Negotiating Space and Space of Negotiation: Consuming Spaces in the Urban Kampong

Abstract

The understanding of place cannot be undertaken without major theoretical endeavor. To know something as apparently simple as the social relations of place and its consumption is to have to engage with a sophisticated array of social theorizing. Built environment (space) will be naturally transformed into a place by desirable quality of human intervention: people permeate it with life and spirit of place. Space is a material product, in relation with other material elements â among others, men, who themselves enter into particular social relations, which give to space a form, a function, a social signification. (Castells,1979: p.115). It is emphasized by Lefebvre proposition about (social) space is a (social) product (Lefebvre, 2007, p.26). Therefore, it is relevant to analyze urban space and its architecture as the spatial products of the socio-cultural representation. Meanwhile, Habraken mentioned that intimate and unceasing interaction between people and the forms they inhabit uniquely defines built environment (Habraken, 2000). In addition, Habraken argued that built environment is universally organized by the Orders of Form, Place, and Understanding. These three fundamental, interwoven principles correspond roughly to physical, biological, and social domain. For those grounds, this paper is an attempt to develop theoretical understanding about production and consumption of social space on the basis of everyday life spatial practices in the domestic setting of Urban Kampong settlement.