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essentialism and spatial 
(re) production

Benjamin Bross

introduction

The phenomenon of Globalization continues 
to strengthen and spread across socio-cultural 
community boundaries, resulting in homogenized 
cultural landscapes.  As Henri Lefebvre pointed 
out, spatial production1  exhibits a society’s value 
systems through the spaces (and places) it produces. 
One of the principal effects of a technology-driven 
flow of information on spatial production is that 
it has increasingly become a binary proposition: 
either design practice contributes to a sense of place 
by being rooted in place-based iterative socio-
historical spatial production processes or, it follows 
Modernism’s rejection of history and tradition 
in order to disrupt consciously the socio-historic 
context. The former asserts the continuation of 
localized spatial traditions and the latter producing 
design that participates in a larger globalized 
contemporary aesthetic. Yet, if spatial production 
is to (re)produce spatial traditions, how do we 
recognize what is essential to the identity of space?

 The purpose of this essay is to produce an 
analytical approach that examines site-specific 
spatial design that results in placemaking: a 
unique physical spatial experience defined by the 
relationship between various spatial objects and 



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their properties. Together, these objects, usually typological spaces, and 
their qualities produce a sense of environmental and geographic spatial 
identity that distinguish a place from other spaces. The spatial production 
of objects that acknowledge and utilize their contexts help counteract the 
increasing homogeneity of globalized space. The question is then, how do 
we determine if a spatial product (a door, a house or a city plaza) belongs 
to, and hence continues, a specific spatial production tradition or context? 
How do we answer the question: What is it? What follows describes spatial 
products as knowable by the nature of their properties. 

 This article uses the philosophical concept of essentialism to develop 
a framework to analyze and generate designs that are rooted in context 
and history. The paper explores “Aristotelian” essentialism, focusing 
on the efficient and final causes, to define the nature of a spatial object. 
The essay continues by explaining the role of time in identifying spatial 
products. Finally, anchored in the previous analyses, the essay proposes 
three modes of spatial production: discontinuity, continuity, and innovation, 
that describe contemporary spatial production based on the deployment 
of essential properties of an object. These three modes allow designers to 
reflectively engage in the practice of spatial placemaking.

ESSENTIALISM

Introduction to Essentialism
 Modern essentialism, as part of part of the “scientific realism” tradition, 

can be applied to explain the nature (see below) of objects. First, it is 
important to remember that as Lefebvre notes, “nature creates and 
does not produce.”2  This is important to note because my essentialist 
argument focuses on the essential qualities of produced objects and not 
that of created things of Nature. Hence, the essay is not about natural 
kinds, but rather, about the essential qualities of produced spatial objects. 
This philosophical approach seeks to document qualities including 
those that go beyond the “appearances in order to discover the hidden 
causes of things.”3 Thus, objects are defined by characteristics/properties 
that are bound in the essence of the object.  Essentialism requires first an 
affirmation of the object’s characteristics/properties and thus distinguishes 
those properties that are intrinsic and necessary for being the object from 
those which are accidental; the latter defined as a “property of an object 
…. it happens to have but that it could lack.”4  Necessary properties, in 
turn, are “primary or secondary qualities” where “primary qualities are 
properties of the objects themselves. The secondary qualities are manners 
in which we are affected by things in the process of perceiving them.”5  



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Hence, all essential properties are intrinsic, but not 
all intrinsic properties are essential. Moreover, as 
Leibniz6  argued, and more recently Baruch Brody,7  
intrinsic properties can only be essential if they 
are possessed at all times by the object. Therefore, 
attitudes towards spatial objects are in themselves 
accidental, that is, susceptible to the passage of time 
and the concurrent evolution of value-systems. 

 An attempt to describe an object by what it is 
not would ultimately be fruitless, because all objects 
lack an infinite number of properties. Rather, it is 
imperative to search for properties, characteristics, 
or qualities that the object must possess to be 
categorized as a part of a specific spatial production 
tradition. The question then becomes, how do we 
identify the essential qualities of a spatial product?

ARISTOTLE’S CAUSES 

 Aristotle’s “causes”8  provide an important 
approach to applying essentialism to spatial 
production. Aristotle proposed “four categories of 
cause” that explain physical reality and the nature 
of things: material, formal, efficient and final.9  The 
material cause, as the name suggests, explains the 
material content of the object; the formal cause 
explains the shape of the object.  With efficient 
cause, Aristotle attempted to describe qualities that 
are not necessarily revealed at the surface of the 
object itself but are imbued into the object during 
its production. These qualities include socially 
constructed value systems acting through the 
individual or groups producing the object: rituals of 
production, skillsets, aesthetics (value judgements 
of beauty), logistics (including location, tools and 
facilities) and temporality (duration and time 
frame).  The final cause, or the purpose of the object, 
is the designed purpose or function of the object. 
Because material and formal causes are somewhat 
self-evident, the essay focuses on the role of efficient 
and final cause in determining spatial essence.

all essential 
properties are 

intrinsic, but 
not all intrinsic 

properties are 
essential

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EFFICIENT CAUSE

 In an Aristotelian context, one of the ways we can explain essential 
properties of the object is by understanding the object’s efficient cause 
or its process of production. First, efficient cause explores who produces 
the object, and more importantly, how. Under this interpretation, efficient 
cause is the combination of the producer and the process (steps) of 
production itself.10  At its most expansive scope, a culture is defined by its 
traditions and rituals (what it does), and at its most granular, fabricators 
are defined by their knowledge; hence the carpenter is identified as the 
carpenter because she knows how to do carpentry. 

