From the production of space to places: A journey between space and societies

Drawing on his personal history as a researcher, the author illustrates various ways of exploring the relationship between space and society. The study of the production of space in the tradition of Henri Lefebvre and Raymond Ledrut led him to investigate the actors and systems of action that produce space, along the lines of Michel Crozier and Erhard Friedberg. Other references (Irving Goffmann, Edward T. Hall, Jean Remy and Liliane Voye, Georges Perec) raised his awareness of the uses of space, and then the existential dimension of our spatial experience. The concepts of place and ambience thus become essential.But the investigation of relations between space and society cannot avoid a radical questioning of the Euclidian definition of an immutable space. On the contrary, ‘the essence of space, as it is conceived today, is its many-sidedness, the infinite potentiality for relations within it’ (Sigfried Gideon, Space, Time and Architecture, 1941: 356, as quoted by Martina Low). These theoretical considerations have numerous implications for practice.