Author(s)

C. James

Abstract

The research seeks to critique, redefine and recast the sustainability agenda through the re-examination of the links between spatial design, the environment and interdisciplinarity. It repositions the role of architecture at the centre of the debate through the reframing of these agendas, in offering a new interpretation of architecture and by problematising its capacity to respond to urgent environmental concerns such as climate change and resource depletion. The proposition for a new potential for environmental engagement through the conceptual formulation ‘interspatiality’ attempts to connect existing contemporary architectural and sustainability discourses and respond to emerging spatial territories such as the ’spatial turn’. The reconceptualisation of space and spatial production is explored as a key to the rethinking of blocked and restrictive architectural approaches and hitherto neglected spatio-environmental identifications. Interspatiality – the spatialisation of the environment, identifies the potential for an overarching understanding of space, spatial innovation and the environment within the city and elaborates interdisciplinary dimensions. It proposes a new spatial methodology of environmental character and signals a model for ‘integral sustainability’; a more unifying, collective, inclusive and reconciliatory approach looking to a productive, creative and ‘complete architecture’ – one scripted to suit the emerging urban global reality. The work develops ‘interspatial thinking’ as a conceptual framework for assimilating new spatial identifications, theoretical approaches, design strategies and methodologies, that can resonate with both contemporary and future directions in architectural practice, research and pedagogy, collaborative, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary modes of practice including global and local policy-makers, and private and public industries.

Keywords

interspatiality, spatiality, environment, interdisciplinarity, urbanism, sustainability