The dialectics of appropriation

Author: Graeme Brooker Year: 2018 Source type: chapter (Ch. 41 of The Interior Architecture Reader, ed. Gregory Marinic, Routledge) Raw file: raw/chapters/brooker-2018-dialectics-of-appropriation.md

Summary

Brooker converts interior architecture's standard deficit narrative — the subject's "slippery" status, its apparent lack of "historical, theoretical, and regulatory foundation" — into its foundational theory: the slipperiness is "a unique and fundamental feature of the subject," because the discipline is constituted through reuse and appropriation, which make every architectured interior "a composite construct – a history, a theory, a space that is built from a number of differing ideas, objects, edifices, and other appropriated elements." Drawing on Hegewald and Mitra's Reuse (the deliberate, selective, disruptive re-contextualization of anything — object, edifice, style, law, concept), Kinney's Reuse Value (the violence of the cut; appropriation's political charge), and Michael Guggenheim's "Formless Discourse" (change of use as that which "simply does not fit the established classificatory order of architecture"), the chapter reframes the failure to codify as the discipline's positive condition, and names its spatial form through a series of dualities — old/new, in/out, space/place — the "dialectics of appropriation": counterpointed elements "joined, stitched, or forced together" that give interior architecture "a dynamic resonance" and its distinctive verbal and visual language. It is the companion piece to Markus Berger's Chapter 40: where Berger gives appropriation its author-theory (death of the architect) and its pedagogy (aneignung), Brooker gives it its ontology (the composite) and its semantics (the uncodifiable).

