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PERCEPTION OF SPACE THROUGH THE DISABLED BODYThomas Wild

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PERCEPTION OF SPACE THROUGH THE DISABLED BODYThomas Wild

This paper sets out to explore the negotiated boundaries between identity and the body within space in order to understand how the construction of space as an architectural form is interpreted.

Social space can be seen as a set of unique experiences, which are embodied within a context such as the City. Consequently, it is the make up of these experiences, which form a sense of place through socio-cultural interactions within space.

These fluctuating interpretations of space occur through the integration between body and object. In an effort to understand how the perception and interpretation of space for those restricted influence their personal space, an experiential account demonstrates how physical and mental interactions define space into a multi-layered concept; these are expressed through the body as sensory and emotive expressions of social space. The sensory integration between the physical and mental interactions in space provides accounts in order to understand how the somatic perceptions of individuals form unique perspectives of space.

Space begins to [dis]able the body rather than disability restricting the body in space. The city has become an urban labyrinth of contested space that restricts the body from freely moving. Restrictive movement is sensuously experienced and determines the boundaries of personal space. The physical obstacles in perceived space are expressed through the rhythmic movements of travelling through space and begin to define both personal and social space.

Introduction

“Our perception of the environment as a whole in short, is forged not in the ascent from a myopic, local perspective to a panoptic, global one, but in the passage from place to place, and in histories of movement and changing horizons along the way.”1

Space is seen as something to occupy; a place of congregation or socio-cultural engage-ment between people. The city has become a place of proximity between social engage-ment and physical interaction of the everyday. “A space which is fashioned, shaped and in-vested by social activities during a finite historical period.”2 Tim Ingold, above, deconstructs the anthropometric view on space as the integration of the body and space in time; “nothing is experienced by itself, but always in relation to its surroundings [and] the sequences of events leading up to it.”3 Space, has been explored both as an individual experience and so-cial construct. People experience spaces differently as the articulation of space proposed by Henri Lefebvre, which, “constitutes a practico-sensory realm that is performed in the spatio-temporal rhythms of the everyday life;”4 in doing so, suggests space is seen to become an “extension of the body.”5 Yet space, is also seen as the integration of social relations, “bound together by the itineraries of their inhabitants, places exists not in space, but as nodes in a matrix of movement.”6

“The perception of the environment encompasses both psychological and physical factors,”7 through which, the integration between the body and the environment forms the relation-ship we have with our perception of space. Each individual has a unique perception of space, expressed through a “system of axes invariably bound to the body.”8 We engage with space through our senses; “our bodies and movements are in constant interaction with the environment, the world and the self, inform and redefine each other constantly.”9 Space is experienced not as mere objects, but as an engagement with the body, or more specifically, the senses. This experience can be deconstructed into different somatic dimensions; haptic, aural, visual, gustation, and olfaction. Through sensuous engagement, we experience space as physical forms.

1 Ingold, T, The Perception of the Environment: Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill, (London: Routledge, 2000), p227.2 Lefebvre, H, The Production of Space, (London/New York: Routledge, 1991), p73.3 Lynch, K, The Image of the City, (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1960), p1.4 Simonsen, K, ‘Bodies, Sensations, Space and Time: The Contribution from Henri Lefebvre’, Geografiska Annaler, Series B, Human Geography, Vol. 87, No. 1, (2005), p1-14 (p11).5 Ibid p6.6 Ingold, T, The Perception of the Environment: Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill, (London: Routledge, 2000), p219.7 Wilson, M.B, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Interaction’, in The Human Experience of Space and Place, (London: Croom Helm Ltd, 1980), p135-147 (p137).8 Levinson, S.C, ‘Language and Space’, Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 25, (1996), p353-382 (p357).9 Pallasmaa, J, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2005), p40.

PERCEPTION OF SPACE THROUGH THE DISABLED BODY Thomas Wild

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This paper seeks to explore how this sensuous engagement in space begins to inform how it is perceived as both a physical and social construct. By considering how we engage with space through the senses, I intend to analyse how they integrate within space by using physical disability as a vehicle to understand what effect removing particular senses from the body has on the perception of space.

Those with the limitation of disability perceive space through physical or mental restrictions. This “package of problems,”10 which is bound to the body, consequently effects the percep-tion of a given context. Limitation begins to suggest they perceive spaces differently from those who are able. Just because somebody is visually impaired implies they only experi-ence space without the aid of sight. They still experience space, even with certain limitations through one of the senses; “the body constitutes a practico-sensory realm in which space is perceived through smells, tastes, touch and hearing as well as sight.”11 Each sense begins to contribute towards your perception of space but how does this affect somebody’s experi-ence that has a disability?

