1. Introduction
The past two decades have marked the social turn in architecture. Architects became more concerned with their designs approaching complex urban issues such as affordable housing, climate adaptation, energy efficiency and social justice. Such a social turn differs from the emergence of discussions on social space. While the latter addresses a physical space where social interactions between people flourish, the first is interested in issues on broader scales and across disciplines through dialogue, long-term research and collaboration. The social turn in architecture is also marked by the introduction of time and temporality in exploring new vocabularies and methods for interventions in (urban) spaces (Sartorio & Airoldi, 2023). The underlying goal in considering the relationship between time and space is to increase the experiential knowledge in architecture (Plowright, 2022), arriving at the objective of better understanding and articulating the social context.
But what is the social context? Does it have specific components that we can identify and work with? What concepts and methodologies can be used to approach it meaningfully?
Within these discourses, urban studies experience a turn of addressing the questions and issues from the bottom up by bringing to the surface the multiplicity of experiences, voices and visions that constitute the urban domain. Comparing this to the previous debates in geography, highlighted as the “spatial turn”, characterised by a curiosity about the urban space as not only geometrically planned but also produced, lived and conceived (Graham & Healey, 1999), we see a new need to connect the analysis to practice. It becomes increasingly clear that architects, urbanists and social scientists must speak common languages and engage with shared methods. Nevertheless, there is a scarce overlap between the emerging and novel concerns in the two spatial disciplines. While architecture rarely consults the methods in sociology, urban studies disregard the value of architectural design knowledge and vision.
This paper aims to answer this research gap by exploring new definitions of urban life and experiences based on making a bridge between its physical and social realities through rhythm analysis. Not by giving a prevalence to one but by approaching the physical and the social within the often-disregarded point where they meet, that of rhythm. Architectural design can be seen as a rhythm intervention: a bench placement at a park, a façade construction of an existing structure, or a new building alternates the current rhythms in the built environment. At the same time, people’s activities generate temporal patterns and rhythms in the physical environment, and many social questions in the city can be improved through spatial and temporal design (Nevejan & Sefkatli, 2020). In 21st-century urbanisation, rhythm can shed light on dealing with complex issues, notions and experiences that create the urban. Understanding the value of urban rhythms in a social problem can improve the methodologies for working with rhythm and expand the usage of the concept.
2. Developing a New Approach to Design through Rhythm Analysis
Cities play their rhythms for us, and often, we are not confronted with methodologies to hear them or use their outcome productively. From the times of Plato and Aristotle until today, many philosophers have contributed to creating a definition of rhythm (Michon, 2016). The word rhythm is a part of our culture and language. Defined by “variation in repetition in a given context” by the Dutch philosopher Marli Huijer (Huijer, 2015), it is a distinct dynamic quality that creates a force of engagement between people  and establishes continuity of experiences in daily life (Dewey, 2005). Although rhythm can be used as a concept and mode of engagement for contemporary, interdisciplinary understandings of the urban (Smith & Hetherington, 2013), its potential as a methodology for better understanding the social aspect of urban life and for identifying design spaces is hardly explored (Nevejan & Sefkatli, 2020).
The theory of rhythms has been in the discourse of urban studies since the 1970s, with Henri Lefebvre’s reflections on the city as a “multiplicity of rhythms” (Lefebvre, 2010). Together with Lefebvre, the contributions of philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari initiated the exploration of daily life and social phenomena as emergent features of social and spatial rhythms of different forms and cycles (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). The city has been a primary context in the work of these philosophers as an environment where polyrhythmicities are manifested and acted out, also opening up a new possibility for spatial practices to align with the urban dynamics.
