Week 4

Chapter 2 of the Production of Space by Henri Lefebvre, with attention turned specifically to the various ways we might interpret the word 'space' beyond 'nice space' and further the consideration of a possible difference between a 'work' and a 'product'.
This is not an easy read, but every year I somehow feel better for reading it, and it will take us to the heart of the dilemmas that occupied the minds of Eagleton's eager Marxists back in the sixties and seventies.

Postscript: In the end last week we sketched out some basics to Marxist economics, especially the distinction Marx draws between use and exchange value and the continuing imperative, in Capitalism, to reduce cost. This was done with very broad strokes and one might question several elements (but probably not the core) of the argument. Certainly this argument should appeal to architects, since it partially explains issues of building quality and patronage close to their hearts. But this further questioning is what Lefebvre tries to do, in further pursuing distinctions between work, labour and production, often quite happy to tangle them up as difficult questions. When it comes to Venice, he seems to imply that the difference between use and exchange value apparent at the time in the city's economy was rather usefully put in the service of beauty.
'Marxism as a relatively interesting way to read Wuthering Heights' (or for that matter any particular building) was not our imperative when we looked at Eagleton, but it is his main issue. With Lefebvre we have something that could help us, at least, criticize Grand Designs or Gardeners World more effectively.

Postscript 2: Why should we bother with all this? Well I just heard a spokesman for a major utility company on the radio. Everybody is worrying about the rising cost of energy. He used the word 'cost' to refer to his 'costs', our 'costs', everything. He should of course, if he wanted to make sense of his economic argument, be talking about 'costs' and 'prices', since they are different things, and he might have included 'investment' too. Using these terms would help us understand what is going on. Seeing as I've just had to make an international phone-call to enquire as to a domestic invoice already twice removed from it's commissioning publication in a multi national dalliance, I would have been pleased if I had understood what my call operator was saying, but I didn't. Hence, not knowing is now endemic, perhaps propagated, and we could say, in the post modern world, that maybe this sucks.

Here's a download link:

Here's a downloadable text:

http://selforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/lefebvre_production_space.pdf