The disability of an individual within society is not a topic considered in the analysis of space. Lefebvre considers the perplexity of space as “not a thing among other things, nor a product among other products: rather, it subsumes things produced, and encompasses their interrelationships in their co-existence and simultaneity.”12

“In theorizing the nature of disability and the city a crucial concern is to generate some understanding of the interactions between the body as a physiological and socio-cultural artifact and the built environment.”13

“Cultural expression provides an opportunity for ideas about disability to be articulated through the body.”14 This essay will begin to discuss the complexity of space, experienced everyday by using an empirical case study. This will enable me to explore how people per-ceive space with a disability. By using opportunitic interviews and an autoethnographic study through the eyes of the disabled, I will analyse a disabled man’s perception moving through personal and public spaces. An understanding of movement through these spaces will begin to develop a haptic awareness of spatial perception engaged through the bodies touch senses. “Touch is usually conceptualized as proximal – up close, specific, local to the body – seen as an exemplum of the performative blurring of boundaries between objects.”15 For

10 James, Interview, (Chichester: 29 December 2012). 11 Simonsen, K, ‘Bodies, Sensations, Space and Time: The Contribution from Henri Lefebvre’, Geografiska Annaler, Series B, Human Geography, Vol. 87, No. 1, (2005), p1-14 (p4).12 Lefebvre, H, The Production of Space, (London/New York: Routledge, 1991), p73.13 Imrie, R, Disability and the City: International Perspectives, (London: Paul Chapman Publishing Ltd, 1996b), p16.14 Linton, S, ‘What is Disability Studies?’, PMLA, Vol. 120, No. 2, (March 2005), p518-522 (p520).15 Paterson, M, ‘Haptic geographies: ethnography, haptic knowledges and sensuous dispositions’, Progress in Human Geography, Vol 33, No 6, (2009), p766-788 (p782).

somebody in a wheelchair, it has become part of their body, an active tool for engagement in space. “There is a need to identify the different forms of spatial cognition and behaviour of people with disabilities and to measure a world of points and lines.”16 The active engage-ment of the disabled in space reveals a spatial hierarchy in understanding the construction of social space through personal space.

By considering how the participant interacts within a given context, the discussion will begin to question how the personal spaces of those with a disability change in size, shape and permeability, both physically and mentally? Does the identity of the space change for some-body disabled? How does the behaviour of the disabled man change when the conditions of a particular space change?

Disabled Voyeur or Disabled Walker? Moving through space.

“We fall into the trap of treating space ‘in itself’, as space as such. We come to think in terms of spatiality, and so fetishize in a way reminiscent of the old fetishism of commodities, where the trap lay in exchange, and the error was to consider ‘things’ in isolation, as ‘things in themselves’.”17

Lefebvre considers “space as a socially produced set of manifolds.”18 Spaces can be defined by people congregating at particular points in time as Kirsten Simonsen consid-ers Lefebvre’s depiction of space as “the body [which] is involved in the constitution of the dimensions of social space.”19 “There is an immediate relationship between the body and its space, between the body’s deployment in space and its occupation of space.”20 The embodied experience has become a mediator of different dimensions within the perception of social space. An “articulation between sensory and practico-perceptual space on the one hand and specific or practico-social space on the other.”21 Social space should be consid-ered as a set of dimensions, which inhabit space-time and give identity to a context.

“Space does not exist ‘in itself’, it is produced.”22 “It subsumes things produced, and encompasses their interrelationships in their coexistence and simultaneity.”23 Lefebvre

16 Imrie, R, ‘Ableist Geographies, Disablist Spaces: Towards a Reconstruction of Golledge’s Geography and the Disabled’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol 21, No 2, (1996a), p397-403 (p401).17 Lefebvre, H, The Production of Space, (London/New York: Routledge, 1991), p90.18 Crang, M and Thrift, N, ed., Thinking Space, (London: Routledge, 2000), p2.19 Simonsen, K, ‘Bodies, Sensations, Space and Time: The Contribution from Henri Lefebvre’, Geografiska Annaler, Series B, Human Geography, Vol. 87, No. 1, (2005), p1-14 (p4).20 Lefebvre, H, The Production of Space, (London/New York: Routledge, 1991), p170.21 Simonsen, K, ‘Bodies, Sensations, Space and Time: The Contribution from Henri Lefebvre’, Geografiska Annaler, Series B, Human Geography, Vol. 87, No. 1, (2005), p1-14 (p6).22 Schmid, C, ‘Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space: towards a three-dimensional dialectic’, in Space, Difference, Everyday Life; Reading Henri Lefebvre, (New York/Oxon: Routledge, 2008), p27-45 (p28).23 Lefebvre, H, The Production of Space, (London/New York: Routledge, 1991), p73.


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suggests that the different dimensions of space can co-exist to form an understanding of perception through experience; “the person is thereby reshaped in time and space, defined as an individual through particular spatiality’s of experience,”24 which bound to the body are physical and mental abstractions of social space. Thus, it becomes the “privileged centre of perception”25 as “space begins to appear as a mere degradation of ‘being’.”26 Physical and Mental interactions with space are bounded to the individual moving through a context. “Rhythm … is something inseparable from understandings of time ... It is found in the work-ings of our towns and cities, in urban life and movement through space.”27 Moving through space becomes a repetitive notion of movements and interactions. For the body, spaces are constructs of social relations at nodes in a context;

“the intertwinement of social spaces is also a law. Considered in isolation, such spaces are mere abstractions. As concrete abstractions, however, they attain ‘real’ existence by virtue of networks and pathways, by virtue of bunches or clusters of relationships.”28

The city is an example of a node in social space. Lynch describes the city as a complex make-up of social processes, which are fragmented by those who inhabit it. It is the experi-ence of moving through spaces, which form social space. “They are not things, which have mutually limiting boundaries,”29 but formed through a network of interlinking social relations.