 Efficient cause analysis requires the development of identifiable 
proprietary sets -a group based on identified shared properties. Who 
may start with a general category, for example, an ethnic, national, or 
other productive group, i.e. “the French”, and can finish with definitive 
specificity, such as a particular or individual producer -i.e., Jean Nouvel.  
As in Set Theory, related groups of specific examples are part of the 
greater general set, with each set containing kinds.11  Specificity in the set 
is only as relevant as required by the analyst to demonstrate the validity 
of the general set’s essential and related properties.12  Who produces the 
object is then an essential property of the object itself -even anonymity 
of production is an identifiable property of the object (i.e., when we do 
not know or cannot know who made the object, when anonymity is a 
requirement of production, or when anyone can produce an object). As 
Walter Benjamin13  noted, who or what produces an object is a fundamental 
property when determining authenticity (see replication below), hence it 
is an essential component of identity. The appearance of “Black Swan”14  
exceptions to any specific set, do not invalidate the original set, but rather, 
create a new independent subset within the larger general set or alternately, 
widen the sorting criteria.  Identifying who produces the object is limited 
only by the Venn diagram-like qualifiers that are used to form a kind set: 
i.e., profession, religious or hierarchical status, socio-cultural and political 
membership, etc. When analyzing a spatial product, such as a church, we 
might investigate who designed, built, blessed, and funded the product, 
noting that each of these producers had a specific role because of their 
knowledge in the process of production. We might further investigate 
requirements to participate in these roles, for example, to bless a religious 
shrine, it is a requirement to be an ordained priest of that religion.

 Another aspect of efficient cause is the ‘how’ or the process of 
production. In essentialism, the object’s essential identity may embody 
the processes of production if deemed relevant by the individual maker 



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or society as a whole. These processes include but 
are not limited to rituals or traditions and their 
associated codes (rules) of execution. For example, 
it may be essential that the object be produced 
following specific manufacturing steps or associated 
rituals that may or may not be visible in the object 
itself; at specific periods of time, such as the first 
full moon of the year, or when a comet appears in 
the evening sky. As we shall see below, these codes 
of production, may significantly overlap with the 
final cause, i.e. the designed purpose, as often how 
something is produced is part of why an object is 
produced. Hannah Arendt15  has argued that the 
how also includes socio-political value systems, 
including capital production contexts, codes, 
and working conditions. Like production rituals, 
these characteristics may or may not be visible in 
the product itself, and overlap at times with other 
Essentialist Causes. For example, a church façade 
may be made of the stone of a specific quarry, such 
that its Material Cause is stone, but its efficient 
cause is that the stone must be from a particular 
quarry associated with a sacred mountain. Finally, 
efficient cause might incorporate “constructal”16  

logic, where the object is the natural (that is obeying 
Natural Laws) result of a production process.  Once 
again, it is necessary for the analyst to propose 
and bound the relevant parameters in developing 
identity sets. 

FINAL CAUSE

 Aristotle describes final cause as the object’s 
purpose or telos. Purpose can be divided into 
two parts: what it should do, for example “a 
house should provide shelter”; and what it can do 
(beyond its primary purpose) because of its intrinsic 
properties, such as materiality, shape, dimension, 
volume, color etc., for example, “a house can be a 
museum.” The should makes explicit intent, while 
can acknowledges an object’s possibilities, but is 

 Like production 
rituals, these 

characteristics 
may or may not 
be visible in the 
product itself, 

and overlap at 
times with other 

Essentialist 
Causes.

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void of designer intent. As we shall see below, this is a critical idea as 
it lays the foundation for a constructed system of values. Furthermore, 
fundamental to the idea of what an object does, is an incorporated history 
of all previous actions, which taken as a sum, enable present and future 
actions of the object (hereafter, called functions). These historic, present 
and future functions become the “signs” by which semiotic analyses ascribe 
various degrees of meaning and ultimately the collective memory inherent 
in the social contexts of spatially produced objects.  

 Another important aspect of final cause exists in an object’s potential 
purpose, such that as the object fulfills its purpose, what was initially an 
extrinsic object quality, thereafter transforms the object’s essence, and now 
forms part of its intrinsic properties. It is important to note that regardless 
of the transformation, the object retains its initial properties even while 
gaining new qualities.17  In that sense, the object acquires new purposes, 
that are fundamental for describing the object’s nature. This is especially 
important when the object must then be able to perform the new intrinsic 
purpose as its reason for being. While considering an object’s purpose—
and hence describing it—space-time contexts must be identified clearly: 
What the object has been, what it is, and what it could be are properties of 
the object. These contexts are necessary to establish categorical boundaries 
of being. 

 To illustrate this point, let us examine the “Western Wall”18  in Jerusalem. 
(figure 1) As a material cause, the wall is made of limestone “Jerusalem 
Stone” blocks quarried near the site.19  Turning to the wall’s efficient cause, 
the wall’s stone blocks were placed side by side to form long courses, with 
each successive course rising away from its bedrock foundation. Though 
parts of the wall have been built and rebuilt by different rulers and their 
corresponding subjects over the last 2000 years, historic records show that 
King Herod ordered the initial construction20  of the wall; hence, members 
of Judean society ranging from priests to slaves initially built the wall. At 
each instance, the tools and technology that were used to construct the 
wall correspond to the time and cultural corpus of the people working on 
the wall. In terms of its final cause, the wall was designed and erected as a 
structure capable of holding back soil in order to support a large temple 
surrounded by ceremonial grounds. 

