SE562-ENVIRONMENT BEHAVIOR RESEARCH

HEIDI KORSAVONG

November 19, 2012

Mini Paper: Private and Public Space

The nature of power is complex and its application can be interpreted in numerous ways.  Power and how it relates to designers, architects, and scholars with relation to private and public space lies in examining social norms and the language used to define it.  It can be a strong tool for manipulation and employed on both micro and macro scales.  In three articles on private and public space, I will examine how power is used to control and frame perceptions of occupants in their space.

In, People Who Live in Glass Houses: Edith Farnsworth, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Philip Johnson, Friedman chronicles the events surrounding the conception and construction of the Farnsworth House, an iconic architectural work by Mies van de Rohe.  The home was designed in 1960 and conceived as a modern glass structure.  The client, Edith Farnsworth, an unmarried doctor in her mid forties, commissioned the home as a weekend retreat.  What is architecturally unique about the building is its thin, transparency curtain wall.  The openness of the structure draws attention the private space: and inner activities of the occupant.

Mirroring the physical transparency of the building, the different structures of power at work against the client, Edith Farnsworth also became exposed.  First, the client found herself at the mercy of the architect’s vision.  He was unconcerned with her programmatic needs and what she actually needed to live functionally and presented her with essentially an open plan, arguing that it was a demonstration of minimalism. In this case power is gained by positioning design decisions as a “choice between taste and mediocrity.”[i]  Using the form of the structure rather than any sensitivity to human activity resulted in a lifeless space devoid of any personalization and what Proshansky termed as place identity: a physical realization of one’s sense of identity and place in the world.

In addition to the uneven distribution of power between the client and architect, the glass structure revealed the  friction between the client’s lifestyle and socially acceptable norms of that era.  Being unmarried and without children, Farnsworth became the victim of public judgment.  The fact that the client was able to commission her own home is ironic because it is in keeping with the 1940s idea of success, but the fact that she was an unmarried woman, the popular sentiment at that time was that she, “forfeited her place, both physical and symbolic, within American Society.”  The concept of voyeurism was also brewing at the  was also catching on with the popularity of TV as a medium for consumption by disrupting the traditional divisions between the public and private spheres.  The glass walls of the Farnsworth home, sparked public interest and curiosity and allowed little control over the public gaze.

In, “Introduction: The Global and the Intimate,” authors Geralding Pratt and Victoria Rosner use feminism to cast light on the power of language at work in defining “global” and “intimate.”  Traditionally, these two terms are thought to be in on two ends of the spectrum and can be used as a way to exclude.  However, the authors argue that these terms are in fact intertwined and politics can be a motivating factor in having them be in opposition to one another.

When discussing the global sphere impersonal, abstract terminology is used.  The idea is that it is meant to be ungendered, which is assumed to embody the male persona.  Global terms cover concepts such as economics, globalization, and capitalism.  Here women are portrayed as passive bystanders, or even worse as victims in globalization scenarios.  By contrast, the inimate realm embodies traditionally feminine associations of the body, emotion, and attachment.  The authors point out that applying these associations to more global terms can help paint a more comprehensive picture.  Emotion can be a strong tool for analysis.  In binary opposition, objectivity is given over in favor of comprehension. Abstract terminology and language can only provide a framework, but cannot encompass individual experience.  Furthermore, using intimate terms has often been given negative connotations as a way of positioning and legitimizing restructuring policy.

Finally, in Putting the Public Back into Public Space,  Kurt Iveson discusses four models of public space: the ceremonial, the community, the liberal, and the multipublic. The ceremonial model of public space encompasses the conventional notion of public squares.  The spaces are embued with a processional quality and are thought to be state owned and provided to the public.  In this model, the agenda of the state is to encourage people to gather, but to always maintain some level of control over their socialization.  In the community model of space, the space is thought to be designated for the public to encourage community participation and attendance.  The success of the community model of public space lies in its effectiveness of providing the community with what it needs.  Typically, it is placed in a centralized location and embodies and individual’s positive place identity requirements: by fulfilling individual needs, rights, and meaning.  The liberal model of public space is conceived to be a multifunctional space where rational discourse and diversity are encouraged. Private individuals are thougth to come together and form this public space.  Iveson’s criticism of this is that the ideals set up in the liberal model of public space are in fact exclusionary because only the participants interests are represented as they will ensure their needs are met before others.  The last model Iveson examines is the multi-public model of public space.  He calls for the existence of a number of publics that are adaptable and mutable and will arise to accommodate a diverse group of publics.  It is in these models that power is achieved through perception and application.  those who own or indabit the space are able to control it.

In the case of my research question, language and perception are there key tools to the discussion of power.  For instance, there is not a single agreed upon definition of sustainablity.  The question is who defines it and what rules and regulation should follow it.  A common language and set of principles is needed to study and organize this framework. The private and public sphere are both affected by setting up these guidelines.  In my case, I am focusing on local artisans and small businesses.  It is on a small scale, with very little global impact.  However, within this microcosm there is a large potential to influence artisans to adopt sustainable practices in the materials they use and the waste from their production processes.  The obstacles to this are many as it is difficult to regulate and standardize.  Additionally, these guidelines need to be flexible or broad enough to adapt to each product. Finally, economics also comes into question.  By adopting sustainable pracices, do these small businesses and artisans gain a significant financial advantage?  Is their customer even interested in this shift?  Can you motivate change even if there is very little financial incentive?