“We are not simply observers of this spectacle, but are ourselves a part of it, on the stage with other participants. Most often, our perception of the city is not sustained, but rather partial, fragmentary, mixed with other concerns. Nearly every sense is in operation, and the image is the composite of them all.”30

Michel De Certeau explores the perception of the city by perceiving space from two perspectives – the Voyeur and Walker. He re-enforces the idea that the city is made up of intertwining networks, which trace the streets forming points of interactions or spaces of occupation. From the perspective of the voyeur, “one’s body is no longer clasped by the streets.”31 It is suggested that from the perspective of the voyeur, one has a greater aware-ness in space. From the perspective of the disabled, one is constantly aware of restrictions in space. Its obstacles become mere diversions, which alter pathways through spaces as people travel. The restrictive nature of space, leads to its monopolisation of disabled people. It is evident that the disabled person has a greater awareness in space they move though

24 Crang, M and Thrift, N, ed., Thinking Space, (London: Routledge, 2000), p8.25 Ibid, p 19.26 Lefebvre, H, The Production of Space, (London/New York: Routledge, 1991), p73.27 Lefebvre, H, rhythmanalysis, space time and everyday life, (London/New York: Continuum, 2004), pvii.28 Lefebvre, H, The Production of Space, (London/New York: Routledge, 1991), p86.29 Ibid, p86.30 Lynch, K, The Image of the City, (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1960), p2.31 De Certeau, M, The Practice of Everyday Life, (Berkley: University of California Press, 1997), p92.

because of the conditions of their path which impede movement. This is similar to that of the voyeur. Their cognisance whilst travelling forms un-restricted space. It becomes a time-con-suming process of rhythmic movements, which construct spaces or points in time to inhabit.

“Walking can easily be monitored and mapped as the millions of individual journeys criss-crossing the city leave trace that can be plotted. But this trace can, in itself, never capture the personal histories that underlie them.”32

Rob Imrie suggests, “the source of the problems facing people with disabilities predomi-nantly resides in the impairment itself.”33 Somebody with a disability has no control over their impairment, but they work with it. It becomes part of their everyday life as movement becomes “laborious time-consuming trips through built environments.”34 This would begin to suggest that it is space, which restricts the disabled body, not the body restricted in space.

“For the totalising gaze of the voyeur sees the city as a homogenous whole, an anonymous urban space that sees no place for individual or separate identities and which erases or suppresses the personal and the local.”35

From the perspective of the voyeur, the identity of space is lost. Space “harbour[s] the places of our memories, because they are the visible matrix of where we live.”36 The relationship between city and its inhabitants is concealed in the integration of social spaces and it is “below the threshold [where] visibility begins.”37 At street level – the walker provides the connection between body and space as it captures the moments of memories in the city. Brian Morris, states, “it is the turn’s and detours of the walker that transform place into space.”38 For somebody in a wheelchair, journeys through spaces are constantly restricted by obstacles and force the body into alternative pathways of travelling from place to place. It is this restriction in space, which re-enforces a sense of space in relation to the wheelchair. The, city - a maze of built obstacles - begins to impede the pathway of the disabled body and in doing so, it is space which disables people, not the body restricting the user in space.

“While the eyes of the body remain close to the ground, the mind’s eye – which is witness to this map like representation - is up with the birds.”39 Ingold begins to suggest that the per-

32 Coverley, M, Psychogeography, (London/New York: Pocket Essentials, 2010), p106.33 Imrie, R, ‘Ableist Geographies, Disablist Spaces: Towards a Reconstruction of Golledge’s Geography and the Disabled’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol 21, No 2, (1996a), p397-403 (p398).34 Golledge, R.G, ‘Geography and the Disabled: A Survey with Special reference to Vision Impaired and Blind Populations’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol 18, No 1, (1993), p63-85 (p64).35 Coverley, M, Psychogeography, (London/New York: Pocket Essentials, 2010), p105/106.36 Relph, E, ‘Geographical experiences and being-in-the-world: The phenomenological origins of geography’, in Dwelling, Pace and Enviornment, (New York: Coumbia University Press, 1985), p15-31 (p24).37 Coverley, M, Psychogeography, (London/New York: Pocket Essentials, 2010), p105.38 Morris, B, ‘What we talk about when we talk about ‘Walking in the City’, Cultural Studies, Vol 18, No 5, (September, 2004), p675-697 (p678).


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ception of the walker and voyeur are in fact combined in our complete perception of space. The disabled body is cognisant to the immediate surroundings through the senses. “Spatial behaviour is dependent on such cognitive processes.”40 Psychogeography begins to define the social engagement the body has within space as it traces the social behaviour of the traveler in space. From the perspective of the walker, “the networks of these moving, inter-secting writings compose a manifold story that has neither author nor spectator, shaped out of fragments of trajectories and alterations of spaces.”41 The disabled body perceives space as the voyeur; an extension of the body through a wheelchair or stick, which engages with it sensuously through the body. By mapping the “emotions and behaviour of individuals”42 moving through space, psychogeography deconstructs space by understanding it through someone’s personal space. The disabled body behaves differently to the able body through the mental interpretations of space mapped by physical moments of sensuously explored space.