 Once the wall was finished sometime between 19 BCE and the end of 
construction of the Temple Mount in 64 CE, it fulfilled its telos. Yet in 
70 CE, 6 years after the Temple Mount was finally completed, the Second 
Temple was destroyed.21  After the destruction of the Temple by the 
Romans, only portions of the retaining wall and Temple Mount were left 



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–though eventually the latter were also removed.  
However, as F.M. Loewenberg notes,22  the portion 
of the retaining wall that did survive, did not acquire 
an “aura”23  of symbolic and theological importance 
until nearly 1500 years later; that would happen 
four years after the 1546 earthquake, when houses 
and other lean-to structures collapsed and revealed 
the original retaining wall. Sultan Suleiman I, the 
Magnificent, instructed his engineers to clear away 
debris and prepare a prayer site for Jews. Thereafter, 
the once extrinsic property –its spatial relationship 
to the Holy of Holies- became an intrinsic quality, 
i.e. no longer was it simply a retaining wall, but 
rather, as a physical remnant of the Temple and its 
grounds, over the centuries increasingly becoming 
Judaism’s holiest site. 

CRITIQUES OF ESSENTIALISM

 In his essay, “No Route to Material Origin 
Essentialism?”24  Nic Damnjanovic critiques 
Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, pointing out 
arguments made against essentialism’s apparent 
inability to determine the “sufficiency” or minimum 

figure 1:

western wall, jerusalem



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properties that an object must possess to be considered essentially that 
object. First, it is important to note his criticism is primarily directed 
at material cause, and concludes “any argument for (EMO) [material 
origin essentialism] that relies on a sufficiency principle is bound to 
fail.”25  Damnjanovic notes that any essentialist argument that depends on 
exclusive material properties of objects alone is not enough to identify an 
object as unique, or belonging to its own set.  Instead, an object’s identity 
essence is derived from material, the other three causes, and its resulting 
intrinsic compossibility.26  Simply stated, an object´s essence does not rest 
alone on its materiality, but in the sum of the properties that are present 
in its production, and its ability to sustain relationships (interactions) with 
other objects.

    Other critics note that essences do not seem to be observable and 
hence verifiable. David Oderberg, citing Locke as the source of the 
confusion, counters that the fundamental question that must be answered 
is “what is meant by observability.”27  He continues by discussing an 
object´s quiddity, pragmatically noting that objects do possess intrinsic 
properties that do manifest themselves extrinsically. As such, these intrinsic 
properties cannot be separated from the object, and hence flow forth from 
it, revealing its essence. He writes “…what a thing is does determine how 
it is –in the traditional terminology, function follows essence. Essence 
just is the principle from which flows the characteristic behavior of the 
thing. And a thing´s numerical identity as particular member of a kind 
determines its particular behavior…”28  Objects must be evaluated by what 
they are and do, and on that basis, analyses reveal how and why an object 
behaves as it does. Therefore, designers can utilize modern essentialism 
to identify spatial production traditions not only by their form, but also 
equally as important, by what they do, and how they achieve designed 
functions.  As we shall see below, this is of paramount importance when 
attempting to avoid “pastiche” aesthetics. 

THE ROLE OF TIME

 In the reductionist tradition, Time is a descriptive property of a spatial 
product (object) indicating the specific status of being (existing) in an 
object’s production, use and relationship with other objects. In this sense, 
an object possesses five distinct (but related) qualities of time: embodied, 
existence, contextual, production, and use.

  Embodied time describes the passage of time incorporated since the 
object’s creation.29  For example, in the case of the Itsukushima Torii30  

(figure 2) the columns are made from Camphor tree trunks. These 



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Camphor tree trunks are at least two hundred years 
old before they were cut down. The embodied time 
property is neither accidental nor incidental, as 
width, height and loadbearing requirements for the 
Itsukushima Torii necessitate trees that must be at 
least 200 years old to fulfill its final cause in the 
same way as past Torii iterations. 

  Existence time is the descriptive characteristic 
of the object’s age from production inception going 
forward. This is because objects can be said to be 
in existence once they have been produced and 
function (see final cause). Existence time criteria is 
fundamental to understand the value systems which 
are imbedded in the production of spatial product. 
For example, use may be the primary production 
criteria when choosing materials prioritizing 
their point of obsolescence, thus enabling future 
market-oriented consumption.  The Itsukushima 
Torii’s existence time begins once the tree trunks 
are transformed into columns, and all other 
components are integrated to form the new whole 
object of the Torii. In this way, we describe the age 
(measured flow of time) of the components either 

figure 2:

Itsukushima Shrine Torii  



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as independent of human interaction (created), or dependent on the 
production process.31 

