Identity as Imposed by and upon Urban Architecture

Kevin Lynch (The image of the city (Vol. 11). MIT Press, 1960) described the image of the city through built environment elements and patterns that can be identified together at different scales. Maintaining his focus on perception but zooming further in can show that many individual identities of diverse inhabitants are embedded within any city- or district-identity. Following a relational, socio-material approach, these concepts can be linked through how urban design and architecture supports, limits, and can be changed by variable expressions of inhabitants’ identities over time. This paper asks, how can the inhabitants impose their identities upon the city? by examining how the built environment hinders, hides, encourages, or showcases individuals’ presentations of self and tactics to support their everyday lives. The study documents identity-laden spatial tactics enabled by architecture in a series of urban housing environments in three Norwegian cities. The findings are synthesized from ethnographic observation studies carried out during three research projects between 2013 and 2021. Recent trends towards large area redevelopment in Norway have resulted in a largely anonymized identity imposed by homogenous architecture. However, contrasting these with longer inhabited neighbourhoods from different architectural periods offer examples of how identities and the needs of daily lives can also be imposed upon architecture by inhabitants through spatial tactics. The analysis provides a preliminary categorization of architectural elements and characteristics that offer material potentials for individual identity-expression or identity-hindrance. The aim of the paper is to understand how architecture’s stabilizing capacity can be redirected towards supporting dynamic, heterogeneous expressions of city inhabitants. This added perceptible layer in the city can redefine the image of the city so that it may also represent the ever-changing identities of its inhabitants.