It could be suggested that disabled persons live in “transformed space.”43 The restricted spaces of the city begin to control the disabled, which limits their movement and in some cases requires the assistance of aid. Mike Crang suggests the “notion of public space, as massively coded and structured.”44 From the perspective of somebody disabled, the restricted spaces of the city influence both the physical perception and mental emotion in a space;

“the city becomes characterised as a jungle, uncharted and unexplored … The navi-gation of this city becomes a skill, a secret knowledge … and in this environment the stroller is transformed into an explorer, or even a detective solving the mystery of the streets.”45

Lefebvre suggests that it is a network of social spaces yet Maurice Merleau-Ponty under-stands it as “something always in the middle of something else, it always forms part of a field.”46 “An individuals behaviour in space … cannot be viewed as being static, but chang-ing via complex learning process.”47

39 Ingold, T, The Perception of the Environment: Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill, (London: Routledge, 2000), p227.40 Seamon, D, ‘Body-Subject, Time-Space Routines, and Place-Ballets’, in The Human Experience of Space and Place, (London: Croom Helm Ltd, 1980) p148-165 (p151).41 De Certeau, M, The Practice of Everyday Life, (Berkley: University of California Press, 1997), p93.42 Ford, S, The Situationist International: A User’s Guide, (London: Black Dog Publishing Limited, 2005), p34.43 Golledge, R.G, ‘Geography and the Disabled: A Survey with Special reference to Vision Impaired and Blind Populations’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol 18, No 1, (1993), p63-85 (p63).44 Crang, M, ‘Qualitive methods: touchy, feely, look-see?’, Progress in Human Geographies, Vol 27, No 4, (2003), p494-504 (p498).45 Coverley, M, Psychogeography, (London/New York: Pocket Essentials, 2010), p62.46 Merleau-Ponty, M, Phenomenology of Perception, (London/New York: Routledge Classics, 2002), p4.47 Wilson, M.B, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Interaction’, in The Human Experience of Space and Place, (Lon-don: Croom Helm Ltd, 1980), p135-147 (p140).

Movement in space is seen as repetitious rhythms that map the personal space of an individual. Dérive “involve[s] playful-constructive behaviour and awareness of psychogeo-graphical effects.”48

“In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.”49

Debord’s illustration, The Naked City, begins to describe the natural movement of the able body through social space. “The first dérive was more about the people you meet, than the environments you pass through.”50 On the contrary, the disabled person’s dérive becomes influenced by the restrictions of space. “The body responds as it has always done, to such basic features of design as enclosure and exposure, verticality and horizontality, mass, volume, interior spaciousness, and light.”51 The restriction of space begins to construct the pathway for the wheelchair and consequently maps the behaviour of the body moving through space. As the disabled body moves through space, the restrictions form a network of nodes, which map movement through space.

It is the body’s engagement within space that forms the relationship between “world, own body and empirical self.”52 Consequently, this informs our physical engagement in space and the construction of social space in the city. The integration of physical and mental abstractions in a context is what defines a space. For the disabled body, the connection is not between his body and the space but the wheelchair and space.

“The wheelchair is a paradoxical object, simultaneously a signifier of their corporeal status or bodily incompetence’s, but also a prosthetic device … [referred] to as a limb object, that is, an extension of the body.”53

The wheelchair becomes the extension into space through which the user can determine the texture of the surface in the motion of movement. In a wheelchair, the subtle changes between ground and chair alter the perception of space, which consequently develops a greater understanding and awareness. Lefebvre narrows down the multiplicity of social space as a construct of the body within space, which brings you “closer to the everyday.”54

48 Debord, G, ‘Theory of the Dérive’, in Situationist International Anthology, (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981), p62-66 (p62).49 Ibid p62.50 Ford, S, The Situationist International: A User’s Guide, (London: Black Dog Publishing Limited, 2005), p35.51 Tuan, Y-F, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press, 2011), p116.52 Merleau-Ponty, M, Phenomenology of Perception, (London/New York: Routledge Classics, 2002), p241.53 Imrie, R, ‘Disability and discourses of mobility and movement’, Environment and Planning A, Vol 32, (2000a), p1641-1656 (p1652).54 Lefebvre, H, The Production of Space, (London/New York: Routledge, 1991), p69.


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[Dis]abled dérive: by Thom

as Wild

For the disabled person, they are forced into continuous interaction whilst travelling - having to be constantly aware, both physically and mentally, of themselves and the environment they are in.

The Deconstruction of Sensuously Explored Spaces.

“Psychoanalytic theory has introduced the notion of body image or body schema as the centre of integration. Our bodies and movements are in constant interaction with the environment; the world and the self inform and redefine each other constantly.”55

Developing upon Lefebvre, Pallasmaa focuses on understanding space, not through the integration of social experiences somebody has in a context, but through the body becom-ing “the very locus of reference, memory, imagination and integration”56 in occurrence with sensory defined experience. “Architecture articulates the experiences of being-in-the-world and strengthens our sense of reality and self; it does not make us inhabit worlds of mere fabrication and fantasy.”57 Pallasmaa defines the perception of space as the physical engagement between body and object, or for the wheelchair user, wheelchair and ground. For somebody refined to a wheelchair, this suggests that the chair has replaced the sense of touch and becomes an extension of the body haptically.

Somebody’s perspective whilst moving through space is seen to be a multi-sensory experience. Everybody has a unique perception of space. “This unification of experience is achieved through the somatic act of being in place;”58 it is a personal reflection of the sensu-ous engagement within space. “It mingles with our being, so much so that place and human beings are enmeshed, forming a fabric that is particular, concrete and dense.”59 It is the physical engagement in space, which defines our perception. Without the senses, we would perceive no world. Remove the eyes, and you cannot see space, yet your other senses replace sight and you begin to perceive space through alternative means; sound, smell, taste and touch. “Kinesthesis as the perception of the body’s movement not as a distinct, individual sense, but as cutting across several perceptual systems.”60 If you removed all five senses simultaneously, how would one know they were in space at all? Pallasmaa sug-gests “all senses, including vision, can be regarded as extensions of the sense of touch – as specializations of the skin.”61

55 Pallasmaa, J, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2005), p40.56 Ibid, p11.57 Ibid, p11.58 Grange, J, ‘Place, body and situation’, in Dwelling, Place and Environment, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p71-84 (p82).59 Ibid, p71.60 Paterson, M, ‘Haptic geographies: ethnography, haptic knowledges and sensuous dispositions’, Progress in Human Geography, Vol 33, No 6, (2009), p766-788 (p769).