Key Claims

The slipperiness inversion: interior architecture "is often assigned a 'slippery' status," whose extreme form is "the derivative view that the subject lacks a historical, theoretical, and regulatory foundation" — but "far from being a negative condition, it is a unique and fundamental feature of the subject." The ambiguity "manifests itself principally as an issue of semantics, and then as an intrinsic and essential spatial ambiguity."
The composite-construct thesis: "the substance of this spatial, disciplinary, and professional ambiguity manifests itself primarily as a composite construct – a history, a theory, a space that is built from a number of differing ideas, objects, edifices, and other appropriated elements." Appropriation and reuse are "process-based approaches to formulating interior architecture" that "ultimately create a particular design language: one that is explicit to the thinking about and the making of 'architectured' interior space."
Dialectic against dichotomy: the dualities are "often viewed as at odds with each other, yet… dialectical conflict, the dichotomy of one idea superseding another, and thus rendering itself obsolete, is a redundant notion in this context. Instead, the dialectics of appropriation forms the basis of the composite construct of interior architecture; a set of processes that give the subject a dynamic resonance and ultimately its distinctive attributes."
Reuse and appropriation as the basis of everything: "Reuse and appropriation form the basis of all aspects of the subject of interior architecture. That is, they are processes that signify the repurposing of an object, edifice, or idea, all of which have been removed from their traditional contexts and deliberately repositioned into a new one."
Hegewald and Mitra's definition of reuse (Reuse: The Art and Politics of Integration and Anxiety, 2012, p. 3): "Reuse essentially refers to using an item again. This can be an object, an edifice, building materials, a style, a law, a concept, a form of governance, an idea or anything else. It is a deliberate and selective process in which existing elements are borrowed and taken out of their former surroundings to be applied to a fresh context. For this to happen, a disruption and a break have to happen, favoring confrontation with something new. Reuse does not imitate and replicate; it is a creative combination of old and new elements which aims to take the item or concept further."
The frisson: recombining "differing elements, or the amalgamation of things that were never intended to be put together, can provoke a frisson. This disruption embodies resonance, a dynamic force that stimulates new value and hence significance in appropriated and reused elements" — it "forces matter to be reappropriated and reinterpreted in order to be read and understood in a new and different way."
Rupture as the core of appropriation technique: the processes "encapsulate a disruptive component, a break in meaning, a rupture that is central to all appropriation techniques… At its extremes, these processes of change border on the brutal and can even be considered transgressive."
The violence of the cut (Kinney, Reuse Value, p. 9): "There is always violence implied in appropriation; and the violence of the cut is always accompanied by the aggravated wound of separation."
Appropriation's political charge (Kinney, p. 8): "As with reuse, particular acts or practices of appropriation can acquire positive or negative charge according to circumstances. Often the charge is political and in contemporary discourse it is frequently determined by the direction of the appropriation in relation to perceived distributions of power." The interior architect's role follows: "it is the role of the interior architect to direct and manipulate this distribution of forces, maneuvering the power or the resonances of appropriation."
Discerning reuse, destroyed meaning (Hegewald and Mitra, p. 4): "A significant aspect of reuse is that it is discerning and choosy, and that whereas some elements are adopted and filled with a new significance, others get deprived and emptied of meaning or even destroyed." Reuse can "ultimately result in their demise."
Guggenheim's deficit diagnosis ("Formless Discourse: The Impossible Knowledge of Change of Use," Candide 4, 2011): there is "a theoretical shortcoming in the literature surrounding the discipline of reuse," related to "the absence of the user in architectural thinking. Guggenheim proposes that up until the 1970s, the occupants of buildings were often merely used for the purposes of scale, particularly in representations of the built environment" — while "a central concern of any interior discipline is human occupation. Therefore, this situation has ensured that the interior has not been suitably represented in earlier twentieth-century spatial discourses – in particular Modernism – where the nuances of occupation and use were often overlooked."
The literature's typological blindness: the authors of the change-of-use literature "are confused about what they see; 'They see only typological change in the buildings and are unable to grasp the process related changes'" (Guggenheim, p. 13).
Latour's three methods, developed by Guggenheim (via We Have Never Been Modern): buildings understood as technologies (function; "how a particular use affected the user" — the building "through type or use"), as signs ("the sign or symbol of the building, rather than its material aspects… a church spire as a symbol of the use of the building. Its appearance instructs the user to congregate and worship beneath it"), and as interactions — the last reversed the first two, "informed the user to act on the building regardless of its technological or semiotic implications."
The sociological take-over: "Throughout the change of use processes… Guggenheim suggested that the sociological or interactive properties were dominant. The building was to be defined by its new use": "A building is erected and in our perception, its technological and semiotic properties are more or less intact, stable, and guide users. By changing use, which can happen without any material change to the building, the sociological properties take command: the building is now largely defined by its uses" (p. 17). "However, the material properties become relatively less important to the sociological ones" (p. 17).
Occupation against function: "In the processes of creating interior architecture, forms of occupation are inevitable, as opposed to types of 'function.' In twentieth-century discourses such as Modernism, a functionalist approach to the design of the built environment is effectively rendered useless where the construction of a building is transformed via reuse or appropriation" — Fred Scott: "In a functionalist model, all works of architecture stand in danger of being considered, at some time or other, by some agency or other, as a waste of space" (On Altering Architecture, p. 5).
Change of use as unclassifiable (Guggenheim, p. 19): "Change of use itself simply does not fit the established classificatory order of architecture. It cannot be classified into categories such as building type, style, structural method, regional origin, name of architect, or materials used." The courthouse-to-apartment-block example: a converted building "is unable to adequately express its change of use."
