synekism…

27Dec08

the word ‘synekism’ comes from the greek word ‘synokismos’… ‘synoi’ part means ‘coming together of’ (as in synthesis) and the ‘kismos’ part coming from the greek word ‘oikos’ that means ‘house’… synoikismos would mean the condition created by the material fact of coming together of houses, or in a general sense, by the increasing denseness of human settlement… synekism, as borrowed from various sources of inspiration and finally used in a qualified sense by edward soja, means the formation and reformation of social relations by the changing organisation of human lives in material (being inseparable from conceptualisations of the material) space, with increasing density of settlements… soja distinguishes the subtly different sense in which he uses the word synekism by shifting away from an older spelling ‘synoecism‘…

i use the term here in a very specific and clearly reduced meaning… in munirka gaon (south delhi), i came across this curious house architecture where the first courtyard after entering the house, on one hand becomes the modern lobby, and on the other hand remains the pre-modern courtyard… and in some cases, they also have a well… in the pics here we see this woman using one of such wells and going back holding the bucket of water…

clearly here takes place a reconfiguration of material spaces of life, caused by increased density of settlements… a spatial juxtaposition forced by lack of availability of space… the well which is not supposed to be in the courtyard had to be moved there… at the same time the courtyard which is supposed to be private or at least less-public than the street, is moved straight next to the street (i took the pics standing on the street), again due to space crunch… what induced me to take the pics is this woman’s complete veiling… now, i think, there cannot be a grand statement regarding whether the space of obtaining water is a private or public space… but usually the well, if private, enjoys a certain seclusion (mostly spatial) that allows it to be used by the women of the house without being directly seen by the men or the guests/pedestrians, and if public, would have a seclusion (mostly temporal) that provides a semi-women-only space, which though not private, is more relaxing than public-with-male-presence… it is of interest here, in the pics, how the veiling regime within the physical boundary of the house has changed with the architecture co-determined by space crunch…

this is micro-scale synekism…

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Tags: architecture, delhi, munirka, private/public, space, urban