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“One feels the touch of it at every step as one walks. It seems that nothing could be closer and more ready to hand. And yet it is more distant than the acquaintance one seeks at a distance of twenty paces. The street retreats, as it were, into the background.”62

Vision becomes a key aid in experiencing space, yet it is the haptic sensation of travelling and interacting with space, which fundamentally influences our perception. Vision is an ex-tension of our body into distance space, whereas touch constitutes our intimate engagement with space. “The notion of the spatial extension of objects is derived from the association of experiences of touch and sight.”63 However the eye only views space, never integrates within space. It is touch, which becomes the extension of the body into space. “Touch is expressive, can open up a non-verbal communicative pathway or channels between bodies, bring them into proximity.”64 Touch “views everyday movement in terms of a stimulus”65 as it becomes the extension of the body integrating within space; “the axis of the body is a proprioception.”66

Those who are blind rely on touch as an extension of their eyes. “Without sight, the other senses reach out to the world and draw close to it, thereby coming to know these other dimensions of the world more intimately.”67 An example of this is braille. Braille is evidence for touch becoming an extension of all senses. Those reading braille, use their fingertips as their eyes in order to read. By applying this concept to space, braille represents architec-ture, and through touch, we experience spatial dimensions in order to read space. “Seeing is touching with the eyes, and, like touch, the eyes reach only to the surface of things.”68 It is touch, which becomes the fundamental tool in perception.

If you remove touch from the body, you lose all perception of what immediate space is. Vi-sion, merely becomes an image, which you cannot engage with. “The effectiveness of touch … lies in the preverbal interface between the psychic and the somatic, sensory experi-

61 Pallasmaa, J, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2005), p42.62 Heidegger, M, Being and Time, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 1962), p141/142.63 Paterson, M, ‘‘Seeing with the hands’: Blindness, touch and the Enlightenment spatial imaginary’ British Journal of Visual Impairment, Vol 24, No 2, (2006), p52-59 (p54).64 Paterson, M, ‘Affecting Touch: Towards a ‘Felt’ Phenomenology of Therapeutic Touch’, in Emotional Geogra-phies, (Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2005), p161-173 (p162).65 Seamon, D, ‘Body-Subject, Time-Space Routines, and Place-Ballets’, in The Human Experience of Space and Place, (London: Croom Helm Ltd, 1980) p148-165 (p150).66 Paterson, M, ‘Haptic geographies: ethnography, haptic knowledges and sensuous dispositions’, Progress in Human Geography, Vol 33, No 6, (2009), p766-788 (p769).67 Hill, M.H, ‘Bound to the environment: Towards a phenomenology of sightlessness’, in Dwelling, Place and Environment, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p99-111 (p100).68 Ibid, p101.

ences that lie prior to articulation”69 through empiricism. It is the physical construct of space – architecture, which informs the social make up of space. By analyzing how the senses are integrated within our physical perception of space it provides evidence that the physi-cal form of space determines mental perceptions of space, or behaviour in space. “Every person is at the centre of his world, and circumambient space is differentiated in accordance with the schema of his body.”70 Perceiving space is a unique personal experience, because it is the senses of the body, which informs the mind. “Where as sensations are private and individual, representations are public and social.”71 In relation to architecture, the senses all play a part in experiencing space, yet visual, aural, gustative and olfactive abstractions of space have no physical proximity in relation to the body. Touch allows somebody to interpret the physical forms of space, for instance the slope on a pathway and the drop in a curb. It forms the sensation of moving along a pathway, which the body interacts with. “Through our senses we are building a representation of the outside world in our mind.”72

The disabled use other senses in order to interrupt space. The blind rely on haptic and aural abstractions of space in order to move. “Their experience of auditory space and of freedom in movement to envisage in their minds eyes panoramic views and boundless space.”73 The wheelchair user relies on haptic and visual space. “Touching and manipulating things with the hand yields a world of objects – objects that retain their constancy of shape and size.”74 The wheelchair extends into space, which allows the body to sensuously experience space. If you remove all sensuous engagement within space you perceive nothing. “Somatic senses are crucial to maintain the integrity of the body, both in a direct physical sense, and in a psychological sense of ownership.”75 Abstract mental space is the result of the integra-tion between physical forms of space and the body. In reaching out to space, we leave trace that can be mapped and identified.

From the perspective of the voyeur you experience social space, yet only see it, as a “swarming mass … an innumerable collection of singularities.”76 It is not until you perceive space from the perception of the walker, or through the somatic embodiment in space that the identity of space, such as the city, changes in personal space.

