Public space is diminishing in many urban areas, and it has been claimed, for instance by Koolhaas, that this represents a major transformation of the contemporary city. At the same time new forms of public space are constructed both inside and outside institutions, by private companies and corporations. “The public”, it can be argued, becomes a technique to stage a “milieu” in Foucault’s sense of the concept, where space is the medium for events. Programs and activities, earlier hidden in the “apparatus of society,” are opened up for the public, and through transparent surfaces or event zones the individual gets caught in unexpected, but still already staged, situations. In this chapter this phenomena is discussed in relation to some contemporary examples, like the factory and the prison, but also in relation to media institutions.
Part of ISBN 978-91-86069-59-9, 978-91-86069-61-2
QC 20250225