A spatial conception based on walking: Critical walk

Abstract

In the thesis, I proceed from the idea that critical spatial practices which establish environments for new kinds of relationships to emerge between the body and the surroundings of the body are alternative ways of understanding and establishing a dialogue with the city. Along with the epistemological paradigm shift that originated at the beginning of the twentieth century, the concept of space has started to be described upon a dynamic and perceiving body in motion, and this shift caused the concept of space to reject Cartesian and rational descriptions. The main problem that the thesis deals with is that these Cartesian and rational concepts of body and space reduce body and space interactions to proportions, measurements and visuality. The human-centered perception of the universe that started with the Renaissance's view of the city, the orthographic perspective that examines the city from above were failing to capture experientiality and were eliminating observers –as subjects– and their experience. At this point, it would be meaningful to state that the body interacting with the space is not fixed; on the contrary, it is a dynamic concept that transforms the space and within it. I argue that the act of walking is an act that multiplies and stratifies the spatial experience, triggers the body-space relationship, and thus enables the body to establish a dialogue with the space. I open the research under four main headings. These headings are, respectively, TOEHOLD, POINT OF DEPARTURE, or INTRODUCTION; WALKING; REWRITING and ARRIVAL. I am trying to establish the theoretical background of the thesis in the TOEHOLD, POINT OF DEPARTURE, or INTRODUCTION. In five sub-headings that do not hierarchically follow each other, I convey my questions, the practices that I believe should be discussed more, my criticism, my purpose and my methodology. In the Questioning section, I examine the long-standing reductionist Cartesian and rational thoughts of body and space. This questioning reaches a whole with sub-questions collected in four pillars. The first of these is about our understanding of the city and its space, how the body-space relationship is established, and how the urban space is conceived and perceived with the body and its movement. Latter, it directs the query to conventional architectural examination and representation tools. In the third sub-question, I focus on the dominance of the desire to see the city from a bird's eye view in understanding and describing the city and its inability to capture the experientialism at the ground level and the accurate perception scale. In the last inquiry, I problematize that plan drawing is the most used tool among architectural representation typologies. In the Missing Pieces section, I draw attention to the diversity of experiences expressed through walking is not given enough importance in the literature. In the Critique section, which emerged after the sections of Questioning and Missing Pieces overlapped, I deepen my inquiries with a theoretical discussion. To achieve this, I involve the cultural history of the aerial view, the relationship between orthogonal or perspective drawings and the subject, and the conflicting situations in the theme of Modern Movement and architecture in the discussion. The epistemological paradigm shift in the twentieth century and the understanding of body and space that gradually moved ahead a slippery surface paved the way for more heuristic, empirical, critical and ambiguous discourses. Within these discourses, the focus of the thesis is on critical everyday life practices and the "walking" concept is discussed as a critical everyday life activity in the thesis. One of the most important inquiries behind this intention is based on de Certeau's rhetoric of "walking in the city". De Certeau (1988) embraced the "act of walking" as a spatializing and space-constituting act with its permanence on the surface at every step and stated that the routes added to this action are reflections on the geography of the city. De Certeau's thought-provoking discourse, which rejected the human-centered perception of the universe that looked from above, supports this thesis' way of searching. I aim to frame a spatial conception based on walking and an unconventional, subjective critical walking method in order to increase spatial awareness and discover tacit, buried, and other information in this way. In this context, I can say that the theoretical background of the thesis is based on critical theory and poststructuralist feminist theory. The primary aim of the research is to describe the "act of walking" as critical everyday life practice and to propose a way to rewrite "walking" in unconventional subjective ways. In the WALKING chapter, I reveal the multidimensionality of walking. Walking as a bodily movement, as an opening to the world, as emotional and intellectual entanglement, as an open-ended and impromptu movement, as a kind of architecture… In the context of my purpose, to describe the act of walking as a critical everyday life practice, I first discuss theoretically what critical practices are and how the act of walking can become a way of dialogue with space. Then various walks, walking theories, walkers and walking styles are dismantled by taking into account the state of being critical, and the concepts revealed by this disassembly form a base, in other words, a lexicon for the