SPATIAL STRATEGIES SOLUTIONS

SPATIAL AND SOCIAL STRATEGIES OF VERTICAL DISTRIBUTION

A simple, ancient, but nonetheless effective spatial strategy: placing high implies appreciation, placing low implies depreciation. Buildings situated high above our heads, on top of the hills or on high rocks we usually perceive as places of high importance, places of power. Heaven is the place of ultimate power (God, or Gods) in many cultures, and closeness to it, whether in ter...

Written by Dr Anna Markovic Plestovic

The moment that started the end of the cold war: Arrival of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev of the USSR for his first meeting with President Reagan for the Geneva Summit at Fleur D’Eau in Switzerland. (from Ronald Reagan Presidential library collection)

Reading an excerpt on the role feng shui played at the first Reagan-Gorbachev s...

By Dr Anna Markovic Plestovic

I have posted this article in May 2012 on my site in serbo-croatian. Now, on the margins of the events in Istambul, where the people are defending the trees and their lives from the ever growing appetite of "development", i have translated it...

" A society grows ...

Written by Anna Markovic Plestovic

Previously I wrote about the influence spatial forms may have on individuals and various levels of society. Now I would like to give an example how individuals express their values in spatial arrangements. Of course, if those individuals are prominent public figures of considerable power and wealth, their individual spatial expressions are likely to have a much further reaching influence, then just their individual lives. And if they happen to be th...

In a previous article I wrote about hierarchies of places deliberately shaped by the designs of spatial patterns. Now I would like to show the other way round, that spatial hierarchies can also define sense of social order and values through individual spatial experience. These influences are present and active on a long timeline, even transmitted to next generations t...

Is it possible that spaces where we lived in the past have left their mark on us, influencing our values, choices, behaviors? Could the understanding of these spatial patterns of our past bring us closer to understanding ourselves?

While reading the Timeless Way of Building I have come upon an intriguing passage. "All acts of building are governed by pattern language of some sort, and the patterns in the ...

Spatial hierarchy refers to the rank or order of importance of various spaces determined on the grounds of functional importance related to the concerned type of human activity and spatial importance expressed in size, volume, positioning, geometries and even symbolism of spaces and their shapes.

Well defined spatial hierarchies tend to make functioning and interactions of people better defined, more transparent, easier to manage, ...