  Contextual time is determined by the occurrence of other events that 
demarcate the beginning, continuation and end of specific periods. In 
contextual time, we note referential time points, as in the past, present, and 
future, but more importantly, by a proposed generally accepted historic 
identifier such as Neolithic or Roman. Contextual time is indispensable to 
understand spatial identity as belonging to an identifiable set of criteria 
to which the spatial product belongs, and as such, denotes and connotes 
particular spatial identity; it allows us to examine the characteristics of 
the social, cultural and political contexts in which an object has been, is, 
and will be produced. Contextual time is often considered the prevalent 
criteria for membership in an identity group, as we often refer to qualities 
of context when describing an object’s identity. As such, we state the object 
belongs to, emulates (simulates, but is not authentic), and disrupts the time 
qualities of objects belonging to the same identity groups. If matched with 
efficient and final causes, we derive a cross-reference of who, how, and why, 
as related to the contextual time frame in which they are produced. Who 
in contextual time, may reference the larger set of people whose cultural 
spatial making is identified with the production of an object, such as the 
“Edo” or “Meiji” periods.  Equally importantly, is the iterative nature of 
contextual time, since the production of an object reinforces the notion of a 
specific period of production: for example, when archeologists suggest that 
a ruin dates from a specific time frame because its physical characteristics 
match those of other objects known to have been produced in that time 
context.

  Production time refers directly to the time that is necessary to produce 
an object. For example, one salient characteristic of Fordism32  is the mass 
production of consumable products in a specific calibrated amount of 
time. In this manner, we can describe the time it takes to produce a spatial 
object as a specific, descriptive quality.  In the case of a Torii, we could 
distinguish within the context of efficient cause, between those that are 
handmade (longer periods of time and labor intensive) and those that are 
machine-made (rapid production and serially made).

  As the name suggests, use time describes the measured amount of time 
an object performs its functions. Whereas existence time is a measure of the 
passage time of the object, use time measures the duration of each function. 
Recalling that function applies equally to what an object should and can do, 
we can similarly note that use time applies to the carrying out of activities 
that are intended and unintended. At first sight, the latter might suggest an 



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extraneous consideration, yet if we recall the example 
of the Western Wall, construction of spatial myth is 
often the result of built environments performing 
time-based unintended activities. Such activities 
become fundamental in understanding the shaping 
of human perception derived from the essence of 
the spatial product. For example, a farmer’s field 
that temporarily becomes a brutal battlefield; 
though comparatively insignificant to the existence 
time of the field, the use time of the Rummel 
Farm33  as a battleground during the U.S. Civil 
War transformed the farm into a spatial component 
of the Gettysburg National Military Park.  Such a 
spatial transformation includes the corresponding 
changes to site’s spatial essence legibility.

DEVELOPMEN OF SETS

 Sets are collections of objects that share criteria-
based common properties. To apply essentialism as 
sorting criteria requires considering objects’ intrinsic 
properties. Sets are made through the analyses of 
spatial production for identification purposes based 
on the cause properties (discussed previously) of the 
objects. For example, “Set Doors” is composed of 
the physical object “doors,” such that all doors are 
contained in “Set Doors.” As a first step, the designer 
defines a door through its final cause essence: What 
does a door do that makes it a door? What must a 
door perform to be considered a door? A second 
step is to sort doors by efficient cause, answering who 
must produce the door, and how must they produce 
it to be perceived as a door, and more specifically a 
particular type of door? A third, but certainly not 
final step, would be to generate time criteria that 
further restricts set membership: in what context time 
is the door produced, and what is the use time for a 
particular door? One possible next step is to identify 
what is a door by formal properties: dimensions, 
materials, configurations, ornamentations, colors, 
components, etc. Each answer generates additional 

   use time 
describes the 
m e a s u r e d 
amount of 
time an object 
performs its 
functions. 

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sets defined by commonalities between member objects, and differences 
with objects of other sets, while all objects are generally still considered 
doors. Taken to its logical end, we can visualize how on one hand increasing 
complexity leads to increasing differentiation and ultimately uniqueness 
in an object, while on the other hand, we can determine as many sets as 
necessary to establish what is essential in a spatial identity set. At the larger 
scale, the quantified and qualified identification of sets allow observers 
to assert that an object belongs to a specific tradition of spatial practice 
because of its essential properties. 

 Once a set has been determined by specific criteria, essentialism 
becomes normative when applied to generate design.  First essentialism 
describes what is, and then, what it should be based on established rules 
of belonging to the set. The more limited the set of explanations available 
for each property, the easier it is to identify the uniqueness of the type 
to a society, and in some cases, the singularity of the object itself. These 
properties are often expressed as normative regulations: to be considered 
a part of an object’s set, a shared minimum of characteristics must be 
evident. The more specific the set, the clearer the revelation of the essential 
nature of the object to a society, and within a society’s total production. 

Set development reveals constructed value systems not only for the set, 
but for the set developer as well. A central aspect of set development is 
the privileging of some properties over others to generate a set identity. In 
other words, why properties are chosen is as important as what properties 
are chosen. The deconstruction of property privileging reveals meaning 
through semiotics. For example, Amos Rapoport (following Hall) 
categorized human spatial production based on their physical permanence 
into fixed, semifixed, and non-fixed components.34  In his methodic 
approach, he proposes a system that identifies the object’s essential final 
cause properties in terms of its existence time to derive meaning. Designers 
can utilize his system to generate spatial production that follows the 
essential property rules to generate similar objects.

As we shall see next, such an approach presents an opportunity for 
designers to continue a spatial tradition by (re)producing that which has 
been classified as belonging to a pre-existing contextual set; or, innovate 
designed components rooted in context or history yet exemplifying 
contemporary expressions of functions, materiality and/or form.