Laura Novich

Mini Paper #3- Public Private

11-19-2012

Power is specific. Power can be dependent upon so many factors that are often out of our hands.  Power is a bureaucratic. Power can be rigid and inflexible and unable to accept new ideas and theories. Power can be a good thing, beneficial, but in the production of sustainable building materials, power plays a pivotal role in the slow development of the sustainable built environment movement.

Lloyd Irland’s article, “Developing Markets for Certified Wood Products”, 2007, is about how wood products that are cut from sustainable, certified forests are not being recognized as such due to lack of comprehension in the multi level supply chains and why this happens. It is important to understand the facts of where a system is failing in order to repair the problems. They did this by analyzing data that they had from the different parts of wood supply chains. Their key findings were that it is hard to market wood as certified through all the levels of supply chain. They explored those problems to help approach the situation and make the marketing of certified wood more apparent.

Power, in this case, takes the form of the supply chain. It is difficult to label a product sustainable when different parts of the company are not abiding by set standards, and often, unintentionally. Higher end employees that dictate how a supply chain should run often do not know what actually takes place in the production. There is a miscommunication happening and it is unfortunate because it is important for the different levels of the supply chain to work together to form a cohesive product. Everyone in the company should understand each leg of the product’s journey; the CEO should know just as much about the production as the factory workers. Without complete understanding, it is hard to believe in your company as a truly sustainable one, and to sell that idea, too.

Cecillia Gravina da Rocha’s article, “A Discussion on the Reuse of Building Components in Brazil: An Analysis of Major Social, Economical and Legal Factors”, 2009, is about how materials can be recycled and reused after construction, because the construction industry produces the greatest amount of waste and, thus, causes severe environmental problems. This is an important task because it will help create a more sustainable production model for others to use. The authors did a single embedded case study by taking available data from Porto Alegre, Brazil and analyzing it. They found through the data and their own supply chain management approach that economical and social factors, and not just the lower socio-economic class, support the reuse of building materials.   The summary argument is that by using their supply chain management approach, they can use it for “close loop” supply chains.

In this article, power was literal: public political power. Because of so many factors and restrictions, it is difficult to set standards in the building industry when it comes to construction waste and reusing it. Even if a country’s government agrees with the proposal, it still will take a long time to put the law or regulation into effect. This article explains how it is feasible to reuse waste from the construction industry, which is great, but you must ask yourself: how long will it actually take to make it happen? This is always the first thing that comes to my mind when I see potential change in the built environment: when will it actually happen?

Claire Cooper- Marcus’ article, “Environmental Memories”, 1992, is about how adults remember their surroundings as children, how they remember the spaces. This is important because it helps us to understand how people view their surroundings and how they react to certain spaces. It also helps to characterize what their preferences are for physical places. The author did this by taking first hand stories from many different people from all over the US and other countries.  Her key findings were that children all reacted to and remembered their surroundings differently. The summary argument is that place has a strong role in people and their upbringing and childhood, which is visible in their adult lives and careers.

Cooper-Marcus’ article explores how people dealt with power as children, how they saw their environment as a refuge from whatever was happening in their lives. The way they interacted with their surroundings mirrored how they would as adults.  For example, the one person who built a junky playhouse with his brother and then his father gave them a perfect one that he had bought. The children played with it to make their father happy, but then quickly returned to their original junky playhouse. That was their reaction to power and how they obeyed it initially, but then continued with what they originally were doing.

This one childhood anecdote could be an example of how companies produce excessive waste and are then targeted by the government to curb their emissions. The company addresses the problem, does what they are expected to do, and then once the government has stopped paying close attention, they revert back to their normal, polluting ways. The children in that story might not have grown up to be the employees implementing such tactics, but it was a strong similarity between how children react to power and how wasteful companies react to power.

Patrick Zou’s article, Managing Risks in Green Building Supply Chain”, 2012, is about how the new methods of green building can have an effect on the supply chain of companies and what risks they faced. This is important because understanding and addressing those problems could help promote and expand the industry. They sent out 250 questionnaires to professionals in Australia with 93 sent back, but only 91 valid. Their key findings were that it seemed possible to improve the green building industry, but there is a definite need for further research and development, education, experience, knowledge sharing and technology. The summary argument is that there was a general “lack of commitment in the supply chain to go green” and that there were financial risks companies felt were a result from green building.

This article explains how there are limitations to trying to achieve a green supply chain. Aside from governmental restrictions making it difficult to become a sustainably produced product, the company itself fears the financial risks. Companies are resistant to becoming a green, sustainably produced product because they think that the financial risks are far higher than what they expected or are prepared to pay. In this case, power is money. As much as we do not want to think that money controls everything, it does. Money is the root of business and, unfortunately, companies need to understand this and abide by it. However, money does not mean that a company cannot be sustainable and still make a profit. A company can very well make a solid profit if they make their production sustainable and change their supply chain approach.

Works Cited

Cooper-Marcus, C. 1992. “Environmental Memories” in Place Attachment, edited by Ian Altman and Setha
Low. NY: Plenum Press, 1-12.

da Rocha, Cecillia Gravina, and Miguel Aloysio Sattler. 2009. “A Discussion on the Reuse of Building Components in Brazil: An Analysis of Major Social, Economical and Legal Factors.” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 54 (2) (December): 104–112.

Irland, Lloyd C. 2007. “Developing Markets for Certified Wood Products.” Journal of Industrial Ecology 11 (2): 201–216.

Zou, Patrick X. W., and Paul Couani. 2012. “Managing Risks in Green Building Supply Chain.” Architectural Engineering & Design Management 8 (2): 143–158.