In the present era of technological advancements and sustainable design practices, including design approaches such as adaptive reuse and retrofitting, artificial intelligence, urbanisation, and globalisation, negative consequences occur locally and globally. The field of architecture in the present day confronts many challenges and concerns, encompassing sustainability, climate change, urbanisation, gentrification, social inequality, non-inclusive spaces, cultural preservation, and a dearth of cultural and social value within society.
In the face of rapid urbanisation and globalisation, the “Third Spaces” concept is a potential solution to address various social issues such as cultural and social value deficits, historical and heritage value losses, and inadequate community cohesion. These spaces serve as catalysts for facilitating social integration, thereby fostering a collective sense of belonging and shared identity among inhabitants.
What are Third Spaces?
Third, Spaces refer to social environments distinct from the home and the workplace.
Public parks, plazas, community centres, libraries, cafés, workplaces, and internet platforms are all examples of Third Spaces. The capacity of such spaces to foster social interactions and generate a feeling of community is its defining feature. They often include facilities and services that attract people to remain, such as comfy seats, free Wi-Fi, conference spaces, and cultural programs.
Third Spaces are intermediary spaces that foster social interaction and egalitarianism among individuals. This location serves as a venue for social interaction and cultural exchange while also being easily accessible to all individuals. These spaces cultivate a sense of belonging and augment community well-being in the context of rapid urbanisation and globalisation.
Edward Soja’s Theory of Third Space
Edward Soja was a self-proclaimed urbanist and a well-known postmodern political geographer and urban theorist. The work of Edward Soja was largely concerned with the social, cultural, and political traits of urban areas. He believed that conventional techniques to comprehend space, such as physical and sociological viewpoints, were inadequate, and he suggested the notion of “Third space” as an alternative paradigm. Soja defined Third Space as an ever-changing and dynamic conceptual space that covers physical and mental worlds, merging people’s and communities’ perceived reality, imagination, and lived experiences.
Soja’s theory of Third Space is derived from Henry Lefebvre’s Lived Spaces, Foucault’s Heterotopias, Bell Hooks’ radical openness, and other notions, ideologies, and standpoints.
In his book “Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places,” Soja emphasised the necessity of understanding metropolitan landscapes by addressing the interaction between physical space, social ties, and people’s subjective experiences. He advocated for a more inclusive and multidimensional view of space that considers many perspectives, histories, and narratives.
The graphic is a transdisciplinary portrayal of space incorporating historicality, sociality, and spatiality. When diverse individuals view, use, and experience a social space, imagined connections are built in their brains with their past or history based on the activities, space, and experience.
Edward Soja’s Classification of Space
First Space
It is the real material world. It represents the tangible, concrete spaces and spatial forms we encounter daily. This includes urban landscapes and architectural structures. First Space comprises both the tangible characteristics of space and the activities that occur within it. Human activities and interactions occur within the domain of objective reality.
Second Space
A perspective that interprets this reality through “imagined” representations of spatiality. It is how we perceive, conceptualise, and represent physical spaces in various formats, including maps, diagrams, mental images, and cultural narratives. It encompasses how we construct the physical universe’s meanings, interpretations, and comprehensions. Second, Space incorporates the social, cultural, and psychological factors that influence our perceptions and experiences of space.
Third Space
In a broader sense, Third space is a purposefully tentative and flexible term that attempts to capture a constantly shifting and changing milieu of ideas, events, appearances, and meanings. It is a place of multiplicity, potential, and inventive transformation. Third, Space comprises the lived experiences, narratives, memories, and imaginations that influence our understanding and engagement with the physical world.
Characteristics of Edward Soja’s Third Space
- A geographically located social space
- Historicality, sociality, and Spatiality as Transdisciplinary – Triple Dialectic
- Each place can be seen clearly and from every aspect, but there is also a hidden object that is conjectured, full of deceptions and allusions, a space that is shared by all of us but will never be fully seen and understood, an “unimaginable universe.”
Everything comes together in Third Space:
- subjectivity (people) and objectivity (space)
- Abstract (memories/experience) and concrete (space/people)
- Real (sociability/space) and imagined (nostalgia)
- the knowable (space) and unimaginable (space/nostalgia)
- the repetitive (sociability/space) and differential (experience)
- structure and agency
- mind and body
- consciousness and unconscious
- disciplined and transdisciplinary
- everyday life (activities of everyday life) and unending history (memories/experiences)
It is a space of complete radical openness, free from the conflicts of race, gender, class, sexuality, age, country, religion, nature, empire, and colonialism.
Edward Soja’s Third Space is empowered by strategic flexibility in dealing with multiple forms of oppression and inequality.
References:
- Dixon, D. (1999) “Between difference and alternity: Engagements with Edward soja’sThirdspace,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Association of American Geographers, 89(2), pp. 338–339. doi: 10.1111/0004-5608.00148.
- Maier, H. O. O. (2013) “Soja’s thirdspace, Foucault’s heterotopia and de Certeau’s practice: Time-space and social geography in emergent Christianity.” doi: 10.12759/HSR.38.2013.3.76-92.
- Maran, A. and Raj, M. (2023) “Integrating Oldenburg’s concept of place and Soja’s concept of space: a spatial enquiry of denial, repression, and closure in Ishiguro’s ‘The Remains of the Day,’” Humanities & social sciences communications, 10(1), pp. 1–8. doi: 10.1057/s41599-023-01676-0.
- Practical design for better urban spaces (2022) EIT Urban mobility. Available at: https://www.eiturbanmobility.eu/news-events/impact-stories/new-kid-on-the-block/.
- Soja, E. W. (1996) Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. London, England: Blackwell.
- Soja, E. W. (1998) “Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places,” Capital & class, 22(1), pp. 137–139. doi: 10.1177/030981689806400112.
- (2018) Planningtank.com. Available at: https://planningtank.com/blog/edward-sojas-theories-of-urban-space.