Developing methods for bridging spatial practices with social sciences through the lens of rhythms and urban dynamics is a novel ambition. Such an understanding is especially relevant in today’s increasingly complex cities, which require more transdisciplinary and inclusive architectural and urban design knowledge (Després et al., 2011). Different parties, from designers, scientists, policymakers, community initiatives and citizens, must work to address various challenges in the cities’ spatial, social and organisational layers (Ese & Ese, 2022). Bottom-up and participatory approaches are already being incorporated into the education and practice of architecture in multiple design stages, allowing architects to adopt different expertise and forms of knowledge (Shanthi Priya et al., 2020). However, how urban practitioners understand the city should also be expanded towards seeing it as a dynamic entity shaped and characterised by various activities, happenings, events, and advents that take place at different temporal cycles and places (Durose et al., 2022). Conceptualising how rhythms clash, merge and harmonise creates a new vocabulary for addressing the social context, which is crucial for developing novel avenues in architectural design interventions and giving a unique perspective to the social phenomena in cities.
The presented experience in rhythm analysis explored this urgency by addressing the urban social phenomena as emergent features of city rhythms. This meant understanding the diversity of dynamics that engage and interconnect with each other in space and time in neighbourhoods, districts and cities. Through conducting case studies in the Zuidoost city borough of Amsterdam, we aimed to expand the understanding of the urban social context to create a novel perspective on social issues in the urban environment. As a result of these explorations, we propose that drawing such an approach to the urban social context is also the key to integrating architecture and sociology; by identifying and visualising the various rhythms that constitute urban social life, it becomes easier for both disciplines to collaborate and come up with shared solutions. While architecture interventions can be fine-tuned with the social context, sociology can result in impactful conclusions for spatial practice.
3. Developing Rhythmic Concepts, Theories and Methods
The social questions explored in Amsterdam Zuidoost through case studies resulted in the development of three concepts: (1) rhythm zones, spatio-temporal patterns in outdoor spaces that engage social, spatial, trash and maintenance rhythms, which are characterised by their internal dynamics as well as by other zones that surround them; (2) rhythm-scapes, groupings of rhythmic elements in time, place, action and relation dimensions, which shape the experiences and presence dynamics of services offered by urban functions and societal organisations; and (3) rhythm spheres, spatio-temporal categorisations of everyday urban activity rhythms based on proximity and distance, that articulate the rhythms of intimate relationships, community and public life.
Analysing rhythms through the case study approach was a nonlinear process. Within the Designing Rhythms for Social Resilience research, which was the framework in which concepts of rhythms and methods for capturing them were developed, the starting point was the social issue. First, the urban context where the social problem occurred was studied, and theory explorations on rhythms were carried out. Based on the developed theoretical framework, methodologies were selected to identify and document rhythms. Next, the urban context was revisited, and rhythm analysis was carried out. The results of the rhythm analysis helped develop concepts for understanding the social problems being investigated from the perspective of rhythms. Such concepts were influential in stimulating new vocabularies to define urban social phenomena for social sciences, while for architecture, they enabled alternative design solutions.
The social issues studied in Amsterdam Zuidoost were decided upon in collaboration with the local municipality. The rhythm zones concept was developed in the context of trash in outdoor spaces around two housing blocks, rhythm scapes in the context of youth unemployment and the precarity of youth care organisations, and rhythm spheres while exploring the community-based self-organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the first case study was conducted specifically in the K-buurt neighbourhood, the other two case studies took place in various urban contexts of Amsterdam Zuidoost.
The methodologies for identifying the rhythms differed for each concept and offered a combination of spatio-temporal analysis and ethnographic work. Rhythm zones were identified based on spatial observations, systematic documentation of the activities in outdoor settings, functional analysis and mapping of the spatio-temporal patterns. To sharpen the findings, participatory observations and “trash walks” were carried out with the neighbourhood cleaners and residents. The rhythm-scapes are identified through participatory observations at care organisations, documenting the spatial and temporal components that characterise their practice and interviews with the care workers and young people at these places. The methods used to identify rhythm spheres are community workshops and interviews for documenting the daily, weekly and yearly rhythms and mapping where they occur. To fine-tune the findings with the insights gained from the interviews, ethnographic work was carried out at the care organisations while conducting the interviews.
