You are on page 1of 3

“The villa thus combined in a single unit of material production the general traits of Roman society

(an order grounded in juridical principles), refined, albeit not very creative – aesthetic taste, and a
search for the comforts of life.”

Henri Lefebvre (1991) The Production of Space, p. 252.

All cultures have their cults. A quick Amazon search for recently published books on “home” finds a
plethora of user guides to life improvement through home rearrangement: Shearer & Teplin’s The
Home Edit: Conquering the clutter with style, Walton’s This is Home: The art of simple living,
Rapinchuk’s Clean Mama’s Guide to a Healthy Home: The simple, room-by-room plan for a natural
home and Blomquist’s Home is Where the Heart Is: How to create a home you love, to mention but
four works published over the last year. The message is clear: greater contentment, greater
achievement and self-actualisation are there for the grasping through an explicit design and practice
of dwelling. We may sneer at the programmatic optimism of such guides, but to at least some
degree we all do it – we take active steps to dwell comfortably – we all arrange the place we live and
work in, in order to (hopefully) achieve desirable effects and to eliminate, or hold at bay those things
that might otherwise leave us feeling disorientated, and alienated from our surroundings. Matters of
comfort and discomfort have profound effects upon our built and natural environments, upon our
society and our economy (the UK ‘home improvement’ market is said to be worth £12 billion p.a.).

With these thoughts in mind, the SHU Space & Place Group’s programme of events this year will be
enquiring into the comforts and discomforts of place.

The SHU SPG group promotes dialogue and collaboration across the full range of disciplines
interested in matters of space and place, both within Sheffield Hallam University, and beyond. We
have been active since 2012, each year running informal events which playfully explore relevant
themes. Previous years have seen us focus on ‘the politics of space’, ‘infrastructure’, ‘soundscapes’
and ‘spaces of learning and doing’.

The SHU Space & Place Group will be running three events this semester, as warm ups for our
Annual Away-Day in early July.

Details of our events are given below. Each event is free-standing (and free to attend) but each will
explore an aspect of the year’s theme, through different angles and formats. The first two events are
intentionally small, in order to maximise participant engagement, the third is a little larger and the
fourth (our Annual Away Day) will feature a mix of sessions which – based on previous years – will
attract around 60 delegates.

Booking for Events 1 and 2 is via email to me (l.e.bennett@shu.ac.uk) due to the need to keep an
eye on participant numbers. An Eventbrite booking sites will be set up for Events 3 and 4 in due
course. The links will be added here when available, as will further details of the Annual Away Day
programme as it evolves over the course of the three warm-up events.

EVENT 1: a discussion workshop on "The afteruses of 'Uncomfortable Heritage' places", 2-4pm on


Friday 8 March (City Campus, Howard 5533)

This discussion will focus upon Pendlebury et al’s recent paper on the reuse of ‘uncomfortable’
heritage places (Pendlebury, Wang & Law (2018) ‘Re-using ‘uncomfortable heritage’: the case of the
1933 building, Shanghai’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24(3) 211-229). The discussion
will be led by Carolyn Gibbeson, Luke Bennett and Simon Kincaid (all of SHU, Natural & Built
Environment) who will each briefly explaining how their own research work touches on aspects of
managing (or erasing) ‘difficult’, ‘dark’ or ‘uncomfortable’ buildings and places. This will then lead
into a wider, open group discussion of Pendlebury et al’s paper in relation to themes such as:

i) Is re-use imperative for Uncomfortable Heritage? Can/should it be left to die? Is an


imperative to utility maximisation and/or profitable reuse wrong?

ii) Is there a gap between studies of conservation (and its materialities) and heritage (and its
focus on meaning making). How better could this gap be closed?

iii) Do we see the 'buildings of control and reform' category as helpful in explaining why
certain types of building are particularly hard to re-purpose?

iv) Isn't academic writing about the (former) lives of buildings as much an example of
narrative engineering and a selective memorialisation and forgetting as that of the
redeveloper/marketer?

v) How helpful do we find Luna's (2013) classification of reuse types as autonomous,


symbiotic or parasitic?

vi) Is heritage preserved and/or revealed in the materiality, architectonic and experiential
qualities of being within a re-purposed building? How important are those qualities and the
atmosphere that they create, and is it always benign / something that adds value,
authenticity etc?

