Transcription: Addressing the Interactivity Between Urban and Architectural Spaces and Their Use

This contribution looks at the social dimension of architectural and urban space, and proposes and analogy with literature to address the relationship between space and its use. It argues that the interactivity between writer and reader in literature, in the sense that the reader co-produces the text, also counts for the designer and the user of architectural and urban space. Following Lefebvre, de Certeau and Sennett, the paper discusses the importance to study everyday practices, and proposes the notion Transcription to address the role of activities, movements and events in space through literary methods such as perspective, character and narrative. The paper discusses how architects such as Libeskind, Eisenman and Tschumi have used such methods in their architectural designs.