A Response to 'Space and Place' - Yi-Fu Tuan

I have to admit, I struggled with this extract – it was slightly too philosophical for my understanding. However, I was able to take away some important elements of space and place to consider and question within my own work. Yi-Fu Tuan discusses the meaning of space and place in a very insightful and interesting way, posing space simply as somewhere one can move, saying ‘Space is experienced directly as having room in which to move’. He identifies that ‘place is a type of object. Places and objects define a space, giving it geometric personality’ and experience within a space, with these objects, is required to define it as a place, stating ‘An object or place achieves concrete reality when our experience of it is total, that is, through all the senses as well as with the active and reflective mind’. The importance of the senses is stressed quite heavily throughout this extract – Tuan says ‘Can senses other than sight and touch provide a spatially organised world? It is possible to argue that taste, odour and even hearing cannot in themselves give us a sense of space. Most people function with the fives senses, and these constantly reinforce each other to provide the intricately ordered and emotion-charged world in which we live’. From my understanding, Tuan sees place as an object, defined by the ways in which we experience it with our senses, and it these senses and experiences that transform a space into a place.

Reading this extract has encouraged me to consider my design work as more than just a visual entity, I should be looking at ways to change and improve the understanding of a space through the stimulation and use of other senses in order to fulfil the ‘experience’ that defines place-making.