THE EQUIVALENCE OF OBJECTS AND PEOPLE

We inhabit space - from our homes to our local communities and the broader built environment. However, from an architectural perspective we may often overlook the fact that at any point in time we share such space with a variety of objects - different scales, geography and temporalities that coexist.

SPATIAL PRACTICE REFLECTS a social sciences perspective - THAT the entanglement and indivisible nature of scales between human and non-human actors makes no distinction between a human being and an inanimate object.

We cannot ignore the humanising aspect of objects in architecture. Indeed, our occupation of space is reliant on objects - our agency is manifested in the freedom to choose those objects around us and to arrange them how we wish. An object may be an inanimate entity both with and without emotional ties. It might include that which is seen in the light of a purely economic and functional lifecycle - of production, usage and disposal. In this case the object is treated as a commodity - something that is used up. People may own it but it has a finite life.

Alternatively, it also includes something that has been imbued with some kind of emotional or ‘magical’ force - often taking on human qualities. In contrast to being a commodity, the personal or sentimental object is timeless and something that is kept, sometimes passed on.

Whichever it is - emotional or otherwise - it is its relationship with the individual that commands our attention. Such objects are inherently vital for our survival as individuals within this world and refer to their politics as a human right.

We might also offer a warning on contemporary society’s normalisation of objects as commodities - a city ‘living in the now’. Such commoditised objects serve to streamline the convenience so desired by modern lives, supporting the city as a process or infrastructure rather than a place AND PRESENTING THE CONVERSE DANGER OF the treatment of people as commodities.