“narrative structures,” “spatial syntaxes,” “subtle complexity stories,” “geographies of actions and drifting,” “proliferating metaphors,” “spatializing operations,” “semantics of space,” “psycholinguistics of perception,” “sociolinguistics of descriptions of places,” “phenomenology of the behavior,” “’ethnomethodology’ of the indices of localization,” “enunciative focalizations.”
de Certeau commences this chapter of The Practice of Everyday Life with a litany of abstruse phrases. Only slightly intelligible on the first read, these terms are intriguing and perhaps architectural. Could one or more alone spawn a design? Or generate discussion or thought that leads to creativity? Surely the remainder of this reading enters the architectural realm, considering that to which “we” strive to give definition.
Surely the line, “transformation of the void into a plentitude, of the in-between into an established place,” will give form to at least the idea of a building. Can buildings be based on philosophical phenomenological musings?