Local Cultures – Global Spaces

Abstract

In an international and emerging body of work, scholars situated in spatial disciplines have offered novel methodological approaches to document and reveal new and generative insights into complex place-based social and ecological phenomena. This essay draws on the work of key creative practice based scholars Lillian Chee, Huda Tayob, Jane Wolff and Nishat Awan to illustrate that representational tools and techniques in architecture can be used to anchor situated knowledges that are social, material, and temporal, fostering a critical reading of place. Some methods and creative outputs capture the minutiae of everyday materialities that may not be noted by ethnographic methods, revealing unique insights into subaltern and minority occupations of place that rely on ephemeral and material appropriations tracking across time. Others use common architectural devices such as the plan and section to capture hierarchy, scale, relationships between spaces and objects in space, through which social relationships and social complexity can be articulated. Meanwhile as argued by Tayob, shifting from photo-realistic representation to drawing/diagramming allows for the de-identification of participants and research subjects and the insertion of conceptual meaning. The resulting creative outputs not only contribute to and extend disciplinary knowledge, but also communicate complex ideas in a way that appeal to a broad audience, shifting public perception and debate. The essay argues that this body of knowledge and the creative and critical capacities of spatial scholars has the potential to ‘transform a precarious present’ by documenting and deciphering complex place-based phenomena in this way.