Residing in Time Are Our Consciousness Experiencing Duration
Facing the issue of being a food desert, The town of Camden, Arkansas found itself unequipped to provide solutions that provide any sort of long term/meaningful benefits due to the limitations of United States’ car based infrastructures. Within such crippling conditions, architecture cannot solve problem alone. Thus, it finds itself in the role of the critic.
Applying Henri Bergson’s theory of duration to spatial theory. This project serves as a parody of such infrastructure that is prominent not only in Camden. But the rest of the United States.
In Henri Bergson’s “Time and Free Will”, he states:
“We picture to our minds a psychic force imprisoned in the soul, the wind in the cave of Aeolus... Our will is supposed to watch over this force and from time to time to open a passage for it, regulating the outflow by the effect which it is desired to produce.”
The temporal experience of space is not predictable by ways of approximation or presumption, as the existence (or illusion) of free will means when we interface with architecture, our realities will differ based on the incalculable numbers of previous experiences that would affect our output of this reality.
By reducing every building to its basest function, the infrastructures of suburban America created standardized architectural machines to replace the experiences of space. The result was the loss of perceived duration in most of the buildings that residents interface with everyday.
As such, the presence of architecture cannot be presumed based only on its preconceived function. Rather, urban design that stays in our memories are those that interface with our innate desires for socializing - they converge those that lives amongst them to common points of utility, they provide multipurpose facilities, and they incorporate the greater spaces to facilitate the blossoming of communities.
What defines many areas and buildings in Camden, Arkansas is their singular and definite purpose. This design approach simplifies the identification of point A to Z for every citizen’s daily needs and routines, promoting greater efficiency. However, this scattered singular use of buildings and areas necessitates car travel, where residents must drive from point A to point B to complete tasks, reflecting a common pattern in American suburban planning.
This planning strategy maximizes efficiency in the utilitarian and laissez-faire capitalistic society of the United States. As a result, it creates highly individualized spaces. Once tasks are completed, individuals often have no reason to linger, making it challenging to foster a sense of community in these areas. The absence of social spaces and the routine nature of traveling from point A to B contribute to highly repetitive cycles in the daily routines of Camden’s residents. This, in turn, affects their temporal experience, creating a looping sense of time, and a feeling of being trapped in the cycle.
