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Through a critical deployment of the surface/depth metaphor, this article explores the catalytic potential of topological thinking to establish points of articulation between apparently opposed notions and canons of thought. Starting from a genealogy of mathematical developments and philosophical mediations toward the end point of geography, we address the interplay between the formal (axiomatic) and conceptual (problematic) dimensions of topology in suggesting some potentially alternative ways of re-imagining the role of topological thinking for spatial theory and human geography. Keywords Topology, surface/depth, mathematics, spatial theory, human geography ''Deafen yourself to the noise of the expressible! Listen instead for the whisper of the taken-forgranted!'' (Gunnar Olsson, 1982: 224) ''The existing scientific concepts cover always only a very limited part of reality, and the other part that has not yet been understood is infinite. Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word 'understanding'.'' (Werner Heisenberg cited in Majid, 2012: 98)

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This paper explores creative reuse as an alternative modality to upcycle the materiality and documentary capacities of things, beyond the linear entrapments of historical or functional redundancy. Drawing on an amphibious ethnography of Volgograd's riverscapes, we analyse the floating churches inaugurated after the collapse of the Soviet Union to support the revival of faith practices. Acting as mobile centres of religious activity, they morph various temporalities, functions and places into multidimensional operative domains that range from the embodied practices of sailing and engaging in religious rituals to the making of sacred space at a regional level. We conclude by suggesting that their operations and impact rely on topologies of fixed points and shifting spatialities, which provide a salient vehicle for broader geographical interrogations of memory, creativity and mobility.

In this paper we explore creative reuse as a critical and imaginative mode of urban practice. By engaging with the case of De Ceuvel, an experimental community located in Amsterdam Noord, we submit three main affordances of creative reuse. Reuse value is accordingly discussed in relation to (a) abandonment, (b) the co-constitutive character of experimentation, and (c) the circulation of heterogeneous ideas and materials. In moving beyond circumstances of disposal and dissolution, the three affordances are evocative of a salvage value regime, which transcends conventional narratives of the city and a siloed treatment of urban sustainability. Based on the findings, we suggest that creative reuse interventions enact infrastructures of curatorship, capable of unsettling particular ways of dwelling, learning and narrating the city.