Mediated Space Research Articles

Intermediary Spaces: The Small-Scale Urbanism of Jože Plečnik

The thesis of this article is two-fold. Firstly, Plečnik’s wartime and post-war projects deserve more research attention than they have received to date. A certain level of under-appreciation of Plečnik’s late work is probably a result of a lower number of realizations and perhaps also of insufficient research of this period compared to Plečnik’s career before that.1 Secondly, the article attempts to prove that in the last fifteen years of Plečnik’s life, the urbanistic character of his work was significantly upgraded. The focus lies on the changed urbanistic character of his wartime and post-war realized as well as unrealized projects. In them, the dissolution of the distinction between the interior and exterior of the buildings as well as between public, semi-public, and private programs was intensified, articulating a wide range of intermediary spaces that position many of his later works somewhere between architecture and urbanism. Plečnik’s strategy of small-scale urbanism had a substantial influence on his disciples, including modernist architects such as Edvard Ravnikar and Dušan Grabrijan, who developed a distinct interplay between the principles of international style and original solutions based on local traditions.

Children, Border(land)s and mixed economies of welfare

This special issue is a comprehensive exploration of the pivotal role of state borders in shaping child welfare in various European borderlands from the First World War to the present. The richly detailed articles present a diverse range of historical and social-scientific perspectives, offering a comprehensive understanding of the complex dynamics at play. Each case study sheds light on a unique aspect of the mixed economies of welfare in borderland areas, collectively proposing a framework for analysing the intricate influence of welfare providers on children’s well-being in the intermediary spaces.

Optimization of underground open intermediary space comfort in TOD complexes: A case study of Chongqing, China.

Rapid urbanization drives social development, but at the same time brings sustainable development Rapid urbanization drives social development, but at the same time brings sustainable development advantages of expanding underground space and relieving urban traffic congestion. High quality TOD complexes with natural elements in the intermediary space have been considered as one of the important means to address sustainable urban development. Nevertheless, intermediary spaces in TOD complexes face various challenges, such as significant contradictory factors in their physical environment spaces. This study classifies the underground open intermediary space into four types according to the characteristics of TOD complexes. And for these four types'Cthe physical environment-generated by various influencing factors of planar geometric, three-dimensional geometric, and detailed construction elements-is simulated using a numerical simulation method based on a static Taguchi experiment. The results demonstrate that space shape is a primary influencing factor for luminous and thermal environments; the window-atrium ratio (W/A ratio) and hole-atrium ratio (H/A ratio) comprise contradictory factors between the luminous and thermal environments of these spaces; profile inclination angle and sunken plaza height are primary impact factors for the acoustic environment; and skylight type has minimal influence on the physical environment. On average, their luminous and acoustic environment comfort can be improved by 200%; whereas, their thermal environment comfort can be improved by 21% and the potential for optimizing it in their shallow space (underground space depth ≤ 10 m) is relatively low. Subsequently, the necessity of comfort optimization as the passive optimization design of underground open intermediary spaces' physical environment in TOD complexes in the future is discussed. Finally, the feasible path and prospect of how to improve the livability and comfort of the spatial physical environment of TOD complexes are discussed and prospected.

Gender segregation in parliamentary committees of Turkey: Intermediary spaces of women's political representation

Do the Turkish parliamentary committees exhibit gendered appointment practices? If so, what are the driving factors behind women's limited representation in some committees? Previous studies find a division of labor in committees based on the perceived gender roles: women legislators are over-represented in low-prestige committees with “feminine” themes such as family, health, and education, whereas they are under-represented in strategically key policymaking committees. These studies —mostly on Western democracies— explain this gender bias with the appointment practices of the conservative right-wing parties. Using an original dataset of appointments between 2002 and 2020, this paper examines the partisan effects on the under- and over-representation of women on certain committees in the Turkish context. We find that all parties except the small left-wing Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP) perform in a similarly biased way. We argue that parliamentary committees are gendered institutional spaces greatly affected by the institutional culture of political parties. Even though institutional culture is mostly shaped by ideological stances, political parties are still among institutional spaces where ideologies of masculinity are effectively shaping power relations. We conclude that institutionalizing mechanisms that enhance agential capacities and practices at the party level are vital for gender equality within the political sphere.

