Firstspace

From Geography

Under construction by Sabrina Willems and Anouk Soomers

First space is a concept by Edward Soja. The work of Soja is an interpretation of the work of Henri Lefebvre (The Production of Space, 1974). What Soja calls first space is in line with what Lefebvre identifies as spatial practice or perceived space (Lefebvre, 1974).

The First space is a physical space. It is our way of being able to reproduce that physical space. It is a material, visible and measurable determination to space. Firstspace epistemologies become fixated on the material form of things in space: with human spatiality seen primarily as outcome or product. It tend to privilege objectivity and materiality, and to aim toward a formal science of space. What gives almost naively sources for the accumulation of (First)spatial knowledge is the human occupance of the surface of the earth, the relations between society and nature, the architectonics and resultant geographies of the human ‘built environment’. (E. Soja, 1996)

According to Soja (1996) Firstspace is conventionally read at two different levels, one which concentrates on the accurate description of surface appearance (an indigenous mode of spatial analysis), and the other which searches for spatial explanation in primarily exogenous social, physical, and biophysical processes. The Firstspace perspective as said, is focused on the material world. The Secondspace perspective interprets this reality through imagined representations of spatiality, which are combined to form the Thirdspace. This is a creative recombination and extension of the first two perspectives (E. Soja, 1996).

Firstspace is the perceived space, it is a perception of the material world around us. The Secondspace is the concieved space and the Thirdspace is the lived space.

Soja, Edward W, (1996) Thirdspace Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places.

Lefebvre, Henri, (1974) The Production of Space.

http://www.kompost.me/104larevue/EN/oeuvres/soja_westphal/thirdspace.pdf http://www.kompost.me/104larevue/EN/oeuvres/soja_westphal/thirdspace_chap2.pdf