SPATIAL STRATEGIES SOLUTIONS

“Human thoughts, feelings, aspirations, values and beliefs are also manifestations of the universal essence, the energy-matter, the Qi. They are intangible, immeasurable, immaterial, but they influence our material realities, the material forms of our environment. The essential qualities inherent to these intangible manifestations we can read in the material forms, distributions and spatial relations of physical environment. Therefore it should be possible to construe places in their entirety and to influence the workings of human society by altering material forms. It should be as well possible to project both the material-spatial, tangible outcomes and the intangible social outcomes of policies, plans, actions, political systems...based on the qi-qualities of the intangible construct .“

This is an idea I have tried to explain more times than I can recount, on various occasions ranging from scientific conferences to private consultations. I have tried to explain it to people of all kinds of backgrounds, education and social standing. Some of them would probably give it a thought if I was a quantum physicist. Or an architect, like Niemayer, the designer of Brasilia. Or, at least an urbanist-minded city magistrate as Haussmann, the man who defined Paris. But I am not. I am a doctor of geography, an agricultural engineer, and I do feng shui consultations. The last one trumps all other education as it seems. So, knowing that I am into feng shui, which is, of course a “spiritual” practice, people immediately start talking about “chakras”, and “auras”, and “mind power”, and “bioenergy” and “power of positive thoughts” and other new-age common places. That happens when they try to be kind and understanding, for us “spiritual” people tend to be overly excited and quite exhaustingly preachy when our otherworldly ideas are challenged or not met with sympathy. And when they are less kind, they explain in no uncertain terms that material world is one thing, the immaterial is quite another and that thoughts, plans and ideas are not just “manifesting” but have to be manifested and materialized by willpower and, often, force. Of course, I am free to tell those naive housewives where should they put their beds for love, but no serious man would ever consider to “BELIEVE” in feng shui.

Of course, serious men BELIEVE (hic!) only in objective facts. Which is a contradiction in terms, but what do I know...

Anyway, the other day I have come upon some photos, which could be seen as objective visual evidence of human systems of values manifesting in the spatial-material dimensions, without any meditation, channeling, chanting, spell-casting or voodoo... Hope those are convincing enough, despite my “fengshuiconsultantness”.

The intangible becomes tangible: state borders

Border in itself is a term from the intangible domain. It is an imaginary line that separates two intangible entities – usually two states – on a map. The line of the border is designed to encircle a number of intangible common denominators for a population, like: values, social and political system, ethnicity, language, cultural relations, historical constructs, etc. Since society exists in space, these borderlines are mapped onto physical space. Now we have a tangible physical space assigned to an intangible entity – a country or state – which has a different “character” – an intangible quality – than its also intangible neighbors. Whether a border is permeable or not (hard border), depends on the level of similarity between the “characters” of entities separated by borders. If these “characters” are similar, the border is likely to be purely formal, hardly noticeable, while in case of difference of characters the borders are marked by hard, material forms.

The material forms marking borders even tend to grow and solidify through time as the difference between the entities grows. Which seems to be consistent with the rule “qi travels with wind and coming to stop at the edge of water it solidifies” , if we understand the intangible “character” as human qi, and the border between entities as limits of movement of this human qi. The process can be illustrated by the building of the infamous Berlin Wall, which was growing ever higher, more solid, more divisive as the cold war gained momentum.

First the Berlin Wall was just a barbed wire fence:

Later on a solid wall was built:

Even later barbed wire and other defensive, separating forms were added:

And finally the contained and built up movement of human qi brought down the wall, but only after the end of the cold war, when the two confronted blocs (entities) made efforts to reduce their differences:

The same process seems to be replicated these days on the southern borders of Hungary, where barbed wire was put to stop the influx of human qi (migrants):

Later on more solid elements were added, and the process is still ongoing:

But the whole thing is not just about politics. It is about the different characters, which lead to different actions, organizational patterns and different attitudes towards the physical space or towards environment if you like. Different qualities of human qi render different spatial forms.

By the picture from the border, it seems that the human qi is quite different in USA than in Mexico, and the difference is materialized – once again – in the form of a wall and the different spatial forms on each side of the wall:

The USA and Canada are not so different that a solid wall is needed, but the line still has to be drawn in the physical space:

The difference in relationship to environment between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is clearly manifested in different surface coverage:

A different, but not so radically opposed relationship to environment is shown by the picture of the border between Brasil and Bolivia:

The difference in land use defines the border between Poland and Ukraine, despite the land art intervention aimed at enhancing communication:

Some difference can even be spotted on borders that are the internal border within the EU, in this case between Germany and the Czech Republic:

We act and build our beliefs

Naturally, for each and every picture in this post one can find so called “rational” explanations of differences in politics, economics, history, culture...but the trick is that these rational explanations are rational within a relational frame of believing in reality of intangible collective entities and their differences. And that is exactly, what I had started with.

Underlying values and belief systems can be red from spatial forms. After all, tell me that “segregation” is not the first word coming into mind looking at the following picture:

For this is a picture of a project “Unequal Scenes”, in which Cape Town-based photographer Johnny Miller used a drone to show the inequality that exists in the Republic of South Africa. Miller explains that some of the communities were “designed with separation in mind,” while others grew “more or less organically.” This is the result of the Apartheid policies when racial segregation was enforced by law. While these policies were eliminated 22 years ago, in reality, “many of these barriers, and the inequalities they have engendered, still exist.”