Bridging home and school in cross-border education: The role of intermediary spaces in the in/exclusion of Mainland Chinese students and their families in Hong Kong

Over the last two decades the Hong Kong government has made considerable investments to develop the city into a regional education hub, with ‘diversification’ as a key aim. The vision is, however, delinked from the tens of thousands of young children residing in Shenzhen who commute to Hong Kong for school daily. These children embody differences that are considered undesired and their social exclusion has been widely reported. Taking a spatial perspective, this paper deepens our understanding of the in/exclusion processes impacting these children. Drawing on our policy analysis, interviews, observations in physical spaces and digital media, this paper analyses the role that intermediary spaces play in (re)producing differences and social relationships. Specifically, we examine the power geometries of the children’s school journey and school-related digital space, which are arenas where social differences are played out and in/exclusion is practiced and negotiated. We analyse the network of state and non-state actors at work in these intermediary spaces, showing the complex ways in which separation and integration, exclusion and inclusion intersect and constitute each other mutually. Our paper also gives some first insights into the impact of COVID-19 on the school children within this education mobility field.

Counter‐Clinical Spaces1

Intermediary spaces between health social movements and biomedicine have proliferated since the 1970s and have typically been analyzed through the lenses of co‐optation or hybridization. In this article, we present data from two separate empirical projects (teaching and learning the pelvic exam in medical schools and feminist anti‐violence counseling programs) in order to theorize what we call “counter‐clinical spaces.” Counter‐clinical spaces are medicalized sites of knowledge production and practice that are produced through social movements’ contestations with biomedicine. Other examples include sexual assault nurse examiner programs, LGBT health centers, and sexual health clinics. Counter‐clinical spaces are “counter” and “clinical” in several ways. First, these spaces are distinctly clinical in that they intervene in the health of the body. Second, these spaces are counter‐clinical in that they are organized in critique of dominant medical practices. Crucially, counter‐clinical spaces engage the clinical encounter as a site of transformation: social movement actors target clinicians’ deployment of medical power, especially in their interactions with marginalized persons. We thus attend to the scale upon which social movements make a change in and against medicine, and we highlight how social movement logics can and do change practices even when they are unable to shift structures.

Reconfigurações do espaço rural e do cotidiano familiar: os sujeitos e suas práticas com as tecnologias de comunicação

No artigo se apresenta pesquisa que investigou a apropriação e a incorporação das tecnologias de comunicação (SILVERSTONE, HIRSCH e MORLEY, 1996), por famílias da agricultura, em um meio rural específico do Sul do Brasil. A perspectiva de análise é comunicacional, mas com abordagem socioantropológica, que faz dialogar duas áreas distintas de conhecimento - Comunicação e Desenvolvimento Regional. A pesquisa original se desenvolveu entre 2014 e 2018, envolvendo pesquisa bibliográfica e de campo, articulando um conjunto de técnicas como: formulário, registro fotográfico, relato de campo e entrevista. A análise teve por base os mapas de comunicação de Jesús Martín-Barbero (2018), e articulou as chaves teórico-analíticas da institucionalidade, socialidade, tecnicidade, ritualidade, espacialidade, temporalidade e mobilidade. Os resultados apontam para a existência de movimentos contraditórios de inclusão e exclusão digital, com existência de aspectos facilitadores e impeditivos de acesso às tecnologias de comunicação; para a forte mediação do espaço e do tempo na apropriação e incorporação das tecnologias; e para a constituição de uma certa ruralidade para a qual as TICs são componentes importantes.

Spaces of Intercommunal Musical Relations in Ottoman Istanbul

The overall aim of this article has been to address those understated intermediary spaces that were produced in the context of musical interaction among the various communities residing in Istanbul in the Ottoman era. The underpinning theme in defining those spaces and tracing their dynamic trajectory throughout the history of the city has been the quest for voicing the diverse elements that composed them. This task has shown that the internal stratification of communities was often quite more multifaceted than previously thought and that the subsequent layers are not always easily traceable. As demonstrated, the internal diversity of communities was based both on the cultural and the social background of its members. Moreover, the makeup of each community and its musicians was constantly renewed through immigration. A consequent challenging question that needs to be addressed is whether and how this diversity was expressed in musical terms.