While the fieldwork in the previous case studies took around six months, the final case study on the pandemic lasted about one and a half years. In all case studies, the results were presented to the local city council of Amsterdam Zuidoost and the leading partner organisation from the Municipality of Amsterdam, namely the cleaning department in the first, the social work department in the second and the health department in the third. After each case study, design proposals were made to the local municipality of Amsterdam Zuidoost, offering alternative solutions to the social issues.
4. Rhythm Zones
Outdoor spaces are areas where many rhythms, ranging from mobility patterns to seasons, social gatherings, and urban functions, merge and interact. Design interventions affect these rhythms at various scales. For example, a new playground in an unused green area may attract a lot of activity, influencing the rest of the neighbourhood’s daily rhythms. Therefore, methodologies for spatial practices must address such a diversity of spatio-temporal organisations and the everyday life experiences that emerge from them. The rhythm zones concept suggests that the coming together of various rhythms in outdoor spaces is experienced in zones which can be identified and mapped. Following Christopher Alexander’s pattern language (Alexander et al., 1977), they are conceptualised as the “emergent relationships” of the correspondence of multiple patterns in space and time.
The case study on trash in outdoor spaces, which led to the development of rhythm zones, concerned the contrasting trash behaviours around two housing blocks in Amsterdam Zuidoost’s K-buurt neighbourhood, Kikkenstein and Kleiburg. The rhythm analysis focused on identifying social rhythms referring to daily activities like going to work or shopping, spatial rhythms such as green spaces, sidewalks, car parks and sports fields, and rhythms of urban maintenance like the type of trash cans or frequency of cleaning. Multiple maps were produced to represent the findings visually, making it possible to recognise these patterns singularly and analyse their relationships. It was found that the residential sidewalks allowed for the translocation of the residents, while those in central locations hosted the shopping activity. The surroundings of the buildings displayed activities reserved for households. The sports fields and playgrounds created social activities, while no dominant activities were observed in the large green spaces. These spatio-temporal relationships also exist in the cleaning practice. The spatial characteristics define how urban places are cleaned; machines clean sidewalks, while grass is cleaned manually. On the other hand, social use in the urban environment represents how frequently an area is cleaned and what type of trash collection it can host.
We conceptualised the phenomenon that emerges as the different spatial, social and cleaning patterns come together as “rhythm zones” (Sefkatli & Nevejan, 2023). Five rhythm zones were identified: domestic, transitional, inactive, gathering and commercial rhythm zones. Referring to Alexander (Alexander et al., 1977), besides having their internal dynamics, the rhythm zones are also characterised by the other rhythm zones that they correspond to. Their rhythmic dynamics also meet when two or more rhythm zones meet in the environment.
The latter is the aspect of the rhythm zones that leads to trash. In the context of the research in the K-buurt, it was suggested that the correspondence of the transitionary and gathering rhythm zones resulted in a clash of many social activities and, consequently, in large amounts of trash. On the contrary, the intersection of the domestic and inactive rhythm zones resulted in too little activity and much trash. In comparison, the correspondence of domestic and gathering, or transitionary and inactive rhythm zones, appeared to create a balance in social activity, resulting in cleaner outdoor spaces. Therefore, it was found that not only the internal dynamics but also how the external relationship of these dynamics influences the emergence of trash in the outdoor spaces.
5. Rhythm-Scapes
Care services form an essential network in the urban environment. From community centres to places directed to a specific cultural group or religious organisations, care services shape the urban fabric as the meeting points of communities and places to go for those needing assistance. In the youth care context, these services offer various rhythms to engage with the youth. Many factors influence the type of care provided in the urban context, such as the location of the organisations that offer care services, spatial disposition, opening hours and people who are present. Nevertheless, these services are often disregarded in the discussions regarding the urban social context. This is also reflected in policymaking, whereas not recognising the spatio-temporal quality of the care services leads to their precarity.
