Who We Are
We address and assist architectural creations to foster communal life. We create exhibitions, conferences, events, podcasts, curate, consult, and do research. Ideal Spaces provides a forum for relevant themes related to architecture and community, focussing on concepts about place and community. We challenge existing concepts, for better placemaking. Ideal Spaces wants to bring to life the history of underlying ideas, influencing the present and future, and their expressions in visible architecture.
Ideal Spaces Working Group is a charitable foundation run by an international group of experts: cultural theorists, digital engineers, modelers, architects, and artists. With a focus on the relationship between space, place, and community, the group aims to develop concepts that will shape better contemporary living spaces and places for the future. This is not only a question of architecture but also of imagination.
Therefore, the group focuses in its work on the central question: what types of architecture are best suited to which human beings? This is a question imagination, and of sociocultural assumptions creating real spaces. Social imagination involves humans projecting inner images (‘ideas’) of how they shall or want to live. When expressed as an architecture of the built space, social imagination is about ideal spaces in the literal sense.
Ideal spaces are informed by certain preconceptions people hold, such as of the world around them, which consist of culturally inherited ideas and symbols. This can also be applied to architectural space. These ideas are based on central assumptions about people and the spaces they occupy. Though these are mostly implicit and exist as tacit knowledge, or an unthought known, they inform actual architecture and real space.
Most modern architecture in today’s real world neglects one essential human need: to live in communities. Communities need places and not just spaces for mere human existence, but real places of identity, distinctiveness, and belonging. The Ideal Spaces Foundation aims to help make this change.
The European city often serves as a guideline for our work, since it thrives on the concept of free citizenship, on the ability of citizens to influence the built space and the development of their city: the essence of democracy. Based on this, the Ideal Spaces Working Group aims to assist in the development of new concepts and ways of generating ‘ideal spaces’ for communities. As such, we are not only concerned with architecture but also with processes of imagination, both of which are firmly rooted in cultural memory. The group poses questions such as: what can we learn from the past and present, in order to build a better future? Which basic assumptions have led to which types of architecture? Ideal Spaces team seeks answers to these questions, and with ‘community’ placed at the center of its work, uses project work and events to inspire real change to people’s living conditions.
Through the intersection of art, science, technology, and vision, Ideal Spaces Working Group is tackling one of the most important problems of the future: ongoing urbanization and the deterioration of natural and human conditions.
WHY THE IDEAL SPACES FOUNDATION IS IMPORTANT FOR THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY
An external view. Written by Grant F. Raynham
Society today is going through major transitions, transitions that have changed the way we think, work, live and communicate with other people. In many ways in a digital world, it feels that the ability of communication between people is becoming a lost skill. Will the socio-economic and political landscape bring a complete disruption of life as we live it today or will it help mankind adapt to a better way of living, and a democratic lifestyle based on the Greek words ‚ Demos‘ meaning people and Kratos‘ meaning power, governing which depends on the will of the people. Will free thought even exist in the near future? Ideal spaces delivers information and contexts from the point-of-view of highly qualified individuals worldwide that are concerned about the status quo, in doing so creating a positive impact on the ongoing conceptualizations of society.
The world is seemingly turning to populism and oligarchical democracy, democracy controlled by the few, a socio-economic and political phenomenon that is affecting Neoliberalism and how exists in the western world. Foundations, such as Ideal Spaces, are needed to link the past with the present and the future, bringing forth the important issues of the transformation of living spaces relative to urban development and the community . We can only have a comfort zone in the present if we look to the past, and a future if we analyze the present, this in the whole describes the importance of Ideal Spaces.
Therefore Ideal Spaces becomes a link, a communicative center, with a view where all things past and present can be analyzed, reviewed and presented in a written and visual form so as to deliver communication to people around the world with a view to the „ideal city“. This in turn causes people to look at themselves, society, architecture, art and the space they live in so as to create having people involved in how society can be bettered for all. This in return will deliver a higher quality of life within a democratic framework. This gives Ideal Spaces a leading edge in presenting solutions and ideas that will allow for a clear and concise journey into finding answers to the real issues that are affecting society in the present day. In a broader view Ideal Spaces exists to collaberate and work through community.
Community, space and a healthy environment are presented by Ideal Spaces as keys to a future life that will give the population the best at all levels within a given society. It is the ability to create and present a framework for community, space and environment that has a democratic core and a desire to present basics from the Greek and Roman societies going back two thousand years that sets Ideal Spaces truly in a league of its own in its written and visual presentations, symposia and events. The world needs solutions and it is the ability of organizations such as Ideal Spaces and the Ideal Spaces Working Group that brings an indepth analysis from individuals highly qualified in urban planning, architecture, art and freedom of speech and movement and delivers solutions, not just platitudes.
Ideal spaces, as presented by the Foundation, is a key concept that has an effect on architecture, art and community andf the human condition. Living within a positive spacial concept brings a mental peace-of-mind to the populace and this in turn creates a productive communal purpose to life, this a mainstay of the ongoing work of Ideal Spaces and this is what draws one to the substancial body of work.
The importance of Foundations such as Ideal Spaces is to keep open communication between people by bringing them together at symposia and events so as to allow for a free exchange of thoughts and information. We all hear that due to the digital age that all we need is a cell phone to communicate and get our information. The question is that there is a lot of information to be had from one’s cell phone, but how and who may be manipulating the information and how it is dispersed. We need freedom of thought and interaction between people so as to protect democratic values and allow through the written word and visuality information flow. Art, architecture, community and living spaces are all components of a whole….a society….a community. Hence dealing with topics of freedom of speech, urban planning, art and architecture bring forth communication that is necessary for community and society to thrive today and in the future.