critical walking method that the research wants to frame. One of the important conceptualizations forming the theoretical background of the thesis, which questions what critical practices are and seeks to establish a dialogue between the act of walking and space, is Jane Rendell's expression of "critical spatial practice". Rendell (2006) argues that the theoretical reflection that entails expanding definitions such as art and architecture provides perspectives for exploring what we might call "critical spatial practice". With this conceptualization she brought together, Rendell (2006) expresses the importance of the critical and spatial, focusing on the spatial dimensions of the multidisciplinary processes or practices that exist between art and architecture. According to her, walking as an everyday activity is also a critical spatial practice because while walking, there are possibilities for new kinds of relationships to emerge between subjects and objects (Rendell, 2006). Another inspiring discourse to discuss walking as a critical daily practice is the "walking in the city" rhetoric of anthropologist Michel de Certeau. De Certeau (1988) presents the act of walking as an anthropological, poetic and mythical experience of space, walkers as ordinary practitioners of the city; and spatial stories formed by networks of roads. Referring to Foucault's critique of power structures, de Certeau sees walking as a kind of resistance against the disconnected and privileged ways of visualizing the city as a unified whole (cited in Petrescu, 2015). Two main actions express the state of being critical in this thesis. One of them is walking; the other is rewriting of walking. Rewriting manifests in the thesis first as a rewriting of the existing walking literature and then as a rewriting of the walk I have experienced as a researcher. I base the relationship between these two main actions on the performativity theory of gender theorist and thinker Judith Butler. Butler (1988) argues that the body performing a public performance act is not a passive receiver written in cultural codes but plays its own role and animates interpretations within the limits of existing directives. Butler's (1988) theory of performativity refers to the performative action of a gendered body within cultural codes that collide with individual choices to assemble an identity. Gender-based identity formation is always performed; similarly, since it is a performative act, a walker's identity formation is framed while walking, and identity becomes clear with the rewriting of the walk. In the REWRITING chapter, I point out the ever-changing and contributing relationship between theory and practice focusing on Gilles Deleuze's conceptualization of "relays" and I suggest walking to get from one theoretical point to another. In doing so, I systematically disassemble a series of walks such as philosophers' walks for meditative reflection, the flânerie, Dada excursions, Surrealist deambulations, Lettrist dérive, and Situationist psychogeographical discoveries and I offer a conceptual lexicon that establishes the critical walking method by reassembling the concepts extracted from the existing walking literature. I envision that the walking lexicon will act like the walker's handbook, which encourages each walker to frame their own critical walking trajectory, allowing for personal exploration and subjective interventions, including their own perspectives along the way. As a researcher, I involve in the thesis with my whole body, immersing myself in the walk, and then translating this experience into the text. I frame the trajectory of "my own critical walk" employing the "walker's handbook or a walking lexicon". To put my critical walking trajectory into practice, I practice a critical walk in the Historical Peninsula of Istanbul, around Eminönü, Hanlar District, where the movement and flow at ground level differ, and the direction of the walking body changes continuously depending on the spatial situations. As I walk, the concepts I relate throughout the thesis are being unraveled one by one. I have neither a predetermined target nor a specific speed. While I am walking, I record the walk. In these recordings, I note unexpected encounters, spatial differentiations, conversations of the people around me, my conversations with those around me, interesting events, the orientation of my body, the passages I enter and exit, the alleys or dead ends. Unique and context-specific conditions interact with my ideas and perception, causing me to make comparisons and encounter juxtapositions. I walk, discovering ground-level spatial stories as I walk, some obvious, some implicit. As if my walking body automatically wrote itself to the area I walk, my walk comes to a natural end by smashing the city into pieces along the way. With this practice, in the ARRIVAL, I make sense of "walking" as a critical spatial understanding that paves the way for different kinds of relationships between subjects and objects in terms of architectural design and is enriched by the perspective of each new observer – even by the experiences of the same observer at different times. I pursue temporary, perceptual and experiential architectural representation potentials that will replace the reduced top-down observation approach of architectural representation; I dream and describe a spatial conception based on walking that draws attention to the city, the body, and the dialogue between the two.