Abstraction, production sociale et production de l’espace

The aim of this article is to discuss two antagonistic conceptions of the relationship between socialization and spatialization. These are the conceptions referred to by the expressions “social production” and “production of space” borrowed, respectively, from Georg Simmel and Henri Lefebvre. The antagonism is rooted, in this case, on the function assigned to geometry as socio-spatial abstraction, particularly in the field of urban planning. Modernist architects like Le Corbusier and Ludwig Hilberseimer consider that the geometrically established relationships within the framework of their respective development projects make it possible to synthesize the main factors of socio-spatial production. In this respect, they follow Simmel, whose empirical deduction of categories such as individuality, role and structure is already a typological abstraction, or even a social geometry. As opposed to that, considering the way they interrupt the continuous fabric of the capitalist metropolis, Richard Serra’s sculptures and Gordon Matta-Clark’s anarchitectures rather resonate with Lefebvre’s analysis of the current socio-spatial production. These works are paradoxical critiques of geometrization by means of geometrical shapes. More precisely, they uncover and question the ideological substratum of modern planning, thus allowing us to discuss two equally antagonistic regimes of abstraction.