprehend the depths of the city, and at the same time knowledge, wisdom and insight have created it, and continue to create it. It is also a jointly imagined reality that everyone who moves through it participates in – the complex social, economic, historical rules, values, and systems which do not have a physical shape are a product of the collective. 

Language and Architecture

There is a conference in October at Queen’s, Belfast, entitled ‘Peripheries’ http://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/Peripheries2011Conference/. The conference invites discussion via papers and short films on the multiple aspects of periphery, describing the “. . . temporal, spatial, intellectual, technological, cultural, pedagogical and political”.

Because we live on a globe, everything is at some sort of periphery or another, depending on your location. If you start including other sorts of non-physical arenas, as above, like the economic or social sphere, there are an almost unlimited number of fields, so therefore a correspondingly unlimited number of peripheries. This is an ideal conference topic, because it means you can talk about absolutely anything.

So, the question is, how to address the notion of periphery, in relation to my own work, within the (exceedingly capacious) bounds of five themes: Peripheral practice, practice based research, urban peripheries, non-metropolitan contexts, and peripheral positions.

What comes to mind here most forcefully reading those titles, is how woolly the language of architectural research can be. I was as the Engaged and Enraged Friday discussion group last week http://www.publicworksgroup.net/fridaysessions/1089/fs_45-on-architectural-education-friday1-april-at-19.00 and plenty of the arguments were based on the use of particular words, how we were using them, and whether we could collectively agree about what them mean (answer: no). What a waste of our collective intelligence.

It seems that at least part of the problem lies in the relationship between language (spoken, written and the visual language of drawings) and the three dimensional space of the world our bodies occupy. It is impossible (or very difficult) to talk about space in words, because space and words are so different (I suspect there is a neurological basis to this).  It’s like trying to talk about English literature in Japanese, where every translation has to be defined to the nth degree, to avoid confusion about minor nuanced variations in meaning. The best way to have a discourse about space is to walk around in it, or to build models of it, because then you are speaking about space in the native language we share which relates to it. But of course, we communicate the majority of complex ideas through spoken language, not gesture (although of course a huge amount of more generalised meaning is communicated through movements) so it would be impossible to have a complex discourse about space using the language of movement alone. Furthermore, it’s important to talk about the physical world through spoken language, so architecture/city/space research can connect and exchange with other disciplines effectively. Part of architecture’s academic isolation seems to stem from its media of communication [the drawing] being incomprehensible to other academics (who therefore dismiss it as non-academic – with some basis at times, I suspect).

When architects use words like ‘practice’ ‘peripheral’, ‘temporal’ and so forth, they must take a cue from disciplines like philosophy, and define then properly, before throwing them about.