REFLECTIONS FROM HOMELAB: DEVELOPING TASKS TO MEASURE UPPER-BODY FUNCTION IN A SIMULATED HOME

Homelike research spaces provide a unique context for studying older adulthood by blurring the boundaries between the participant’s own home and traditional laboratories. Such intermediary spaces hold promise for developing measures of functional performance with increased ecological validity. While “home labs” are becoming more accessible at institutions around the world, the research design process in these spaces contains hidden challenges that can be a barrier to entry for the uninitiated. We identify and reflect on these challenges through the lens of a recent protocol built to assess upper-body performance among older adults during activities of daily living. The U-M HomeLab served as a proving ground for four example tasks: opening a water bottle, sorting pills, tying an apron, and hanging laundry. The evolution of each task is traced through ideation, testing, and refinement, culminating in a pilot among nine community-dwelling volunteers aged 61 to 72 with upper-body pain. Based on this experience, we recommend that designers of naturalistic tasks in homelike environments give special consideration to (1) feasibility, (2) scorability, and (3) safety while carefully balancing standardization against verisimilitude. In turn, each of these elements must be grounded not only in the context of the facility itself but also in the population using that facility. Among older adults with upper body pain, considerations included remaining cognizant of fall risk, anticipating and capturing compensatory behaviors, tailoring task difficulty for a wide range of physical ability, and accounting for the impact of historically gendered divisions of labor on task performance.

Caught in the middle? Creating and contesting intermediary spaces in low-carbon transitions

The distributed nature of renewable energy has given rise to new forms and scales of energy governance, in particular the emerging role of households and community organisations in generating and distributing renewable energy. Accompanying this trend has been the emergence of intermediary organisations, whose role it is to mediate between these actors cf. the market and the state, with the aim to move from local experimentation to widespread transformational change. While in recent years a significant body of research has emerged that has considered intermediary functions, less is known about intermediary spaces. By tracing how intermediary spaces are shaped, negotiated, protected, and expanded, this article makes three contributions to the literature on energy governance and low-carbon intermediaries. First, a focus on the relational nature of intermediary spaces challenges the community/state binary in energy governance. Second, it highlights the power dynamics behind these emergent relational spaces; showing such spaces are not neutral, but produced through social relations within and beyond them, affecting the functions that intermediaries seek to fulfil. Third, it provides an understanding of how the ever-changing nature of intermediary spaces can also enable new spaces for action to emerge and challenge the status quo.

Mapping the ‘presency’ of women in cities

This paper explores how innovative ways of mapping both the presence and the agency of contemporary women in cities may support the emergence of emancipatory placemaking perspectives and previously unrecorded narratives. It starts by proposing ‘presency’ as a new concept, merging the meaning of presence, as a mindful way of paying attention to life; and agency, as critical awareness of the context and capacity to act. It examines the pace of urbanisation of the world and the revisited role of women in their mediation of space and making of place including efforts to forge a new framework of regenerative urban development. It proposes different mapping approaches to capture a mosaic of regenerative practices led by women addressing how cities of present and future can be green and inclusive. It concludes by suggesting that the act of mapping spatially and ‘from within’ the way women experience and act in the city may unleash women’s emancipatory place-making skills, moving cities systems up to higher orders of integrated expression.

Workshop: Bucharest. Reclaiming the Intermediary Space of the Porticoes

Porticoes are intermediary spaces with an important urban role. Although they are first of all spaces of passage, meant to protect the passers-by from bad weather conditions, through their configuration they also become social spaces, negotiating the relationship between street and the (usually) public functions along them. This article presents the short research and the interventions proposed by the participants at the workshop having as a theme: “Bucharest. Valorising the intermediary space of the porticoes”. The theme opened to discussion was that of valorising the porticoes on Ion Câmpineanu Street, in Bucharest, porticoes that now hardly meet their main function of protecting the people that cross them (much less auxiliary functions), being disagreeable and abusively occupied by extensions of the commercial spaces they separate from the street. After a short introduction of the event and the context of its unfolding, the article points to the role of the porticoes in the urban configuration and at a social level as well. Then we shortly present the actual status of the Bucharest porticoes (including those studied at the workshop), and at the end we publish the four projects proposed by the multidisciplinary teams of participants.

Glimpse into a world of recorded absence

Abstract Flimmer renders visible the intermediary spaces or the ‘spaces in-between’ its underlying components. It advances a world that grows out of absence, discontinuity and division.

What is planning?

