The Production of Space and the Archive of Everyday Life

The cloud is a complex material entanglement that moves across multiple scales from the microscopic to the mega-city. The material manifestations of the cloud, like data centers are nodes in an entangled network that cannot be thought apart from the modes of being that they produce. This requires us to think beyond the question — dominant in much architectural discourse — of what it is and ask what does it do? Concerning the cloud these two questions cannot be separated, to ask one is immediately to ask the other. This is the reason why I propose that Lefebvre’s triadic is a useful conceptual framework which architects can use to understand the processes at play in the production of space within the archive of everyday life.. To make the case for the ongoing usefulness of the triadic I will begin by briefly introducing Lefebvre’s three-dimensional spatiology. I will then focus on two processes within the triadic that will help foreground the complex entanglements between architecture, ways of being in the world and the production of space. These two areas are perceived and conceived space. In The Production of Space Lefebvre does not explore in detail how it is that the shifts in the modes of production actually change modes of perception and conception. Someone who does do this is philosopher of technology Bernard Stiegler. I will therefore expand on the role of perception and conception in spatial production by reading them through Stiegler’s concepts of tertiary retention and tertiary protention which I contend are central to understanding the spatial nature of shifts in modes of being created by new modes of production.