DISCONTINUITY, CONTINUITY AND INNOVATION

Having described essentialism as analytical tools to examine the identity 



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of spatial products, we can now propose how these 
analyses are applied through design. Generally, 
we understand spatial production through three 
general modalities: Discontinuity, continuity, and 
innovation. Each of these modes of production 
display varying degrees of commonality, from none 
to total, with the latter a high reliance or emulation 
on the proprietary qualities of contextual spatial 
production. Specifically, we are able to categorize 
spatial objects because sets (see above) contain 
objects that relate to each other through causal 
qualities at the exclusion of objects that do not share 
properties. Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen, citing Thomas 
Kuhn, explains that: 

According to Kuhn’s theory, references of 
kind terms are determined through a network 
of similarity and dissimilarity relations, which 
specify what properties an entity can and 
cannot have in order to qualify as that kind. 
Similarity-dissimilarity sets do not entail any 
principled distinction between essential and 
superficial properties. Although the original 
formation of sets does not require any 
description, the descriptive content stored in 
the sets is subsequently needed to keep the 
boundaries between kind categories sharp.35 

Because sets are determined by selecting 
specific parameters, designers must engage in the 
selection of properties that may be produced or 
re-produced during object production. Obviously, 
certain parameters are impossible to replicate, 
such as contextual time. Yet, as we will see below, 
the inability to possess the same contextual time 
disqualifies continuity only as far as it limits an 
object´s authenticity for a specifically bounded 
time context, but not in its tradition of making or 
embedded value systems (i.e. building codes). 

having 
described 

essentialism 
as analytical 

tools to 
examine 

the identity 
of spatial 
products, 

we can now 
propose how 

these analyses 
are applied 

through design

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DISCONTINUITY

With the rise of Modernism in the 19th century and onward, as 
exemplified by Adolph Loos’ treatise Ornament and Crime, designers and 
artists willfully turned away from the past and its traditions. Moreover, 
contemporary spatial production practices, even in the Postmodernist 
period, continue to question the value of establishing a continuity or 
innovative relationship with historic and contextual environments.  
Lebbeus Woods had gone so far as to declare “I am at war with my 
time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened 
forms.”36    It is this rejection of spatial history and context that creates 
spatial discontinuity, as it privileges objects that are dissimilar to their 
environment. Discontinuity is a modality of spatial production where 
contextual essential qualities are obviated in favor of the production of a 
consciously differentiated spatial product.  

Discontinuous spatial production exhibits the absence of the various 
properties of the spatial products such as time, materiality, history, 
purpose, and value systems. Differentiated objects exhibit contextual 
relationships that are limited to either their physical presence, enforced 
embedded value systems, or functionality. Perhaps one of the best examples 
of discontinuous spatial production is Adolf Loos’ Steiner House. Built in 
1910 in a Viennese suburb, it radically differentiates itself in its façade 
design and plan development, a precursor to his raumplan,37  from the 
neighborhood’s preexisting houses. 

 For the purposes of our discussion, spatial production requires that 
objects occupy physical space over time.38  Because of the physical 
relationship between objects, there is an ontological reality of perceived 
existence, regardless of the design intention of the produced objects. 
Simply stated, a new office building whose design embraces a differentiated 
essence and hence façade from its context, has a relationship with all the 
other buildings in its proximity by virtue of its physical existence, during 
the time that buildings in proximity exist. It is this condition of physical-
time existence that allows our built environment to be understood as a 
palimpsest: layer upon layer of spatial production that in summation 
exhibits Aldo Rossi’s “genius loci.”39  

 Another baseline shared relationship is the enforced embedded value 
systems during the production of spatial objects. Discontinuous objects 
share imposed values systems, such as fire codes, ADA, setbacks, design 
review directives, or other legislation that all objects must obey. In that 
sense, all spatial products of a specific time and place exhibit the constructed 



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value systems of the participative groups who enact, 
promote and enforce codified production rules. 
Yet, other constructed value systems are often 
suppressed or removed from the production process 
itself, diminishing or eliminating bonds between 
objects. Finally, discontinuous objects tend to relate 
to other objects by their functions. Hence, we can 
see how houses built in the 18th century through  
the 21st century should provide shelter but, often do 
so at such differentiated processes that the function 
provides any meaningful relationship across time 
and space.  Altogether, discontinuous spatial 
production generates environments of disconnected 
spatial objects, standing silently apart from each 
other, in the same space, but without a sense of place. 

CONTINUITY

Continuity is the act of producing objects that 
directly exhibit object-property kinds revealed by 
the essentialist qualities of an existing environmental 
context. This production can occur by either 
replacement, replication or resemblance. The intent is 

figure 3: Ise jingu shrine



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to go beyond surface-first qualities and define design composition through 
essentialist frameworks in the way of making that embed value systems 
associated with spatial production.  