69 Paterson, M, ‘Affecting Touch: Towards a ‘Felt’ Phenomenology of Therapeutic Touch’, in Emotional Geogra

phies, (Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2005), p161-173 (p171).70 Tuan, Y-F, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press, 2011), p41.71 Ingold, T, The Perception of the Environment: Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill, (London: Routledge, 2000), p158.72 Zanker, F.M, Sensation, Perception and Action – An Evolutionary Perspective, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p3.73 Tuan, Y-F, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press, 2011), p16.74 Ibid, p12.75 Zanker, F.M, Sensation, Perception and Action – An Evolutionary Perspective, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p125.76 De Certeau, M, The Practice of Everyday Life, (Berkley: University of California Press, 1997), p97.


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The Disabled Body in Space

“Wood to a carpenter, stone to a sculptor, an engine to a mechanic – each is a rela-tionship which is not merely spatial but which radiates meanings that derives from grouping, adjusting and using things.”77

For the visually disabled person, the stick becomes his eyes, which extends into his person-al space to haptically travel through the city. For the physically immobilized, the wheelchair becomes the extension of touch, which reads terrain and the rhythms of pathways. In order to analyse the social construction of space and its engagement with the body, two observa-tions of moving through space from the perception of somebody in the wheelchair will begin to analyse the extension of the senses into space. [To protect the identity of my empirical case study I will refer to him throughout the remainder of this paper as James.] James is wheelchair dependent and his haptic engagement within space is confined and restricted. His movement through space becomes fragmented and monopolized as (in the case of this study) the city and a museum begin to determine his pathway through personal space.

The City

“Walking is a bodily movement that not only connects the body to the ground but also include[s] different postures, speeds, rhythms. These shape the tactile interac-tions between the moving body and the ground, and play a fundamental part in how the surroundings are sensually experienced.”78

As James moves through space he is required to constant decisions whilst travelling. He becomes the voyeur in space. The perceiver of all obstacles, aware of his body limitations and restrictions of space, he travels the city “mapped by the complex spatial mosaic”79 of pathways. James refers to his disability as “a package of problems.”80 These problems are only visible in the conditions of space, which he perceives. Microarchitecture of the built environment, such as the grains, colours and textures of surfaces or the indentations and undulations of the street create a phenomenal experience of architecture.

77 Relph, E, ‘Geographical experiences and being-in-the-world: The phenomenological origins of geography’, in Dwelling, Place and Environment, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p15-31 (p18).78 Lund, K, ‘Seeing in motion and the touching eye: walking over Scotland’s mountains’, Etnofoor, Vol 18, No 1, (2005), p27-42 (p28).79 Imrie, R, Disability and the City: International Perspectives, (London: Paul Chapman Publishing Ltd, 1996b), p12.80 James, Interview, (Chichester: 29 December 2012).

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Disabled people begin to perceive the city as “laboriously transformed”81 space. It is through documented experiences that we begin to understand how these spaces inform both per-sonal and public space. Conversely, those obstacles that form James’s personal space only impede his movement as he moves through the city. For the able-bodied pedestrian, the curb merely becomes a threshold between the road and pathway that you can pass between to cross the road. Similarly, “the rigid walk of the urban pedestrian reveals the dense, impacting weight of the city walls.”82 It is through “physical and/or architectural restrictions of disabled people’s mobility and movement [that] draw attention to hegemonic modes and means of disability.”83 The constraints of the city form the personal space of the disabled and the constant bodily interactions with physical objects in the city begin to construct social space.

On observing James moving through the city, it is evident that he plans his movements in relation to the urban landscape. He often backtracked in order to find a suitable point to cross the road or crossing the road multiple times in order to avoid curbs which were unsuit-able for his wheelchair. The movement of James begins to identify how the “spatiality of disability relates to the production of segregated spaces.”84 This “treats disability as homo-geneous, reinforcing the notion that there are two discrete types – the able bodied and the disabled.”85 The city forms spaces inaccessible to the disabled preventing those from freely travelling pathways without impeding movement. “Within architecture itself, the taste for deriving tends to promote all sorts of new forms of labyrinths.”86 However, as James moves through the city, he is aware of his limitations and space becomes un-restrictive. “Movement habits often are limited to selected learned routes between known places.”87 James uses the knowledge of his surroundings to travel through spaces. “It’s just being aware of your limitations.”88 Through the physical interaction with space “part of the city disappears and exaggerates others, distorting it, fragmenting it, and diverting it from its immobile order.”89

81 Golledge, R.G, ‘Geography and the Disabled: A Survey with Special reference to Vision Impaired and Blind Populations’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol 18, No 1, (1993), p63-85 (p63).82 Grange, J, ‘Place, body and situation’, in Dwelling, Place and Environment, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p71-84 (p72).83 Imrie, R, ‘Disability and discourses of mobility and movement’, Environment and Planning A, Vol 32, (2000a), p1641-1656 (p1646).84 Imrie, R, ‘Disabling Environments and the Geography of Access Policies and Practices’, Disability and Society, Vol 15, No 1, (2000b), p5-24 (p6).85 Imrie, R, ‘Ableist Geographies, Disablist Spaces: Towards a Reconstruction of Golledge’s Geography and the Disabled’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol 21, No 2, (1996a), p397-403 (p398).86 Debord, G, ‘Theory of the Dérive’, in Situationist International Anthology, (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981), p62-66 (p63).87 Golledge, R.G, ‘Geography and the Disabled: A Survey with Special reference to Vision Impaired and Blind Populations’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol 18, No 1, (1993), p63-85 (p69).88 James, Interview, (Chichester: 29 December 2012).89 De Certeau, M, The Practice of Everyday Life, (Berkley: University of California Press, 1997), p102.