The failure of language is the slipperiness: "The lack of language available to adequately express the processes of reuse leads to the slippery conditions ascribed to the subject." Guggenheim: "the architectural discourse on change of use is a result of this inability to see, recognize, and talk about the processes of change, even when looking at changed buildings" (p. 33); "Besides failing to establish a set of terms, the literature on change of use fails to classify its object. To classify means to introduce an ordering device by selecting and categorizing objects according to defined features" (p. 19).
The power-claim in classification: "Defining these features is a task that assumes a position of power; it creates order in an otherwise disorganized world."
Brooker's counter-move — uncodifiability as opportunity: "Rather than a failure to establish a recognized discourse, I would suggest that there is an opportunity for the development of language in interior architecture. Anything that is yet to be defined allows for openness as to how narratives might be framed, discourses can be positioned, and knowledge can be formed, critiqued, and established. This open quality of interior architecture discourses ensures that it remains fluid and flexible. Concomitantly, when something is fully codified, it is completed."
Bonnet's loss of completeness (Unruly Places, p. xiv): "When the world has been fully codified and collated, when ambivalences and ambiguities have been sponged away so that we know exactly and objectively where everything is and what it is called, a sense of loss arises. The claim to completeness causes us to mourn the possibility of exploration and muse endlessly on the hope of novelty and escape."
The failure to clarify as positive: "The failure to 'clarify its object' is instead a positive and dynamic quality endorsing a continuous attempt to redefine interior architecture and its references. This open-endedness ensures that the architecture of the interior remains open to a multiplicity of voices and ideas. If reuse is uncodifiable, then the processes of making architectured interiors are invaluable and capable of expressing nontraditional ways of presenting interior space." Kinney (p. 3): "Reuse is noticeably nonconformist, exceptional, and ideological, rather than systematic and neutral."
The doubled interior (Rice via Baudelaire): Charles Rice (The Emergence of the Interior, p. 2) described the interior's doubled quality through Baudelaire's "Two-fold Room": "Doubleness is manifest in the semantic development that marks the emergence of the interior… The interior thus emerged with significance as a physical, three dimensional space, as well as an image… Significantly, doubleness involves the interdependence between image and space, with neither sense being primary."
Teyssot's doubled house (A Topology of Everyday Constellations, p. 24): "The history of the house, oscillating between an ideal of transparency and the need for establishing certain forms of opacity, manifests a double, sometimes contradictory ambition" — domestic space "constantly vacillated between private and public."
The dialectic against doubleness: "Rather than doubled, I would suggest the dialectic is a useful device as it is intrinsic to interior architecture because traditional notions of dialectical variance, the dichotomy of one idea superseding another, are an unnecessary diversion. Instead… the dialectics of interior architecture are very particular and connected entities formed through the appropriation and explicit combination of elements that are not only at variance, but are often in diametric opposition to each other as well as the buildings that are being transformed."
The composite defined as counterpoint: "The dialectics of appropriation are spatial counterpoints, elements, and ideas; processes that are joined, stitched, or forced together in order to form a composite. This is a construct that affords interior architecture a number of fundamental attributes namely a dynamic resonance due to the forces of resistant and unfamiliar elements being incorporated together."
Old/new: "The combination of both new and old elements is a familiar trope in the formation of interior architecture." Hegewald and Mitra (p. 2): "The meeting of opposites, for example the modern and the traditional, is not always a scene for peaceful accommodation. Dualities are sometimes overcome through converging affinities, leading to the creation of novel and hybrid forms." "The resonances created between the deliberate placement of something contemporary against – or within – an element of differing chronology, will always create a very particular spatial dialectic." Case: FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, Dunkerque (Lacaton and Vassal) — "The existing Halle building was 'doubled' to create a new exhibition and event space."
In/out duality: "A threshold, such as the one between an interior and an exterior, creates a significant rupture in a continuous or possibly seamless spatial condition." Malnar and Vodvarka (The Interior Dimension, p. xi): "One of the most fundamental divisions in design is that of interior from exterior, volume from mass. As the interior and exterior are perceptually separate, sustaining coherence between them is a difficult task. It entails a significant divergence in design approach, despite many shared theoretical assumptions and techniques." Case: Red Bull Academy, Madrid (Langarita-Navarro) — "The threshold between interior and exterior was obscured when the old warehouse was reoccupied with a series of rooms in which to make music."
Space/place duality (Bonnet, p. 13): "Space sounds modern in a way that place doesn't: it evokes mobility and the absence of restrictions; it promises empty landscapes filled with promise. When confronted with the filled-in busyness and oddity of place, the reaction of modern society has been to straighten and rationalize, to prioritize connections and erase obstacles, to overcome place with space." Brooker: "These processes of conversion ensure that the dialectic of space and place becomes constructed through changes in use as well as the processes of decay, obsoletion, and reoccupation, and then the same again."
The interior-architectural sensibility: "The processes of making sense of what is extant and how it will be utilized requires a very particular sensibility, one that is predisposed to working on-site, and one that is concerned with a multiplicity of processes of reuse and also of appropriation… These processes form the basis of the interior architectural sensibility: a predilection for the extant and a profound curiosity for working with what is already there."
Reuse's second definition (Hegewald and Mitra, p. 49): "Reuse is a conscious and selective process in which existing elements are borrowed or salvaged and taken out of their former environment in order to be applied to a new context, or they are left within their old milieu but filled with new meanings, or they get manipulated and react to new external influences. This also includes resistance to certain elements. For this to happen a disruption or change has to take place, favoring a confrontation with something different."
The loss or change of meaning as elemental: "The loss or change of meaning that occurs when things transform their original identities during the processes of reuse and appropriation means that those ambiguous, or dialectical, conditions are of paramount importance, as well as elemental to the languages used to describe it. The dialectics of appropriation are a set of ambiguous conditions, circumstances that are inherent in the semantics of interior architecture but which are elemental in the development of a composite construct; a space formed from counterpointed elements that are brought together through the processes of reuse and appropriation."

