is a phenomenological study that draws on the phenomenology of Edmond Husserl to reconsider a refurbished London street, Bermondsey Street, as an interior where objects of memories are curated into a reconstructed atmosphere of domesticity. The study argues that as our experience of the city becomes increasingly transient, the notion of inhabiting shifts to a wider and more fragmented context, and our ability to integrate with the urban environment becomes eroded.
Bermondsey Street presented a distinctive experience where the phenomena of intimacy and familiarity converged across space and time to provide a more stable form of inhabitation. In order to understand how these phenomena occured and how the experience of the urban interior manifested itself in consciousness, the study followed the Husserlian phenomenological method of intentionality whereby the urban interior of Bermondsey Street became the intentional object. It also placed the reflective gaze of the phenomenologist in ‘epoché’, a phenomenological method of reduction that suspends normality. In doing so, the phenomenologist was able to access the points of reference that revealed the affective qualities of the intentional object in consciousness.
The phenomenological narrative was bracketed and illustrated as a meditative journey; a recollection of memories of the homely, initiated by the encounter between consciousness and the way the urban interior animated imagination. Thus, in ‘epoché’, the reflective gaze of the phenomenologist transcended normality to reveal the underlying structure of the phenomena and the intentionality of the subjective experience. Text and the photographs shown here were used together to express this phenomenological encounter and reveal hidden layers of perception.
© Valérie Mace 2016
Related article
Mace, Valérie (2016) The Transfigured Phenomena of Domesticity in the Urban Interior. Idea Journal.
Book chapter
Mace, Valérie (2019) Transient Domesticity in the Urban Interior. In: Interior Futures. Crucible Press, Yountville, CA.
Reference
Cerbone, D. R. (2006) Understanding Phenomenology. Chapter 1: Husserl and the project of pure phenomenology. Durham:Acumen Publishing Limited.