This research focus is based on both an empirical and a symbolic definition of space (social, geographical, historiographical), considered as a construction prompted by practices and experiences.

Experiencing space is framed by the layout imposed by objects– architectural, instrumental, or common–as demonstrated by current research on the social life of objects, which grasps them in their interactions with individuals and groups. Such an everyday experience of objects is intertwined with a range of symbolical structures: mental mapping, through which space is both surveyed and imagined; traces of a presence/absence, which are open to the archaeology of events both gone and surviving; palimpsests, with their time layers; and boundaries, both concrete and symbolical, through which space is defined, classified, organized and made one’s own. Continue reading Research Area 3 – Objects, Traces, Mapping: Everyday Experience of Spaces →