To better understand the rhythmic experiences of youth care services, we followed Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s operationalisation of Barbara Adam’s timescapes concept (Adam, 2005; Puig De La Bellacasa, 2011). While Adam highlights the multiplicity of rhythms involved in care in socio-technical systems and how they influence the orchestration of the present (Adam, 2005), Puig de la Bellacasa explores this in the context of soil, identifying three ways of care: practical, epochal and embodied (Puig De La Bellacasa, 2015). To employ the timescapes concept for identifying the various spatio-temporal qualities of youth care, we used Caroline Nevejan’s YUTPA framework, which focuses on the dynamics of presence (Nevejan & Brazier, 2010). According to Nevejan, presence can be analysed in the dimensions of time, place, action and relation. The framework guided us to document the rhythms of the care organisations in these four dimensions, suggesting that timescapes allow for different ways of being present through the rhythms they generate. In this light, we conceptualised rhythm-scapes to create a new vocabulary for the social interplay the care organisations enable. Examples of rhythms in these dimensions were “weekly activities”, “waiting rooms”, “informal exchanges”, and “volunteers”.
Like rhythm zones, the rhythm-scapes concept suggests that such rhythms form groupings in the analysed locations. For example, the practices that allowed for informal exchanges, like picking up food, also required interactions in unplanned, in-between spaces. The services that included specific time schedules also provided rigid spaces and definitions of roles within the practice. Moreover, the care services that included many events and creative activities were equipped with flexible spaces and time schedules. Three rhythm-scapes were identified: the rhythm-scape of activity-based care, the rhythm-scape of administrative care and the rhythm-scape of social care.
The ethnographic work at the organisations that offer care services showed that they incorporate multiple rhythm-scapes in their practice. In this light, we identified three types of organisations. The first type is where the rhythm-scape of administrative and social care are predominant; the second type is where the rhythm-scape of activity-based and social care prevail in the care practice; and the third is where the rhythm-scape of administrative and activity-based care is prioritised. By engaging with two or three rhythm-scapes simultaneously, they offer various spatial settings and temporalities to be as meaningful as possible for the urban environment where they are located or the community they focus on. How the rhythm-scapes are combined within the organisations’ practice also shapes the care experiences.
6. Rhythm Spheres
The social context of cities deals with everyday urban activities at many scales, directly or indirectly. These activities offer different rhythms in space and time through which community life emerges in the urban context. The COVID-19 pandemic heavily disrupted these rhythms by imposing spatiotemporal restrictions on activities, functions and networks that constitute urban social life. In Amsterdam Zuidoost, while the community rhythms underwent many disruptions and changes, new rhythms emerged amongst the communities thanks to the self-organisations orchestrated in the neighbourhoods.
We approached this phenomenon by articulating how urban community life emerges from everyday ordinary activities. Deploying Lyn Lofland’s social realms (Lofland, 1998) and Peter Sloterdijk’s notion of spheres (Sloterdijk, 2011, 2014, 2016), we conceptualised rhythm spheres. While Lofland’s social realms suggest that urban social life and interactions can be observed at the level of private, community and public realms, Sloterdijk distinguishes these three levels from the perspective of proximity and distance in space and time. Following this outlook, the rhythm spheres concept identifies spatial proximity, temporal frequency and the length of synchronous engagement as parameters that shape the social aspect of ordinary urban activities. Three types of spatio-temporal categorisations are distinguished: (1) rhythm spheres of bubbles, referring to activities that occur through high spatial proximity, temporal frequency and the length of synchronous engagement; (2) rhythm spheres of foams, referring to activities with average spatio-temporal intensities, such as a temporal frequency of few times a week or synchronous engagement of 2 to 6 hours, and (3) rhythm spheres of globes, referring to activities with low temporal frequency, like conducting an activity monthly, high spatial proximity, like travelling to another district or region, or with low synchronous engagement, like up to one hour.