To replace, is “to take the place of,”40  and –ment, indicates the action itself. 
Replacement is literally an action where an object´s spatial component are 
exchanged in situ by components whose qualities are materially identical to 
those that are being displaced. Component qualities obey causes with the 
possible exception of contextual time. Because components are bound to 
the historic period in which they were produced, all objects not produced 
at the same time as the original components can be determined to be 
different, unless the period is expansive enough to be considered part of 
one space-time continuum.41  

 Replacement components themselves are subject to further analysis: 
they may have been produced at the same time as the original components, 
but stored for later use, maintenance and upkeep. For example, roofing tiles 
might be produced and stored specifically for later use, at the same time 
as a first set of tiles are installed; these stored tiles are then used to replace 
older tiles as these reach the end of their useful life.  The replacement 
tiles, though installed years or decades later, would still belong to the same 
contextual and production time as the first installed tiles. Alternatively, 
identical components may be produced millennia later, to replace failing 
components. The question in this case is a larger one, when we consider 
who installs them, and how they install them. This analysis becomes 
relevant to those who seek to establish parameters of authenticity. Who? is 
not an innocent question, as it identifies groups that seek to appropriate 
or consolidate socio-political power through the affirmative control of 
historic spatial products.  How must be understood too, as we analyze 
forces of capital and labor involved in production and replacement: 
we must consider the final cause of replacement itself, especially when 
accounting for social, cultural and political agendas.  

Replication is a spatial production process by which an object´s physical 
components are produced in an identical manner to the original but, 
in a separate physical space and time. Unlike replacement, replication 
production does not occur in situ. Similar to replacement components 
and objects, replication products are bound by the specificity of their 
time qualities. For example, the Jingu Shrine in Ise is replicated during 
the Shikinen Sengu ceremony occurring every 20 years (figure 3).  Junko 
Edahiro notes,  

Its underlying concept—that repeated rebuilding renders 



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sanctuaries eternal—is unique in the world. 
In the occidental way of thinking, creating 
something durable would normally involve 
building a structure with robust stones, bricks, 
and concrete. At this shrine, however, the 
structures are made exclusively from wood 
and, by being rebuilt over and over again, can 
last forever. Also, in the process of rebuilding, 
the skills of shrine builders and craftsmen in 
various fields (carpentry, sacred treasures, 
apparel, etc.) are also passed on from generation 
to generation.42 

Viewed as part of the final cause, the Jingu 
Shrine object’s use time prescribes that its Torii 
pillars be used in the sanctuary for twenty years; 
once dismounted from within the main shrine, 
they are used another twenty years as gates at the 
Uji Bridge. While any variation of this use time 
may not eliminate the Torii essence of the object, it 
would however, prevent it from being considered 
specifically an Ise Grand Shrine Torii, because the 
deviating iteration would  no longer be bound by 
the required use time characteristics.

Mass replication (in series or concurrently) by 
non-mechanical and non-automated means of 
production, precisely because of implied labor 
concentration in production time, evokes the sense 
of a process-centered spatial production unity. In 
mass replication, spatial production is accretive 
to the individual maker at the personal level, but 
also accretive to the larger scale society. Specifically, 
production by replication connotes membership 
in the larger group. Presently what we mostly 
see, however, is mass replication by mechanical 
and automated processes that obey the logic of 
capital as its main identity. This continuous spatial 
production approach is prevalent in projects that 
produce large amounts of units in a standardized 
and rapid manner (thus providing the largest 

“

”

production by 
replication 

connotes 
membership 

in the larger 
group



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number of costs efficiencies). For example: mass housing projects whose 
constituent components, entire buildings, and even neighborhoods, are 
produced identically and serially (except for their physical location within 
the overall urban project). 

On one hand, as Walter Benjamin43  noted,mass replication has 
provided unprecedented access to all types of works and spatial products 
for the largest number of people. Yet, Benjamin points to the failures of 
mass replication, where spatial production is driven by the logic of capital, 
leading to vanishing authenticity. Similarly, Aldo Van Eyck has pointed 
to mass replication in urbanism as its main challenge in placemaking. He 
notes “[w]e must continue the search for the basic principles of a new 
aesthetic and discover the human meaning of number. We must impart 
rhythm to repetitive similar and dissimilar form, thereby disclosing the 
conditions that may lead to the equilibration of the plural, and thus 
overcome the menace of monotony.”44,45  

There is a final mode of continuity, that neither replaces, replicates, 
but relates to the context: resemblance. Michel Foucault recalls that until 
the “end of the sixteenth century, resemblance played a constructive role 
in knowledge of Western Culture. It was resemblance that largely guided 
exegesis and the interpretations of texts; it was resemblance that organized 
the play of symbols, made possible knowledge of things visible and invisible, 
and controlled the art of representing them.”46  At first glance, reaching 
back to the sixteenth century and its Aristotelian tradition47  might seem an 
anachronistic approach, but attempts to contemporize once archaic forms 
of understanding yields fruits in present postmodern discourse. Spatial 
production is perceived as continuous because it resembles preexisting 
contextual components. Though varying from object precedent/context, 
they do so in such a way as to present the observer a sense of unity or 
belonging to a greater group of objects. Resemblance in objects requires 
the development of parameter-defined kinds criteria; individual essential 
properties that permit identification of the object, or what Foucault calls 
the “signature.” Moreover, resemblance joins spatial objects to each other, 
over distance and time, creating what Foucault names sympathetic links 
-rendering contextual time a non-essential quality of the product.  In 
resemblance, spatial products with similar fundamental properties form sets 
whose objects exhibit specimen variations to generate object individuality, 
while retaining membership through what Wittgenstein called “familiar 
relationships.”48  For example, we can readily recognize a brownstone 
neighborhood in New York, but we can also distinguish individual 
dwellings frome each other. Wittgenstein notes that we as observers 