Connections

Concepts: dialectics of appropriation — the chapter's title concept; appropriation — the primary process; change of use — Guggenheim's name for the process the discipline theorizes; spolia — Kinney's field, the ancient lineage of the violence-of-the-cut; adaptive-reuse — the practice whose basis ("all aspects of the subject") the chapter claims; interior-architecture — the discipline defined by ambiguity-as-fundamental; typology — the classificatory order change of use defeats; the in/out duality — the chapter's second duality (threshold as rupture); the absent user — Guggenheim's diagnosis; authorship — classification ("name of architect") as one of the ordering devices that fails; obsolescence — "decay, obsoletion, and reoccupation, and then the same again"; space and place — the third duality's terms; modernism — the discourse that "overlooked the nuances of occupation and use"; interdisciplinarity — the composite construct as constitutive mixture.

Authors: Gregory Marinic — editor of the volume; Markus Berger — the companion Chapter 40 (death of the architect, aneignung, the palimpsest): where Berger theorizes appropriation's author-politics, Brooker theorizes its ontology and semantics; Bruno Latour — We Have Never Been Modern supplies the three-methods frame (buildings as technologies, signs, interactions) that Guggenheim develops; Edward Hollis — co-editor of Thinking Inside the Box (2007, cited in note 2) and author of the Reader's opening historiography, whose artefact-vs-alteration split Brooker's composite construct radicalizes. Named in the text without pages (see log): Julia A.B. Hegewald & Subrata K. Mitra, Dale Kinney (and Richard Brilliant), Michael Guggenheim, Fred Scott, Alistair Bonnet, Charles Rice, George Teyssot, Joy Monice Malnar & Frank Vodvarka, Henry Hildebrant, John Gigli, Frazer Hay, Andy Milligan, Alex Milton, Drew Plunkett, Clive Edwards, Paul Rodgers, Charles Baudelaire, Lacaton & Vassal, Langarita-Navarro.

Debates: Interior Design vs. Architecture — the "slippery" status and the absent "regulatory foundation" as the hegemony charge's newest form; Brooker's answer (ambiguity as the discipline's fundamental feature) is the debate's slipperiness-as-strength position.

Related source notes: Death of the architect (Berger 2018) — the appropriation pair: Berger's death-of-the-author frame and aneignung pedagogy meet Brooker's composite ontology and uncodifiability semantics; both chapters claim reuse as the discipline's basis; (Re)constructing Histories (Hollis 2018) — the artefact-vs-alteration split that Brooker's composite thesis supersedes; Spatial therapies (Qureshi 2018) — reuse's contemporary programmatic scale; Spatial Stories (de Certeau 1984/2006) — the space/place pair's other formulation (space as practiced place); Inside out (Webb 2018) — the in/out duality's practitioner formulation ("the outside is the inside distended").

Direct Quotes

"The diverse processes of appropriation inform the basis of the descriptions of the discipline of interior architecture. This elemental feature of the subject means it is often assigned a 'slippery' status. At its most extreme, this perception manifests itself in the derivative view that the subject lacks a historical, theoretical, and regulatory foundation." (opening)

"first, that the 'slippery' quality of the interior is of paramount importance; far from being a negative condition, it is a unique and fundamental feature of the subject. Second, that the substance of this spatial, disciplinary, and professional ambiguity manifests itself primarily as a composite construct – a history, a theory, a space that is built from a number of differing ideas, objects, edifices, and other appropriated elements." (opening)

"I suggest that dialectical conflict, the dichotomy of one idea superseding another, and thus rendering itself obsolete, is a redundant notion in this context. Instead, the dialectics of appropriation forms the basis of the composite construct of interior architecture; a set of processes that give the subject a dynamic resonance and ultimately its distinctive attributes." (opening)

"Reuse and appropriation form the basis of all aspects of the subject of interior architecture. That is, they are processes that signify the repurposing of an object, edifice, or idea, all of which have been removed from their traditional contexts and deliberately repositioned into a new one." ("Reuse and appropriation")

"Reuse essentially refers to using an item again. This can be an object, an edifice, building materials, a style, a law, a concept, a form of governance, an idea or anything else. It is a deliberate and selective process in which existing elements are borrowed and taken out of their former surroundings to be applied to a fresh context. For this to happen, a disruption and a break have to happen, favoring confrontation with something new. Reuse does not imitate and replicate; it is a creative combination of old and new elements which aims to take the item or concept further." (Hegewald and Mitra, quoted, n. 4, p. 3)

"the amalgamation of things that were never intended to be put together, can provoke a frisson. This disruption embodies resonance, a dynamic force that stimulates new value and hence significance in appropriated and reused elements." ("Reuse and appropriation")

