The term ‘critical spatial practice’ refers to forms of practice between art and architecture. Jane Rendell introduced the term in 2003. Rendell later consolidated and developed the term as one that defined practices located at a three-way intersection: between theory and practice, public and private, and art and architecture. For Rendell, critical spatial practice is informed by

Michel de Certeau Michel de Certeau (; 17 May 1925 – 9 January 1986) was a French Jesuit priest and scholar whose work combined history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the social sciences as well as hermeneutics, semiotics, ethnology, and religion. He was known ...

’s ''

The Practice of Everyday Life ''The Practice of Everyday Life'' is a book by Michel de Certeau that examines the ways in which people individualise mass culture, altering things, from utilitarian objects to street plans to rituals, laws and language, in order to make them the ...

'' (1980, translated into English in 1984), and

Henri Lefebvre Henri Lefebvre ( ; ; 16 June 1901 – 29 June 1991) was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for furthering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of social ...

’s ''The Production of Space'' (1974, translated into English in 1991), as well as the critical theory of the

Frankfurt School The Frankfurt School is a school of thought in sociology and critical theory. It is associated with the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Institute for Social Research founded in 1923 at the University of Frankfurt am Main ...

, but her definition aims to transpose the key qualities of critical theory – self-reflection and social transformation – into practice. In Rendell’s work, critical spatial practices are those that question and transform the social conditions of the sites into which they intervene, as well as test the boundaries and procedures of their own disciplines. Other theorists and practitioners have since worked with the term, evolving it in different directions. For example, there was the reading group and blog spot initiated by Nicholas Brown in the early 2000s, which came out of discussions around Brown’s own artistic walking practice. In 2011, Nikolaus Hirsch and

Markus Miessen Markus Miessen (born in Bonn, 1978) is a German architect and writer. Education and teaching Since 2021, Markus Miessen has been Professor of Urban Regeneration at the University of Luxembourg, where he holds the Chair of the City of Esch, assoc ...

started a book series with Sternberg Press called ''Critical Spatial Practice'', which focused on architectural discourse and practice. In the first publication, they asked, "What is Critical Spatial Practice?" In 2016, Hirsch and Miessen set up a website site called criticalspatialpractice.org to archive their work in this area since 2011. The ''MaHKUscript, Journal of Fine Art Research'' published a special issue on critical spatial practice in 2016, where many of the contributors enact critical spatial practices concerned with political and ecological issues. In 2019, Rendell established the website criticalspatialpractice.co.uk to formalise the term, archiving projects located between art and architecture, "that both critiques the sites into which they intervened as well as the disciplinary procedures through which they operated."https://criticalspatialpractice.co.uk

References

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External links

Rendell's Critical Spatial Practice Website
Architectural history