Radically constructing 'place'

Place—what it means to be somewhere, or to be from somewhere—is a common thread running through the many systemic crises of our time. Place is a value under threat from globalisation, gentrification, networked technologies, human conflict and environmental disasters. At the same time, it is an underlying cause of some of the political and social tensions that are intertwined with these issues. Within architectural theory, place is strongly associated with phenomenology, the foundations of which are entangled with the sort of nativist politics that is currently resurgent around the world. In this working paper, I outline an alternative approach to place as a way to address its double-edged quality, building on Ernst von Glasersfeld’s radically constructivist interpretation of Jean Piaget. In doing so, I establish points of connection between architectural discourse on place and the cybernetic foundations of systemic design.