Eight ordinary urban activities were considered in the analysis: household, family and friends, work, school, culture-related, interest-based, local exchanges and recreational activities. The qualitative data showed that each activity incorporates different spatiotemporal proximities and synchronous engagement possibilities. By visualising the spatio-temporal quality of these activities, it was possible to see how the urban rhythms changed during the pandemic. Based on this articulation, the changes in urban life during the pandemic were represented in the shift of spheres.
The main changes observed in the case study were the transition of the everyday activities from the foam and globe spheres to that of the bubble and the shrinking of the foam sphere. Different community-based self-organisations occurred in Amsterdam Zuidoost to mitigate the changes in the rhythm spheres. The observations brought to the surface that these orchestrations also took place within the foam sphere based on the proximity, frequency and synchronised engagement they allowed for. As a result, it was shown that the foam sphere is an influential aspect of urban life to consider for pandemic preparedness.
7. Towards Rhythm Analytical Research and Design Framework
This paper proposed three concepts of rhythm analysis to bridge architecture and sociology by better articulating the social context of cities and propose shared solutions that are fine-tuned to the experiences of urban residents. The rhythms addressed through the case studies extend beyond daily routines; they encompass the socio-cultural, economic, and environmental cycles. Considering that the urban environment is in continuous flux and change orchestrated by physical arrangements and temporal synchronisations introduces a new approach to spatial design and social sciences. With the identified rhythms and the rhythm-based description of the social phenomenon, it becomes possible to propose shared design solutions for both disciplines.
The rhythm zones are identified through social and spatial patterns observed in outdoor spaces. They can be spatially mapped, and their relationships can be analysed in various urban contexts. In this sense, they are not restricted to the issue of trash. As the main idea of the concept suggests, the design proposals may focus on the internal characteristics of the rhythm zones, through which the spatial and temporal rhythmic elements that constitute them can be altered. Or, interventions can be made to create a harmonious encounter of rhythm zones, focusing on their external properties. In other words, introducing spatial design interventions in outdoor spaces or the different functionalities also changes the rhythm zones. Moreover, transforming one rhythm zone may also impact others, creating harmony or a clash as they encounter each other.
The case study on youth care services has established that places like care organisations and institutions also have their rhythm, impacting the urban environment. Often disregarded as an area of study in architecture, such places are significant for many, especially in disadvantaged urban areas. Capturing the rhythm-scapes singularly through identifying and documenting their rhythmic elements and detecting the combinations of rhythm-scapes can be helpful in both research and practice. While solutions could focus on enhancing the elements in the rhythm-scapes’ time, place, action and relation dimensions, the concept invites spatial researchers and practitioners to recognise the diversity of rhythm-scapes that organisations and institutions present in their daily services.
Finally, the case study on the COVID-19 pandemic showed that urban activities incorporate rhythm spheres of bubbles, foams or globes, depending on the spatial proximity, temporal frequency and synchronised engagement they create. The interplay of spheres in the urban context enables the emergence of community life. From the perspective of sociological research, the concept allows for a better understanding of the notions that flourish in urban community life. Furthermore, the spatial implications of the spheres can be further explored in architecture to better address the possibilities of transitions from one sphere to another, which was highly necessary for pandemic preparedness.
By bringing together architecture, sociology and rhythm analysis, the three concepts expand how we view social life in cities and create the potential to enable novel design approaches in space and time. This contribution presented the three concepts as separate entities. However, the dynamics that constitute them can be considered to interact in the urban environment, considering that it is in continuous flux and change. In this sense, the three concepts do not build on to each other but complement each other in the deeper understanding and descriptions of the urban fabric. When we make a design proposal for a building, public space or a simple detail in the outdoor environment or indoors of an existing place, we actively deal with the rhythm zones, rhythm-scapes and rhythm spheres in the urban environment. A design intervention, therefore, may be affecting all three of them together. Future research can focus on this interplay, further developing the identified concepts and their methodologies for spatial design interventions to address the dynamic value of the urban social context.