IntroductionI've often been asked, 'so what is anyway?' As I suspect with much of the planning fraternity, this question usually elicits a vague response about coordinating how society interacts with and within built and natural environments. To more academically attuned ears I might even venture to present the Royal Town Planning Institute's (RTPI) more thought-provoking, but equally ambiguous, assertion that planning is 'the mediation of space; making of place'. Neither explanation normally satisfies my interlocutor. I am thus compelled to list examples of common practitioner activities. Unfortunately, as the list lengthens so too shortens the tolerance of my quizzer as they generally fail to see how diverse activities such as transport planning, environmental assessment and community development can be legitimately held together beneath the rubric of 'planning'. If I can retain their interest a little further, I'll typically relate a litany of objectives. Somewhere in here I'll describe how planners act as facilitators who provide expert knowledge in assisting stakeholders reconcile different perspectives on a planning matter. Should I be probed on what a 'planning matter' comprises, I'm liable to find myself circling back to my initial vague response or falling onto the bureaucratic crutch of 'what is specified by policy and regulation'. Yet we as practitioners and academics intrinsically feel that there is more to planning than this. Nevertheless, trying to somehow convey what this elusive 'more' entails is commonly a challenge. This Viewpoint offers a perspective on identifying this 'more' by attempting to answer the all-too-often uncomfortable question 'what is planning?'1What is planning?The literature abounds with different conceptions of what planning involves. To properly understand them, it is necessary to appreciate the journey planning has taken as a discipline. Some trace planning's lineage to public health, some to engineering, and others to architecture. However, there is a general consensus that modern 'planning' emerged as a response to the appalling living conditions of the late Industrial Revolution (Hall and Tewdwr-Jones, 2011; Cullingworth et al., 2014). Such early ideas about planning did not differentiate it from the 'art' of design and viewed it as essentially 'architecture writ large' (Taylor, 1998, 159). This outlook conceived planning as the designing of blueprints for the desired state of an area. Here, planning was seen to have far-reaching control over the evolution of society's relationship with the space in which it was embedded. However, with a growing recognition of urban complexity, this morphologically and aesthetically centred view became increasing untenable as sociological understandings of space gained academic respect (Harvey, 2010). Buoyed by the growing dominance of positivism, planning became ever more focused on 'systems' and how to scientifically evaluate and determine the optimal choice in a series of alternatives (McLoughlin, 1969). Thus the focus of planning moved from the design of space to mapping and predicting the complex processes that shape spaces. With this move, planning shifted category from 'art' to 'science'. However, the dominance of systems thinking was not unanimously welcomed, with several prominent thinkers on planning arguing that the preoccupation with scientific methods was losing sight of normative goals (Hirt and Zahm, 2012). Hence emerged a movement in planning that conceived planning as 'advocating' on behalf of those who live, work and use the spaces being planned (Davidoff, 1996). This movement ultimately laid the foundations for a philosophically sophisticated drive towards bottom-up inclusion and consensus seeking in planning (Forester, 1999; Healey, 2005). Here, planning is essentially viewed as 'managing' the decision-making process. This 'collaborative' approach ostensibly dominates planning practice today, at least in the UK and Ireland. …

From Space to Location

This article considers a possible logic of evolution in Indian cinema, which rests on the movement from space as stage of action, imbued with value, to a multiplication of secularized intermediary spaces. The encounter with the city—a defined geography and grid—made its own contribution to this process of narrative rationalization. At the same time, that encounter also released the impulse of pure recording and description, at odds with the narrative propulsion. The article places this logic in relation to the demise of the mass film in contemporary times, and it attempts to read the treatment of space in Indian cinema in relation to the location of film production itself.

The Aesthetic Experience of Time, in between the Hourglass and the Self

This article interrogates time and presents the results of an ethnographic study in a railway station in the suburbs of Paris. More in particular, it analyses the interactions of some of the passengers with ‘Texel’, an experimental artistic dispositive composed of a number of hourglasses that responds to the movements of the passengers. The study identifies several processes and conditions that explain why some passengers did interact with Texel, while others did not.  Subsequently, it explores aesthetic experiences realized during the interaction of people with the device. It focuses on the passage from “aesthetics of perception” to “aesthetics of operation”, and on interactive works of art creating such aesthetics.  It observes that this takes place in spaces in between the internal experience of the passenger and the external reality of the artistic device, and that this aesthetics is transdisciplinary as it integrates cognition, emotions and enacting. Finally, the article explores some links between aesthetic experience and transdisciplinary hermeneutics, and between intermediary spaces of experience and Nicolescu’s concept of the Third Included.

