ABSTRACT
We understand face-to-face interpersonal contacts as contexts where life,
work and human relations are acutely and actively negotiated. Physical
spaces are ordinarily taken to be mere vessels that formally structure and
contain such human action. However the apparent solidity, or exaggerated
durability, of such ‘structures’ are projections of our own and our subjects’
desires to stabilise our environments. These perceptions are convenient, but
fully artificial, artefacts of our work of sense-making. The plasticity of
physical spaces, and therefore their relation to time, is more durable than, but it is not different in principle from, the plasticity of face-to-face inter-
action. By no means am I trying to imply by this plasticity that physical
spaces are thereby false, ephemeral or unreal. On the contrary, I hope to
describe them as fully effective, evolving productions, made meaningful as
they take place through social relations.