PERCEPTION OF SPACE THROUGH THE DISABLED BODY Thomas Wild Acc

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As James moves through space he recognizes obstacles that he has to avoid. For the able-bodied pedestrian, these obstacles are recognised but have no impeding influence on travelling through space. Both move through space identically, yet react to space differently.

“Each time the movement is repeated the responses evoking that particular route are rein-forced and in time the pattern becomes habitual and thus involuntary.”90 The body moves through space as the walker. The senses reach out into space and inform movements that become repeatable haptic responses to an environment.

“Everytime I get in this thing I’m aware of my limitations and the things I can’t do … it becomes very apparent as soon as I set off down the street where most places are off limits to me.” 91

For the disabled body, the notion of moving through space is influenced by the restrictions of space. For the wheelchair user, this is expressed through the touch senses in his personal space. Whilst travelling, one considers space as a personal journey. James travels space interpreting it in relation to his body, or wheelchair. He considers the terrain, and rhythms of the pathway, which become “hurdles”92 in his movement. He moves as a walker. “A path is to be understood not as an infinite series of discrete points, occupied at successive instants, but as a continuous itinerary of movement.”93 The rhythms of movement inform the relationship between the body and space. In this case James is no longer disabled, but embodied within space. His wheelchair becomes the bridge between the haptic explora-tion within space and the mental abstraction or behaviour in social space. “Getting from A to B, in short, is explained through harnessing of a simple process, of bodily locomotion, to complex structure, the mental map.”94 James visualises space similar to an able-bodied pursuer. His account demonstrates how disability deconstructs the perception of space and how the senses inform his experience of social space. However, space is not considered as a defined single concept, but “a rapprochement between physical space (nature), mental space (formal abstractions about space) and social space (the space of human action and conflict and sensory phenomena).”95

Movement is considered as an “experimental behaviour linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of transient passage through varied ambiences.”96 James states,

90 Seamon, D, ‘Body-Subject, Time-Space Routines, and Place-Ballets’, in The Human Experience of Space and Place, (London: Croom Helm Ltd, 1980) p148-165 (p154).91 Imrie, R, ‘Disability and discourses of mobility and movement’, Environment and Planning A, Vol 32, (2000a), p1641-1656 (p1646).92 James, Interview, (Chichester: 29 December 2012).93 Ingold, T, The Perception of the Environment: Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill, (London: Routledge, 2000), p226.94 Ibid, p220.95 Merrifield, A, ‘Henri Lefebvre: A socialist in space’, in Thinking Space, (London: Routledge, 2000), p167-182 (p171).

“you need to be aware of being in a wheelchair … when you are restricted in height, and the crowds are surrounding you, you cannot see that well.”97 His immediate perception of space can be limited not only by the physical environment, but the behaviour and interac-tion with other people too. “The dynamic labyrinth (an ever shifting maze) would represent the paradigm of both architecture and social utopia.”98 This becomes more apparent when observing James moving through Tate Britain, where the integration between his body and other people, begins to construct a new dimension of space.

The Museum

Spaces, which occupy buildings, provide further investigation into the behaviour of indi-viduals in space. “Understanding of spatial layout is predominantly cognitive rather than objective.”99 James moves through space in relation to his wheelchair and the wheelchair moves through space in relation to physical obstacles and other people. For the wheelchair user, the body becomes invisible to the public eye in busy, contested spaces. “You are out of their eye line … you need to be aware of people’s perception of your position.”100 An exam-ple of this was observed in the Tate Modern as James moves through exhibition spaces.

“Wheelchair users are forced to maintain an inside line because they are not able to break the threshold between the public and the art work. Consequently it forces the disabled to move through space slower, at a restricted pace controlled by others.”101

This extract from my observation notes begins to describe the restrictive nature of the wheelchair in space. James’s movement through space was confined by two constructs: the restricted movement of a single confined path lining the outer edge of room and the behav-iour of other people in space. The notion of a museum naturally forces people into moving through an exhibition controlled by the spatial layout of a room. The pre-determined path fails to provide James with the freedom of movement in confined space, such as a crowd of people. The personal space of James is pre-determined by his wheelchair. The wheelchair becomes the extension of his body into space that determines his movement through space both physically (mapped by movement) and mentally (expressed through behaviour).

96 Andreotti, L & Costa, X, ed., Theory of the dérive and other situationist writings on the city, (Barcelona: Museo d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, ACTAR, 1996), p69.97 James, Interview, (Chichester: 29 December 2012).98 Ford, S, The Situationist International: A User’s Guide, (London: Black Dog Publishing Limited, 2005), p74.99 Golledge, R.G, ‘Geography and the Disabled: A Survey with Special reference to Vision Impaired and Blind Populations’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol 18, No 1, (1993), p63-85 (p65).100 James, Interview, (Chichester: 29 December 2012).101 Extract from observation notes, 2013.