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recognize similarities between objects, writing 
that “we see a complicated network of similarities 
overlapping and crisscrossing; sometimes overall 
similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.”49  

INNOVATION

The third major modality is that of innovation. 
Unlike resemblance, where properties may vary 
superficially or minimally from object to object, 
but retain essential familiar similarities and hence 
belong to the same “set,” innovation represents a 
wider variation in material cause and an outright 
departure from an object’s historic efficient cause 
essence.  Often, changes in material realities are 
catalysts for changes in production processes. How 
and who exhibit contemporary labor, production 
technology, and social value systems while 
maintaining essential formal and final causes. By 
modifying the efficient cause properties, designers 
propose spatial relationships that simultaneously 
relate to the contextual precedent, while 
modifying an object enough to imbue it with a 
sense of contemporaneous production –i.e., the 
zeitgeist. Thus, objects are produced with essential 
modifications that address new or contemporary 
social, cultural and political contexts. 

 This looking back to history but being part 
of the present is the hallmark of innovation. In 
Koestler´s Ghost in the Machine, he relates a story 
describing the process of production attributed 
to Bios.50  However, where Nature evolves, spatial 
producers innovate. Following his narrative, spatial 
production processes innovate by incorporating 
simpler processes into the production of increasingly 
complex objects. We can directly relate the original 
production process and its resultant spatial product 
with each new iteration because of contextual time 
and the changing efficient cause of an object to 
achieve intended functions. Innovation allows for, 
even promotes, the notion that design can reveal the 

i n n o v a t i o n 
represents a 
wider variation 
in material 
cause and 
an outright 
departure from 
an object’s 
h i s t o r i c 
efficient cause 
essence. 

“

”



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contextual essence of things, and still be produced in its own time context.

Critical Regionalism, for example, as defined by Kenneth Frampton, 
approaches place making through innovation that seizes on the essential 
aspects of spatial production and steers away from what he calls “nostalgic 
historicism” and “sentimental” attachments to place. Instead, Frampton’s 
focus is on “elements derived indirectly from the peculiarities of a 
particular place.”51  Confronted with the inability to match contextual 
time, selected properties are extracted, decanted from contextual objects, 
to reveal causes that create sympathetic commonalities from spatial object 
to object. Essential components are not formed from the impulse of 
replication, but rather, from the material cause of location, the efficient 
cause of the producer, and the final cause of its functions.  Where focus 
is placed solely on the form as perceived, with disregard for other causes, 
spatial production becomes “pastiche,” and ultimately void of any content 
other than the act of aesthetic continuity resemblance. 

An example of spatial innovation is Urbanu’s Tulou Housing (2005-
2008) (figure 4) in Guangzhou, China. Hakka migration between the 
12th and 20th century produced the “tulou …. a dwelling type unique 
to the Hakka people.”52  The oldest examples are “O” shape building 
typology, built with compacted earthen walls that look inward in fortress-
like relationship with their exterior context. This meant that living units 
faced inward. That orientation, along communal programming in the 
central courtyard, provides a rich social environment. After studying 
traditional Hakka dwellings in the Chinese provinces of Jiangxi, Fujian 
and Guangdong, Urbanus developed a housing project that innovated 
on the traditional typology. While preserving the final and formal 
causes (cantilevered roofs over a circular housing block with centralized 
programming) they also embraced contemporary construction processes 
and materials such as poured reinforced concrete walls and slabs and steel 
guardrails.

CONCLUSION

The above text is an attempt to explain an essentialist design approach 
to spatial production in order to achieve context-based placemaking. The 
sum of essential qualities is the spatial identity of the essential components 
of a society’s secretions. As Globalization continues to strengthen and 
spread across socio-cultural community boundaries, places are reduced 
to geographic accidents: increasingly, locations fail to reveal the essence 
of cultural spatial production, and therefore, they fail to reveal their 
uniqueness. 



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 Ultimately, all spatial production reveals 
embedded value systems: what is important in the 
production of space. For those who prioritize not 
only preserving but also enhancing the qualities of 
place, especially in the context of contemporary 
market-driven considerations, the practice of spatial 
production requires the capacity to go beyond the 
surface image of objects.  It requires the ability to 
peel away each layer to reveal Aristotelian causes that 
define design criteria sets of proprietary qualities 
and functions –and then apply them. These sets, 
each with their own object-derived properties, form 
the basis of the sum of the parts to create a greater 
sympathetic whole. Each object, be it a teakettle, a 
house, or city park, is then the sum of its essential 
parts and can contribute to the continuation and 
innovation of spatial production. 

If Modernism’s, and Postmodernism’s rejection 
of the past, including its traditions, and context 
continues, and what is valued and therefore 
prioritized is the differentiated spatial object, we 
will eventually be confronted with a world where 
little or no cultural production differences exist.  
The long shadow of homogeneity will have spread 

figure 4:  Tulou Housing



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over our communities, and we will only find the mythical trace of what 
was once place through the nostalgic science of archeology.

