Heterogeneous Space

Definition

Heterogeneous space is the spatial paradigm Christopher Hight, Michael Hensel, and Achim Menges propose for the digital age, against modernism's homogeneous "universal space": space that is "ordered through differential relationships between diverse systems leading to a multiplicity of atmospheres." Its defining properties, as Carraher assembles them: it is not neutral but active — space that "proudly displays its dynamism" rather than hiding its effects; it is differential — ordered by the differing relations among systems (material, environmental, social, performative) rather than by a uniform order imposed on them; and it is empowering — space that can affect change "through the empowerment of others, allowing them to engage in their spatial environments in ways previously unknown or unavailable to them, opening up new freedoms and potentials as the result of reconfigured social space."

The concept diagnoses a developmental imbalance in contemporary practice: "Our repertoire of spatial concepts and our ability to understand and work with them remain relatively underdeveloped compared to the formal innovations, programmatic savvy, and critical sophistications of the past decades" — forty years of form without a comparably rich theory of the space in which it occurs. Hight, Hensel, and Menges add the reflexive twist: space is "a blind spot of architectural discourse" precisely because it is modern architecture's constitutive problem — and yet "an architect is trained to have an intimate and perhaps a certain expert knowledge about space, even if it remains unarticulated as such." Heterogeneous space names that unarticulated knowledge's coming to terms.

Key Thinkers

• Christopher Hight, Michael Hensel & Achim Menges — the concept's authors (Space Reader: Heterogeneous Space in Architecture, 2009; "En Route: Toward a Discourse on Heterogeneous Space beyond Modernist Space-Time and Post-Modernist Social Geography"): differential ordering, multiplicity of atmospheres, space as discourse's blind spot (not yet paged — see log).
• Erin Carraher — the transmission into interior architecture: heterogeneous space as the target of digital praxis, and the empowerment criterion as its social test.
• Henri Lefebvre — the antagonist-turned-source: modernity's homogeneous space and its Bauhaus production regime as what heterogeneous space must move beyond.
• Marc Fornes / THEVERYMANY — the built edge case (via Carraher): installations promising "a new form of interiority that is both heterogeneous and homogeneous" (not yet paged — see log).

Related Concepts

• Homogeneous Space — the modernist counter-concept: universal, standardized space whose neutrality concealed architecture's agency; heterogeneous space is its digital-age successor and critique.
• Space — the parent vocabulary: space only entered architectural discourse in the 1890s; heterogeneous space is its latest (and, for H/H/M, most underdeveloped) inflection.
• Atmosphere — the concept's experiential unit: heterogeneous space is ordered into "a multiplicity of atmospheres" rather than one uniform condition.
• Digital Architecture — the practice paradigm that makes differential ordering designable: parametric relationships among diverse systems.
• Spatial Agency — the concept's stakes: heterogeneous space is active, and its activity is valued by what it empowers.
• Interactive Architecture — the technological kin: climate-responsive, sensor-driven environments as heterogeneous space's built instances.
• Performative Envelope — the instrument: Marco Vanucci's chapter supplies the mechanism that produces heterogeneous space — "a heterogeneous spatial condition is achieved through the hyperarticulation of the building envelope by means of differentiated material organization."

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Technologies: The spatial agency of digital praxis (Carraher 2018) — the concept's assembly: the H/H/M definition ("ordered through differential relationships between diverse systems leading to a multiplicity of atmospheres"); the empowerment quote (Awan/Schneider/Till, p. 32); the underdeveloped-repertoire diagnosis (p. 11); homogeneous/heterogeneous as modernism's and digital practice's spatial orders; Fornes's installations as the "both heterogeneous and homogeneous" edge case.

• Shape shifting (Taylor 2018) — the neighbouring dynamic paradigm: the responsive environment's "immanent relationship to lived space" and real-time feedback as the experiential face of the same re-ontologization of space.

• From ambient environments to sentient spaces (Gattegno & Johnson 2018) — the gradient register: heterogeneity as environmental gradation rather than differential ordering. The campfire "suggests a gradient of multiple environmental qualities with different degrees of interiority"; the installations "seek to produce gradients of enclosure and ranges of intimacy and interiority"; Lightswarm creates "multiple interiors, multiple degrees and zones of activation that range in scale, scope, and perception as multi-layered, nested interiorities"; and the trajectory is for gradients themselves to "begin gaining intelligence through their seamless integration with data – they become sentient." Where H/H/M's heterogeneity is ordered difference (differential relationships among systems), G&J's is graded difference — interiority by degrees, zones, and ranges, without the ordering vocabulary. The two meet in "a multiplicity of atmospheres": both make multiplicity the spatial norm. See multiple-interiorities, the-campfire, sentient-spaces.

• Volatile Architectures (Drobnick 2002/2006) — the other heterogeneity: Drobnick's postmodern museums "participate in and exemplify the postmodern trend towards ambiguously defined spaces, ones that combine multiple functions and behaviours" (p. 91) — heterogeneity as programmatic mixing (restaurants in the sanctum, mall-logics in the gallery) rather than H/H/M's differential spatial order; its atmospheric index is heterosmia, "a preponderance of smells from disparate sources" (p. 91). A complementary sense of the word: where H/H/M heterogeneous space is a designed spatial order, Drobnick's museum heterogeneity is the unintended condition that mixing produces. See heterosmia, exhibitionary-complex.

