Doing Building Work: Methods at the Interface of Geography and Architecture

Abstract

This paper summarises the methodological approach taken in an interdisciplinary project involving geographers and architects. The project charted the diverse afterlives of the modernist‐inspired, state‐sponsored, residential high‐rise, and did so drawing on two cases: Red Road Estate in Glasgow and Bukit Ho Swee Estate in Singapore. In offering a specific account of, and reflection upon, the methodologies used in the High‐rise Project, we hope to advance the methodological repertoire of human geography generally and contribute further to the new wave of scholarship on geography and architecture.

Spatial agency and practising architecture beyond buildings

“…This research, therefore, directly responds to repeated calls for geographers to listen more carefully and work more closely with architects (Jacobs & Merriman, 2011;Jacobs et al, 2012;Kraftl, 2010a;Lees, 2001). I wish to further those concerns that recent geographic scholarship on architecture is becoming too restricted to a focus on buildings as the 'object' of research, even if such status is denied.…”

“…This is to emphasize that architects are not as powerful as often presumed, but also to focus upon those who situate their practices within such uncertainty rather than deny it through a retreat to abstract form-making. Through outlining the key tenets of spatial agency, I turn to discuss the methods used to engage with these 'spatial agents' in light of the repeated calls for geographers to work more closely with architects and other practitioners (Jacobs, Cairns, & Strebel, 2012;Jacobs & Merriman, 2011;Kraftl, 2010a;Lees, 2001). Drawing upon these interviews and informal interactions, I discuss the frustrations among contemporary architects surrounding their marginalization within 'conventional' land development and how this connects to broader questioning of their design practices in relation to the social production of space and their complicity in producing more commodity objects.…”

Enacting parenting policy? The hybrid spaces of Sure Start Children's Centres

“…The most material of these resources are perhaps the buildings themselves. Recent work in human geography has begun to pay attention anew to buildings and material environments as shaping experiences, seen not as the passive container of events but rather as events or performances in themselves (Jacobs, Cairns, and Strebel 2012;Jacobs and Merriman 2011;Rose, Degen, and Basdas 2011). A detailed discussion of these perspectives is beyond the scope of this article, however I want to suggest that there is scope to draw on this work in analysing the dynamics of institutional and semi-institutional spaces (e.g.…”

Farming ruins: a landscape study of incremental urbanisation

“…Relational geography captures the enactment of place and the importance of a heterogeneous set of actors (human and non-human) for its constitution (Qviström, 2017). While this is a wide field of research, the focus is narrowed to the discourse on maintenance and repair (Barnes, 2017;Edensor, 2011;Graham & Thrift, 2007;Jacobs, Cairns, & Strebel, 2012;McFarlane, 2011), especially studies on the successive decay and dismantling of buildings or networks once maintenance and repair have come to a stop (De Silvey, 2006;Edensor, 2005;Hommels, 2008;Qviström, 2012).…”