Endnotes

1. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, (Malden, MA, Blackwell 
Publishing) 2011, 15
2.  Lefebvre, 70 
3. Brian Ellis, The Philosophy of Nature, a Guide to the New Essentialism, 
(Montreal, Quebec:McGill-Queen´s University Press, 2002), 24-25.
4.https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/essential-accidental/
5. Op. cit. Ellis, 41-42.
6. Gallois, Andre, “Identity Over Time”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Phi-
losophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://
plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/identity-time/>.
  7. Baruch A. Brody, Identity and Essence, (Princeton, N.J: Princeton 
University Press, 1980.)
 8. Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle, Physics, edited by Jonathan 
Barnes, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 315-446.  
9.  “The Four Causes”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 
accessed on July 2, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/
aristotle-causality/#FouCau
10.Aristotle. Physics, Book 2:3, p.332-333
11. “Natural Kinds” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed on July 
5, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-kinds/ for additional 
explanation of kinds.\
12. “Essentialism”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed July 
2, 2018 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-kinds/#Ess, 1.3 
Essentialism.
13. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Repro-
duction.” Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. (New York, NY, 1969), 
217-251.
14. Past experience and/or observations fail to predict the emergence of 
new objects or events.
15. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, (Chicago, IL: University of 
Chicago Press, 1998),141-144.
16. Adrian Bejan, and J. Peder Zane, Design in Nature: How the Con-
structal Law Governs Evolution In Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social 



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Organization, (New York, NY. Anchor Books, 2013), 1.
17. “Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Properties.” Stanford Encyclopedia of 
Philosophy, accessed November 20, 2019 at https://plato.stanford.
edu/entries/intrinsic-extrinsic/
18. Also known as the “Wailing Wall.”
19. Ilana Teitelbau, “A Stone’s Throw From the Quarry,” Jerusa-
lem Post, Accessed on January 25, 2020. https://www.jpost.com/
Local-Israel/In-Jerusalem/A-stones-throw-from-the-quarry
20. Evidence exists that the wall itself was finished after Herod’s 
death. See Yadin Roman, “Who Built the Western Wall,” accessed 
on January 22, 2020, http://www.zfa.com.au/wp-content/uploads/
Who-built-the-Western-Wall.pdf.
21.  Ibid. 
22.   Loewenberg, F.M. 2017. “Is the Western Wall Juda-
ism’s Holiest Site?” The Middle East Quarterly 24 (4). http://
search.ebscohost.com.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/login.
aspx?direct=true&db=jph&AN=IJP0000182628.
23. See Walter Benjamin’s definition of authentic.
24. Nic Damnjanovic, “No Route to Material Origin Essential-
ism?” Erkenntnis (1975-), Vol. 72, No. 1 (Jan., 2010), pp. 93-110, 
Springer.
 25. Ibid. p.102
 26. Compossible: able or possible to coexist with another. See 
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compossible
 27. David Oderberg, Real Essentialism, (New York, Routledge 
Studies in Contemporary Philosophy, 2007), 22.
28. Ibid. p. 23
29. Nature creates, humans produce.
30. Shinto shrine gateway in southern Japan
31. Theseus’ Ship Paradox demonstrates an object’s embodied time 
is paramount in identifying questions of component and object 
authenticity.
32. “Fordism”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed on August 27, 
2018, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fordism.
33.http://gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/battlefield-farms/
rummel-farm/
34. Amos Rapoport, after Hall, The Meaning of the Built 



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Environment: A Nonverbal Communication Approach, (Tucson, AZ: The 
University of Arizona Press, 1990), 87-101.
35. Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen, “Kuhn on Essentialism and the Causal 
Theory of Reference*”, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 77, No. 4 pp. 544-564, 
The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science 
Association, October 2010, p.546
36. Lebbeus Woods, War and Architecture, Pamphlet Architecture series 
#15, Princeton Architectural Press, 2002, p.1
37. Cynthia Jara, “Adolf Loos’s Raumplan Theory,” p.185
38. Mental space is beyond the paper’s scope.
39. Aldo Rossi, Architecture of the City, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 
1999), 103.
40. https://www.etymonline.com/word/replace
41. In this way, replacement time bounding resolves the Paradox of The-
seus’ Ship.
42. Junko Edahiro, “Rebuilding Every Twenty Years Renders Sanctuar-
ies Eternal -the Sengu Ceremony at Jingu Shrine in Ise City”, accessed 
October 1st, , 2018, https://www.japanfs.org/en/news/archives/news_
id034293.html
43. Benjamin, 1969.
44. Aldo Van Eyck, “Steps Towards a Configurative Discipline”, accessed 
on November 1, 2018, https://hts3.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/van-
eyck_steps-towards-a-configurative-discipline.pdf. p.333
45. For van Eyck, “number” means “harmony in motion.” 
46. Foucault identifies four types of resemblance: Convenientia, aemu-
latio, analogy, and sympathy. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An 
Archeology of the Human Sciences (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1994), 
17. Italics mine.
47. Op. Cit. Aristotle, Categories, edited by Barnes, 3-9 
48. “Ludwig Wittgenstein”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed 
October 10, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#Bib 
49. Ludwig Wittgenstein, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe, Philosophical 
Investigations (Oxford, UK, Basil Blackwell, 1958, 1986), 33, 66.
50. Op. cit. Koestler, 45
51. Kenneth Frampton, From “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, accessed 
on October 11, 2018, http://designtheory.fiu.edu/readings/frampton_
regionalism.pdf
52. “Tulou Collective Housing 2008,” Urbanus. Accessed on 
December 10, 2019. http://www.urbanus.com.cn/projects/
tulou-collective-housing/?lang=en


