How random is that? Yet I fit in more here than at the advertising company? Why? Because the company deals with space and I am obsessed with space. Yes Whiz Property is concerned with building buildings and selling the space, and I am concerned with the use of space and how it affects our social lives.
But the two have married in my latest experiment: assessing the changing use and need of space in the urban environment.
Hello new love affair!
The need for space and the use thereof is changing. Just as the internet, two years ago, did not know that a single "like" button on a face book page could revolutionise the spread of information, so space and place in the urban context has speedily generated a need for us to think differently.
San Francisco has come to the rescue, in the form of a Writers' Grotto. It is not being acknowledged that it is not only corporate business people who require the structure and motivation of working hours in a working only space. Writers, freelancers and other people and their dogs are beginning to realise that even us bohemian artistic, creative, writing and philosophising types need structure, schedules and other such 'corporate' motivations in our lives.
And to the Writer's Grotto was born.
This is a niche market that, it appears, does not exist (at least in profusion) in South Africa.
So the space begins to change.
Office space is no longer going to be for the clock-inners and outers, the eight to fivers and the CC owners. Now it will be for people like me, or Luntu or Kylene, who take some writing here, a design job there, some film editing next door, but end up cleaning the top of the top cupboard a day before deadline.
If anybody who reading this (very witty and informative) post finds themselves in the Gauteng province experiencing just such a scenario of freelance work and rabid spring cleaning then comment on this post and we will hook you up dawg!
Culture is made in the physical space. I want to create a culture of creative, enterprising, networking individuals who will take the Gauteng province by storm. The physical space says a lot about us - why we choose to live in a space, how we react to a space, what we get from a space.
So now it is time for me to build a city. Of space. And begin to explore the these spaces as cities of creative collaborations.
That is all.
This post got me thinking, and I'm starting to warm up to the "anthropology of space." Like, I originally felt the study was a little frivolous, until recently.
ReplyDeleteMy largest project, so far, hinges on the anthropology of space. Namely, the percieved value of rooftops. Although rooftops are technically more useful to me than an indoor level -- because of sunlight, pitch, and easy drainage --- I get charged less because rooftops have less PERCEIVED value in my culture, which decreases my overhead and increases profits.
You should email me. I'd like to co-author an blog article with you.
--- Ashkuff | http://www.ashkuff.com | Bored with reading about others' adventures? Burning to venture out yourself? Let this applied anthropologist remind you how.