• Sensorial interior landscapes (Garófalo-Khan 2018) — the grotto register: heterogeneity as sensorial gradation and spatial non-correspondence. The grotto is "An interior literally formed from the landscape – but intentionally disassociated from its context – [that] does not index its exterior form or structure, making it a distinctively internal manifestation of form"; its spaces progress by changing qualities rather than by plan ("The spaces progress gradually from the tight, humid, and dark entry space toward brighter and drier ceremonial space" — Bienvenidos al Sur), and its contemporary exemplar dissolves the modernist order-figure outright: "The dissolution of the Cartesian bounding box obstructing biophilic integration of the natural and the human-made is accomplished through this shimmery interior landscape." Where H/H/M's heterogeneous space is differential ordering, the grotto register is heterogeneity as graded condition — "varied size" domed spaces, shifting light, moisture, and smell, ordered by nothing but the medium's density. See sensorial-interior-landscape, ambient-conditioning.

• Inside-out and outside-in: The envelope and the search for a heterogeneous interiority (Vanucci 2018) — the mechanism and the measure. The mechanism: "a heterogeneous spatial condition is achieved through the hyperarticulation of the building envelope by means of differentiated material organization" — the envelope (citing H/H/M's En Route directly in note 6) as the instrument that produces the differential ordering the concept names. The measure: "a new type of heterogeneous space is emerging: one that seeks difference in kind and in degree, and that can no longer – or not only – be described for its extensive characteristics. Rather, it is experienced through its intensive qualities of visual porosity, humidity, light, ventilation, etc." Where Carraher's chapter assembles the concept's definition and social stakes, Vanucci's supplies its production method (performative-envelope) and its experiential units — intensive qualities rather than extensive quantities — while extending the genealogy back through Frei Otto's form-finding ("extraordinary possibilities to connect performance, differentiation, and heterogeneous spaces") and naming the static predecessor both poles of recent discourse produced: "modern and postmodern architecture sought for homogeneous spaces, undifferentiated fields provided a homogeneous environment." See homogeneous-space, mass-customization.

• Event-space: A performance model for spatial design (Hannah 2018) — the concept's evental deepening: space's plurality stated axiomatically (Libeskind's epigraph: "there is no space, there are spaces. Space is not one, but space is plural, a plurality, a heterogeneity, a difference") and Grosz's saturation as its phenomenological form — occupancies "saturated with spaces of projections, possibilities, and the new," "allowing the unrealized and unthought to emerge," the virtual "promis[ing] something different to the actual that it produces." The concept's anti-container corollary: space "saturated with spaces, becomes a continual unfolding, temporally defined and multiplied by an accelerated succession of actions" — heterogeneity not as a designed order (H/H/M's differential relationships) but as the evental condition of every built environment ("within the singular spatial event of architecture, multiple events are enacted through spacing"). See event-space, multiple-interiorities, objectile.

• Altered (e)states (Erdman 2018) — the practice register: heterogeneity produced by alteration rather than by envelope or gradient. The Repulse Bay brief "aimed at amplifying the heterogeneity of the tower units while simultaneously imbuing the property at large with a greater sense of cohesion"; the ensemble's techniques — "a composite of technological approaches… ranging from digitally prefabricated construction to algorithmically generated graphic design and coloring techniques" — "proliferate a high degree of specificity, dexterity, and heterogeneity, while avoiding episodic fragmentation"; and the register's distinctive pairing is heterogeneity with cohesion: "diverse material assemblies and moods augment heterogeneity in experiences, while also producing enough cohesion to give the property a new identity." Where H/H/M's heterogeneity is differential ordering and G&J's graded difference, Erdman's is heterogeneity produced as the sum of disconnected interventions — the spatial fabric "cohesive yet agile." See alteration, interiorized-object, homogeneous-space.

• source-notes/marinic-2018-why-this-why-now

Open Questions

• Is "a multiplicity of atmospheres" a spatial order or its refusal — can differential relationships order anything, or is heterogeneous space simply the name for order's end?

• The H/H/M epigraph says forty years of discourse lacked a "rich exploration of the space… in which either occurs" — has the wiki's own cluster (atmosphere, interactive architecture, heterogeneous space) closed that gap, or restaged it?

• Can heterogeneous space be designed at all, or only configured — and does that distinction return the discipline to modernism's master-of-space problem (Gropius's "mastery of space") under a new name?

• H/H/M's "blind spot" thesis implies architects possess unarticulated expert knowledge of space — is heterogeneous space that knowledge articulated, or another formal vocabulary that will leave the blind spot intact?

• Vanucci's intensive/extensive distinction relocates the concept from geometry to environmental quality — can a space be heterogeneous for one occupant (whose humidity threshold, whose light preference?) and homogeneous for another, or is the intensive measure as universalizing as the extensive one it replaces?

• Event-space: A performance model for spatial design (Hannah 2018) — the concept's evental deepening: space's plurality stated axiomatically (Libeskind's epigraph: "there is no space, there are spaces. Space is not one, but space is plural, a plurality, a heterogeneity, a difference") and Grosz's saturation as its phenomenological form — occupancies "saturated with spaces of projections, possibilities, and the new," "allowing the unrealized and unthought to emerge," the virtual "promis[ing] something different to the actual that it produces." The concept's anti-container corollary: space "saturated with spaces, becomes a continual unfolding, temporally defined and multiplied by an accelerated succession of actions" — heterogeneity not as a designed order (H/H/M's differential relationships) but as the evental condition of every built environment ("within the singular spatial event of architecture, multiple events are enacted through spacing"). See event-space, multiple-interiorities, objectile.