Delegates will need to have read Pendlebury et al’s paper before the event and to have registered
for the event (by emailing l.e.bennett@shu.ac.uk).

EVENT 2: a discussion workshop on “Getting comfortable with Lefebvre’s spatial triad”, 2-4pm on
Wednesday 10 April (City Campus, Harmer 2401)

This workshop will be led by Yvonne Rinkart (SHU, Natural & Built Environment), and it will offer up
an opportunity to explore Henri Lefebvre’s notoriously Delphic but ubiquitous ‘spatial triad’, The
session will be based around a close reading of extracts from Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of
Space (pages 33 and 38 to 43 of Donald Nicholson-Smith’s translation published by Blackwell in
1991) combined with an opportunity to ‘learn by doing’ by interrogating ‘concepts in space’ within
the setting of the City Centre campus’ atrium. This active investigation of theory and research
practice is in keeping with the SHU SPG’s interdisciplinary assay of the Southbourne Building in 2013.
Big times lie ahead for the atrium space (it is soon to be closed for a 16 month refit). This makes it a
great venue to think about the past, present and future weave of designed intentions, everyday uses
and rhythms to be found in this busy University space.

Delegates will need to have the Lefebvre’s extracts before the event and to have registered for the
event (by emailing l.e.bennett@shu.ac.uk). Delegates will also find it helpful to have considered the
aspirations of the SHU Estates Masterplan for the refit [here] alongside the following critical article
on the link between University design, comfort and productivity: Hancock & Spicer (2011) ‘Academic
Architecture and the Constitution of the New Model Worker’, Culture and Organization, 17 (2) 91-
106.

EVENT 3: a seminar on “Feeling comfortably at home: Four investigations”, 2-4pm on Wednesday


15 May 2019 (Collegiate campus, room tbc)
This event, which will be led by Jenni Brooks (SHU, Sociology), will draw together a cross section of
researchers and creators who have as their core concern the design, use and enjoyment of
comfortable dwelling, both in domestic and other settings. Giving 15 minute presentations, each
speaker will range across questions such as: Where is home? What does it mean to dwell
comfortably? How can different groups’ (and individuals’) needs for comfortable dwelling spaces
differ? To what extent can design that pursues homeliness be divisive or discriminatory? Speakers
will include:

 Jenni Brooks presenting on how people with dementia articulate their sense of home and
community in their blogging activities;
 Jonathan Took (SHU, Natural & Built Environment) on the inclusive design of school
environments to better address the needs of autistic learners:
 Joanne Lee (SHU, Institute of Arts) on the strange correspondence of the
Danish hygge home-aesthetic and UK notions of cleanliness and anti-immigration sentiment;
and
 Anja Uhren (freelance illustrator, www.anjauhren.com) talking about the inspiration for, and
her execution of, her graphic works Home and Where Is Home?.

There will then be an open discussion of ‘comfort’ across all sense of ‘dwelling’. All welcome. Further
details on venue and how to book will be provided nearer the time.

EVENT 4: the SHU Space & Place Annual Awayday 2019 “Comfortable and Uncomfortable
Places”: 9am-5pm Wednesday, 3rd July 2019 (provisional date – and venue tbc, probably the
Sheffield’s (former) Head Post Office)

The Awayday will pull together (and/or extend) strands emerging from Events 1 to 3 within its more
expansive and playful format. Therefore the content for this event is likely to emerge over the
months ahead, and we’re happy to receive any expressions of interest from colleagues (within or
beyond SHU) who would like to do something to contribute to exploring the comfort // discomfort
of place at our event in July. We already have a keynote presentation by Amanda Crawley Jackson
(French Studies, University of Sheffield) who will speak on discomfort from the perspective of
plasticity, post-traumatic landscapes & difficult urban memory, drawing upon Lefebvre and Georges
Didi-Huberman to do so. If you would like to offer any suggested contribution please email any
ideas to me, at: l.e.bennett@shu.ac.uk.

Booking and venue details will be confirmed by an announcement here in due course.

You might also like