Spatial Intimacy: Social Space
Last updated
Last updated
Edward T. Hall described the interpersonal distances of man (the relative distances between people) in four distinct zones:
Social distance is reserved for strangers, newly formed groups, and interaction with new acquaintances.
Close phase – 4 to 7 feet (1.2 to 2.1 m)
Far phase – 7 to 12 feet (2.1 to 3.7 m)
'Space is social: it involves assigning more or less appropriated places to social relations....social space has thus always been a social product'. - Henri Lefebvre
All actors of HvA make use of the Kohnstammhof, by walking, sitting or chatting with colleagues & students. Everybody consensually 'knows' that Kohnstammhof is a place that is informal, open and transparant, yet it is dedicated to the educational institution of the HvA.
Humans try to make sense of their own behavior, and others’ behavior, over time, and the main way in which we do that is by collecting our own and other people’s reasons and assembling these sets of reasons into an “identity” — a simplified model of ourselves or of others. Our sense of one another’s identity (and of a set of shared values) is what justifies cooperation.
A social space is physical or virtual space, where people gather and interact. Within social spaces a system of 'adapted' expectations and responses occur, which are rarely articulated as such because they seem obvious.
While a small number of values have names (“freedom”, “equality”, “honesty”, “generosity”) most of them don’t. But values without names can usually be referred to by phrases (“honoring the dead”, “building the capacity of the team to handle problems together”). Much of human conversation amounts to asking the question “what is important in such-and-such-a-situation?” and answering it with value-phrases of this sort.