"There is always violence implied in appropriation; and the violence of the cut is always accompanied by the aggravated wound of separation." (Dale Kinney, quoted, n. 5, p. 9)

"As with reuse, particular acts or practices of appropriation can acquire positive or negative charge according to circumstances. Often the charge is political and in contemporary discourse it is frequently determined by the direction of the appropriation in relation to perceived distributions of power." (Kinney, quoted, n. 6, p. 8)

"it is the role of the interior architect to direct and manipulate this distribution of forces, maneuvering the power or the resonances of appropriation." ("Reuse and appropriation")

"A significant aspect of reuse is that it is discerning and choosy, and that whereas some elements are adopted and filled with a new significance, others get deprived and emptied of meaning or even destroyed." (Hegewald and Mitra, quoted, n. 7, p. 4)

"a central concern of any interior discipline is human occupation. Therefore, this situation has ensured that the interior has not been suitably represented in earlier twentieth-century spatial discourses – in particular Modernism – where the nuances of occupation and use were often overlooked." ("Discourses of appropriation," on Guggenheim)

"They see only typological change in the buildings and are unable to grasp the process related changes." (Guggenheim, quoted, p. 13)

"A building is erected and in our perception, its technological and semiotic properties are more or less intact, stable, and guide users. By changing use, which can happen without any material change to the building, the sociological properties take command: the building is now largely defined by its uses." (Guggenheim, quoted, p. 17)

"However, the material properties become relatively less important to the sociological ones." (Guggenheim, quoted, n. 10, p. 17)

"In the processes of creating interior architecture, forms of occupation are inevitable, as opposed to types of 'function.'" ("Discourses of appropriation")

"In a functionalist model, all works of architecture stand in danger of being considered, at some time or other, by some agency or other, as a waste of space." (Fred Scott, On Altering Architecture, quoted, n. 11, p. 5)

"Change of use itself simply does not fit the established classificatory order of architecture. It cannot be classified into categories such as building type, style, structural method, regional origin, name of architect, or materials used." (Guggenheim, quoted, n. 12, p. 19)

"the architectural discourse on change of use is a result of this inability to see, recognize, and talk about the processes of change, even when looking at changed buildings." (Guggenheim, quoted, p. 33)

"Besides failing to establish a set of terms, the literature on change of use fails to classify its object. To classify means to introduce an ordering device by selecting and categorizing objects according to defined features." (Guggenheim, quoted, n. 14, p. 19)

"Defining these features is a task that assumes a position of power; it creates order in an otherwise disorganized world. Rather than a failure to establish a recognized discourse, I would suggest that there is an opportunity for the development of language in interior architecture." ("Discourses of appropriation")

"Concomitantly, when something is fully codified, it is completed. It could be argued that in the processes of the completion of an element such as a building or space, something is lost" ("Discourses of appropriation")

"When the world has been fully codified and collated, when ambivalences and ambiguities have been sponged away so that we know exactly and objectively where everything is and what it is called, a sense of loss arises. The claim to completeness causes us to mourn the possibility of exploration and muse endlessly on the hope of novelty and escape." (Alistair Bonnet, quoted, n. 15, p. xiv)

"The failure to 'clarify its object' is instead a positive and dynamic quality endorsing a continuous attempt to redefine interior architecture and its references. This open-endedness ensures that the architecture of the interior remains open to a multiplicity of voices and ideas. If reuse is uncodifiable, then the processes of making architectured interiors are invaluable and capable of expressing nontraditional ways of presenting interior space." ("Discourses of appropriation")

"Reuse is noticeably nonconformist, exceptional, and ideological, rather than systematic and neutral." (Kinney, quoted, n. 16, p. 3)

"Doubleness is manifest in the semantic development that marks the emergence of the interior… The interior thus emerged with significance as a physical, three dimensional space, as well as an image… Significantly, doubleness involves the interdependence between image and space, with neither sense being primary." (Charles Rice, quoted, n. 17, p. 2)

"The history of the house, oscillating between an ideal of transparency and the need for establishing certain forms of opacity, manifests a double, sometimes contradictory ambition." (George Teyssot, quoted, n. 18, p. 24)

"the term dialectic can be used to describe elements, concepts, and ideologies that may be considered violently at odds with each other. Rather than doubled, I would suggest the dialectic is a useful device as it is intrinsic to interior architecture because traditional notions of dialectical variance, the dichotomy of one idea superseding another, are an unnecessary diversion." ("Appropriate dialectics")