Multiple interests or unified voice? Online communities as intermediary spaces for development

While the uptake of online communities toward development purposes continues to grow, many are characterized by an unresolved tension. On the one hand, they benefit from participation of heterogeneous stakeholders in their efforts to strengthen their expertise. On the other hand, these stakeholders represent highly diverging interests, which makes collective strategic action very challenging. To understand how online communities cope with this tension, we conducted a longitudinal, mixed method case study of an online community focused on development transportation. We argue that online communities are uniquely equipped, through their fluidity and open-endedness, to enable knowledge creation and agenda-setting. In so doing, online communities afford an ‘intermediary space’ that simultaneously accommodates both convergence and divergence of interests. Our study strengthens the bridge between information systems research and development studies, by highlighting the potential of ICT uptake toward ‘remaking participation’ in development debate, while including the perspectives of heterogeneous interest groups.

Paving the Way to Prosperity: Ford Motor Company’s Films, Interstitial Rhetoric, and the Production of Economic Space in the Interwar Period

This essay examines the production of economic space as a rhetorical project in the motion picture work of Ford Motor Company between 1918 and 1945. On film, Ford’s overlapping visual narratives worked to position abstractions like markets, commodities, and class as spatially experienced entities grounded in the materiality of roads, village industries, and national parks. When presented to an American public working through ideas of national identity, isolationism, and economic depression during the interwar period, these films played an integral role in shaping the trajectory of the American landscape to this day. Moreover, in taking up this set of artifacts, I position Ford Motor Company as a unique category of spatial rhetor—an institutional figure large enough and powerful enough to generate and distribute narratives that can crack open the codified elements of social life and insert, in the newly formed intermediary spaces, images of individuals performing industrial or corporate identities.

Intermediary Spaces Linking Urban Space to Buildings: Functions and User Satisfaction in Three Mixed-Use Complexes

Contemporary cities have different types of mixed-use complexes to increase urban density for preventing suburban sprawl. Intermediary space is a third space that connects a mixed-use complex and its surrounding area. This study examined the main functions of intermediary spaces and user satisfaction with the intermediary spaces’ amenities in three European mixed-use mega-complexes. It focused on various amenity elements in intermediary spaces, including daylight, noise, green space, condition of facility, management, and accessibility. The data were collected through site visits and a questionnaire survey of space users in the three mixed-use complexes. Major findings identified the main purposes of visitation to intermediary spaces, the amenity elements affecting user satisfaction, and the relationship between users’ satisfaction with these spaces and their perceptions of the complexes. Results showed that intermediary spaces functioned in various ways and users’ satisfaction with these spaces related closely to their perceptions of complex buildings. Evidence from the research will provide important guidelines for improving environmental quality of intermediary spaces to make them more functional for space users.

Assemblages of Experts: The Caribbean Court of Justice and the Modernity of Caribbean Postcoloniality

This essay explores the ways that new judicial formations centered on the Caribbean Court of Justice provide a space for understanding the workings of various legal rights brokers as central to a project of Caribbean regionalism. It examines the intermediary spaces in which legal brokers—predominantly nationals of countries in the region—are reconstructing legal regimes through which new spaces of Caribbean regional unity are taking shape. The development of such formations further accentuates the need to understand the particularities through which new regionalisms underlay old forms of social organization and, thus, are becoming relevant in the ways regions are being reinscribed in increasingly international spheres of engagement. The agents engaged in such spheres of international and regional governance are transforming juridical structures in the Caribbean. These changes are taking place not simply through the workings of national institutions, such as schools and cultural life, but also through the circulation of assemblages of judges and lawyers, leaders, international nongovernmental organizations, and consultants who provide a certain level of expertise toward regional integration. What characterizes this formation is not just its judicial structure but the politicians, experts, and judges who function in the advancement of a particular social cause. The mobility of these actors and the products of their knowledge mark an important change in the political organizing that has accompanied and facilitated the massive decentralization of capital accumulation worldwide. What distinguishes this Caribbean-basin form of regionalism from earlier forms is its dream of membership in the international community and its brokers' circulation on the world stage. These brokers, experts of sorts, travel from region to region. This article interrogates how to make sense of the emergence of these cosmopolitan brokers in relation to locations historically imagined as the Caribbean.