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“When I am in busy spaces, sometimes I feel my wheelchair gets in the way of other people… I have to be careful when moving in busy spaces not to hit anybody as they are concentrating on what is in their peripheral vision and not me.”102

The wheelchair begins to restrict James in space and is restricting because of the environ-ments spatial qualities. By suggesting the personal space of the disabled person becomes restricted through the nature of the wheelchair, it can be suggested that the “spatiality of disability relates to the production of segregated spaces.”103

“Public space, the space of representation, becomes spontaneously a place for walks and encounters, intrigues, diplomacy, deals and negotiations – it theatralises itself.”104 James be-comes embodied in contested spaces, and his movement through space in his wheelchair defines his personal space. “Space is viewed as an active constituent of social relations.”105 The museum is a public space occupied by both able-bodied and [dis]able-bodied people. The able body can move through space with greater freedom than the disabled body. The disabled body moves in relation to restriction. “Instead of regulating my movement through physical streets and squares, the signs pointed in the direction of another city.”106 Paul Carter describes this as another city. Space takes on a new identity constructed through the personal space of the body. In contested spaces, “it is not the street or open square that causes panic, but the crowd. The moving chaos of wheeled and pedestrian traffic.”107 In the busy museum, James is not restricted by the museum but by other people occupying space.

Restriction for James relies upon the conditions of the space. Space is constructed through both the physical forms of space and the environment of the space (people occupying space). Someone’s perception of space is based upon his or her intimate experience that maps the body’s behaviour in personal space.

102 James, Interview, (Chichester: 29 December 2012).103 Imrie, R, ‘Disabling Environments and the Geography of Access Policies and Practices’, Disability and Society, Vol 15, No 1, (2000b), p5-24 (p6).104 Lefebvre, H, rhythmanalysis, space time and everyday life, (London/New York: Continuum, 2004), p96.105 Mowl, G & Fuller, D, ‘Geographies of disability’, in Introducing Social Geographies, (Great Britain: Arnold, 2001), p164-186 (p178).106 Carter, P, repressed spaces; The Poetics of Agoraphobia, (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2002), p11.107 Ibid, p31.

Conclusion.

“What Cozzens encountered in traveling through and what we encounter in travel-ling to the Grand Canyon are both different from the environment which indigenous peoples encounter as they dwell there rather than travel.”108

Robert Mugerauer’s example of the Grand Canyon outlines how space is perceived as a personal and self-defining phenomenon. It is this personal experience, which is formed through physical interaction with space. For those that dwell in a place, they consider space as points of frequent inhabitation that forms the identity of home. For the traveler, the per-ception of space changes as a result of movement and the rhythmic sensation of travelling through space. In both cases the construction of personal space is through the physical relation to space. The body, or senses inform this physical construct as “spatial practices can be revealed by deciphering space and have close affinities with perceived space.”109 The deconstruction of perception formulates the identity of space.

As the disabled body, moves through space, the environment forces the body, or wheelchair into constraint movements. The body ignores the motive for movement and instead begins to interpret personal space, which informs the social space of the city. “Cities have a psy-chological relief, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes which strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.”110 In the city, the “intertwined paths give their shape to spaces. They weave places together… Pedestrian movements form one of these real systems whose existence in facts makes up the city.”111 The personal space of the disabled indentifies the immediate social space, which construct pathways through cities.

The body forms a “relationship between innate knowledge and sensory experience” 112 when perceiving space. “Spatial perception necessarily elides the specific perceptual content of the different sense modalities … sensations cohere at some cognitive level.”113 The senses begin to inform the physical integration between the body and space however your percep-tion of space is seen as an experience expressed through sensuous engagement in space – defining both the behaviour and movement through physical interactions. The disabled and able person experience space identically, it is their response to the environment which, consequently changes their perception of space.

108 Mugerauer, R, ‘Language and the emergence of environment’, in Dwelling, Place and Environment, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p51-70 (p54).109 Merrifield, A, ‘Henri Lefebvre: A socialist in space’, in Thinking Space, (London: Routledge, 2000), p167-182 (p174/175).110 Debord, G, ‘Theory of the Dérive’, in Situationist International Anthology, (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981), p62-66 (p62).111 De Certeau, M, The Practice of Everyday Life, (Berkley: University of California Press, 1997), p97.112 Paterson, M, ‘‘Seeing with the hands’: Blindness, touch and the Enlightenment spatial imaginary’ British Journal of Visual Impairment, Vol 24, No 2, (2006), p52-59 (p52).113 Ibid, p57.


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The disabled move through space with the aid of a device. The wheelchair becomes a vehicle for reading terrain and the rhythms of the pathway expressed through touch. The intimate embodied experience becomes unique to the body, which maps the behaviour of the body defined by movement through space.

“The body is the ground of human action. The mind constituted by the affirmation of the actual existence of the body, and the reason is active and embodied precisely because it is the affirmation of a particular bodily existence.”114

By deconstructing space through disability, we have explored the different dimensions that inform our perception of space. It is the physical interactions with space, which define the behaviour of somebody in space. The senses define how we experience space as they “think and structure our relationship with the world.”115 For the disabled, touch becomes the extension of sight, which guides people through space. The wheelchair reads physical space and defines how one interprets space. By understanding how the senses begin to read space, disability deconstructs space by removing a sense from the body and dem-onstrates how we interpret space through touching our personal space by using the other senses available to the body.

The personal space of the disabled highlights the construction of space in the city. Space is a unique experience. For the disabled, space is restrictive through the behaviour of the body travelling along pathways and through squares. The construction of personal space is expressed through the senses, which informs our “direct experience of the world.”116 The disabled body defines space as a network of restrictive points in movement that conse-quently form greater awareness in space. The disabled body, does not restrict somebody in space, it is the nature of space, which restricts the body.

114 Gatens, M, Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, power and corporeality, (London: Routledge, 1996), p57.115 Pallasmaa, J, The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture, (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2009), p17.116 Tuan, Y-F, topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values, (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1974), p8.

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