ASSIGNMENT

Prompt: Select a designed space (but not your own home) and, using careful observation and the analytical methods we have discussed and read about in class, interpret its influence on the people who use and experience this space (for example, the values and beliefs the space embodies, how it shapes our sense of reality and ourselves, the way the space constructs or restricts or restricts communal relations and/or privacy and intimacy- its tone, so to speak- or the ways it might try to encourage consumption, and so on).

You do not need to answer all of these questions (but you should try to address at least some of them).

Again, you may not use your own home (that’s just too easy).

Your argument should identify the most important meaning or meanings you have found in your analysis, and show whether or not the space successfully embodies or expresses that meaning or those meanings or fails to do so. Look as well for contradictory uses of the space (‘on the one hand it does this, but on the other it does that’) or even ‘misuses’ of a space in order to produce a richer reading of that space. Please be sure to provide lots of details to support your claims at each stage of your argument.