"The dialectics of appropriation are spatial counterpoints, elements, and ideas; processes that are joined, stitched, or forced together in order to form a composite. This is a construct that affords interior architecture a number of fundamental attributes namely a dynamic resonance due to the forces of resistant and unfamiliar elements being incorporated together." ("Appropriate dialectics")

"The meeting of opposites, for example the modern and the traditional, is not always a scene for peaceful accommodation. Dualities are sometimes overcome through converging affinities, leading to the creation of novel and hybrid forms." (Hegewald and Mitra, quoted, n. 19, p. 2)

"The resonances created between the deliberate placement of something contemporary against – or within – an element of differing chronology, will always create a very particular spatial dialectic." ("Old/new, in/out, space/place")

"A threshold, such as the one between an interior and an exterior, creates a significant rupture in a continuous or possibly seamless spatial condition." ("Old/new, in/out, space/place")

"One of the most fundamental divisions in design is that of interior from exterior, volume from mass. As the interior and exterior are perceptually separate, sustaining coherence between them is a difficult task. It entails a significant divergence in design approach, despite many shared theoretical assumptions and techniques." (Malnar and Vodvarka, quoted, n. 20, p. xi)

"Space sounds modern in a way that place doesn't: it evokes mobility and the absence of restrictions; it promises empty landscapes filled with promise. When confronted with the filled-in busyness and oddity of place, the reaction of modern society has been to straighten and rationalize, to prioritize connections and erase obstacles, to overcome place with space." (Alistair Bonnet, quoted, n. 21, p. 13)

"These processes of conversion ensure that the dialectic of space and place becomes constructed through changes in use as well as the processes of decay, obsoletion, and reoccupation, and then the same again." ("Old/new, in/out, space/place")

"These processes form the basis of the interior architectural sensibility: a predilection for the extant and a profound curiosity for working with what is already there." ("Old/new, in/out, space/place")

"Reuse is a conscious and selective process in which existing elements are borrowed or salvaged and taken out of their former environment in order to be applied to a new context, or they are left within their old milieu but filled with new meanings, or they get manipulated and react to new external influences. This also includes resistance to certain elements. For this to happen a disruption or change has to take place, favoring a confrontation with something different." (Hegewald and Mitra, quoted, n. 22, p. 49)

"The loss or change of meaning that occurs when things transform their original identities during the processes of reuse and appropriation means that those ambiguous, or dialectical, conditions are of paramount importance, as well as elemental to the languages used to describe it." (closing)

Open Questions

Brooker converts the discipline's "lack of historical, theoretical, and regulatory foundation" into a virtue — but can a discipline taught in accredited programs (with professional bodies and registration exams) actually remain uncodified, or does the pedagogical apparatus quietly codify the "slippery" quality into a canon (cf. Hollis's historiography of the founding literature, which is exactly such a codification)?
Guggenheim demands "inventing a language that is based around process"; Brooker answers that the failure to classify is an "opportunity for the development of language." Is this a disagreement or a division of labour — Guggenheim the sociologist's complaint, Brooker the designer's opportunity? What would a process-based classificatory language for change of use actually contain?
If "the material properties become relatively less important to the sociological ones" during change of use, how does this square with the composite-construct thesis, in which the counterpointed matter (old against new) does the resonance-producing work? Is the sociological dominance a description of the converted building's meaning, while the dialectics describe the design act?
The chapter names the violence of appropriation (Kinney) and reuse's destructions ("deprived and emptied of meaning or even destroyed") but does not settle the politics Kinney raises ("the direction of the appropriation in relation to perceived distributions of power"). When does the interior architect's "manipulation of this distribution of forces" become the powerful appropriating from the powerless?
Bonnet's "space sounds modern in a way that place doesn't" cast space as the rationalizing term and place as the resistant one — yet Brooker's composite treats both as productive counterpoints. Can the space/place duality be resolved into de Certeau's formula ("space is a practiced place"), or does reuse's cycle of "decay, obsoletion, and reoccupation" keep the two terms permanently out of phase?
Rice's doubleness (image/space) and Teyssot's doubleness (transparency/opacity, private/public) are "doubled" conditions; Brooker insists on "dialectic" precisely because the doublings lack the element of opposition. Is the distinction between doubled and dialectical sustainable, or does every duality oscillate between the two descriptions depending on whether it is observed in use (doubled) or designed (dialectical)?