Appropriation

Definition

Appropriation names the process by which inhabitants make space their own — not by receiving a given structure but by thickening space through habitual rhythms, detours, and a relationship with things. In Spuybroek's formulation, "inhabitation viewed as appropriation reverses the idea that we inhabit space as a given structure." Appropriation is a double act: an opening (drawing things into a personal sphere, suspending them from their original meaning) and a closing (concentrating on the self, stabilizing its rhythms). It operates by detour — what Lefebvre calls détournement — and produces a "thickened" or "doubled" space (poché) where things flicker between presence and absence. The concept has roots in Stoic oikeiosis (making something one's own and making oneself part of something else) and connects to Lefebvre's "transfunctional" spaces of enjoyment and Bachelard's pocketed interiors.

Key Thinkers

• lars spuybroek — develops the theory of inhabitation as appropriation across the ontological spectrum of things; appropriation thickens space into poché.
• henri lefebvre — the "porous space" of play and the "transfunctional"; appropriation turns spaces of domination into spaces of enjoyment via détournement.
• gaston bachelard — the "pocketed space" of drawers, chests, and wardrobes; appropriation as the daydreaming, meditative contraction of the interior.
• emanuele coccia — "homes do not exist per se. Only homemaking exists"; oikeiosis as the Stoic root of appropriation; "we occupy only things."
• friedrich nietzsche — "brief habits" and goodwill as an aesthetic alternative to the unconscious; style as dealing with things beforehand.

Related Concepts

• dwelling — appropriation is the active process of dwelling; dwelling is the existential condition appropriation produces.
• everyday life — appropriation is the mode of everyday inhabitation; habit and play are its rhythms.
• habitus — the bodily dispositions that generate the habitual rhythms of appropriation.
• play — the trying and breaking with habits that is essential to appropriation as more than "distributing habits in space."
• poche — the architectural name for the thickened space that appropriation produces.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Habit and Inhabit, Stuff and Trash (Spuybroek 2025) — the primary source; appropriation as the thickening of space across the spectrum of things.
• Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment (Lefebvre 2014) — Lefebvre's "transfunctional" and porous space of play.

Open Questions

• Is appropriation fundamentally a spatial concept or a temporal one — does it structure space more than time, or time more than space?
• Can appropriation be operationalized as a critical/architectural concept, or does it remain phenomenological-poetic?
• How does appropriation relate to de Certeau's tactics — is appropriation a tactic, or does it precede the strategy/tactic distinction?