Symbiotic Spaces

Definition

Symbiotic spaces is Emily Stokes-Rees's coinage (Chapter 6 of The Interior Architecture Theory Reader) for the mutually beneficial coexistence of unlike entities in the built work: "the idea of symbiosis, pointing to the mutually beneficial coexistence of unlike organisms – a synergistic relationship that might result in the emergence of a new species," used "as a model for the mutual relationship between the idea of the museum, its nation of origin, its building, and its narrative; each benefit from the relationship." In the Museum of Macau, "the give and take between form and function… reflect[s] the extent to which the museum's building and story are inseparable, and… Macau's unique identity is inextricably linked to its colonial history. The architecture, both exterior and interior, is not subservient to the museum's content and message, but rather, acts as a protagonist in the communication of symbiotically framed ideas about the past and the present, form and function, colonial and postcolonial, and East and West."

The concept operates on two scales. Architecturally, the symbiosis of building and story: the fortress's physical constraints "determined the narrative logic of the exhibition space" — two floors excavated within the walls, the entrance underground, the cistern and original fortress walls incorporated as exhibits, so that "the fortress is as much an artifact of the narrative the museum articulates as any other object displayed within," and "the museum is symbolically intertwined with the fortress and hill, becoming a unique and powerful blend of interior and landscape." Culturally, the symbiosis of East and West: the displays' rigorous symmetry — Portuguese and Chinese cannon side by side sharing one pile of cannonballs, the São Paulo facade's cooperative bicultural imagery, Tin Hau, Guan Yin and the Virgin Mary "binding the three faiths into one common experience" — staging Macau as "an active generator of new cultural forms." The formula in which the concept culminates: "various design elements dovetail into relationship, blurring the boundaries between inside and outside, past and present, architecture and interiority, city and museum."

Key Thinkers

• Emily Stokes-Rees — coins the concept and develops its two registers (building/narrative; East/West) through the Museum of Macau; the museum as "both product and producer" of cultural identity.

Related Concepts

• Narrative Space — the narrative mechanism symbiosis produces: the building as storyteller and artifact at once.
• Adaptive Reuse — the practice beneath the concept: "respect for colonial spaces adapted for museum use after independence" becomes "instrumental in redefining the nation."
• The Dialectics of Outside and Inside — the symbiotic blur is the dialectic's civic-scale dissolution: interior and landscape, city and museum, "emerging out of the mountain."
• Postcolonial Identity — the political work the symbiosis performs: a harmony narrative ("blended and balanced to live in a peaceful way") that forecloses "different versions of this history."
• Hybrids — the near neighbour: symbiosis claims mutual benefit and the "emergence of a new species," a stronger biological metaphor than hybridity's mixture — the difference matters for what the MoM claims Macau to be.
• Interior Architecture — the Reader chapter's disciplinary stake: interior architecture as the design of a building-story symbiosis.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Symbiotic spaces (Stokes-Rees 2018) — the source that names the concept: the four-party symbiosis (museum, nation, building, narrative), the fortress-as-artifact, the East/West symmetry displays, and the closing blur of inside/outside, past/present, architecture/interiority, city/museum.
• Touch, Taste, Smell (Brown 2018) — the community-scale register: the symbiosis re-scaled from nation to community, with food and interior as the bond. The Southern Food and Beverage Museum (New Orleans) "examines and celebrates all the cultures that have come together through the centuries to create the South's unique culinary heritage" while serving "as a community center" — its working kitchens making the museum the site where "food – its production, its preparation, and the ritual of sharing a meal – is both formed by and contributes to community identity and the role the museum plays in that identity." The Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe (NMAI) is the interior-scale case: dining space designed "in an ongoing conversation with Native American communities from across the Western hemisphere," its curvilinear forms and cedar paneling built so that — in Hayden's formula — "The landscape flows into the building, and the environment is who we are." Where the MoM symbioses museum, nation, building and narrative, the taste-full museum symbioses museum, community, cuisine and interior. See taste-full-museum, narrative-space.

Open Questions

• Symbiosis promises mutual benefit — but who verifies it? The Director's admission ("They didn't want to talk about different versions of this history or different opinions") suggests the symbiosis is curated: is the concept analytic or euphemistic?
• Does the "new species" metaphor hold — did the MoM produce a genuinely new (Macanese) cultural form, or a bilateral symmetry that keeps East and West "separate but equal" monoliths?
• The concept blurs "inside and outside, past and present, architecture and interiority, city and museum" — is this the same operation as Bachelard's osmosis (a lived blur) or a designed representation of blur (a staged one)?
• Can symbiotic framing travel beyond the postcolonial museum — to any adaptive-reuse project where host building and new program narrate each other?