Stoney Street/Park Street Junction
On the second day of my fieldwork in London I recognised an interesting complexity in the space surrounding Monmouth Café; the space was char-acterised by a noticeable multiplicity, regarding types of visitors, activities and events. Besides the café, the space – which is situated in a T-junction between two roads (Stoney Street/Park Street) – includes one of the main entrances to the market, which is connected to the southern end of ‘the Middle Road’ (a pedestrian axis that runs diagonally through the mar-ket); an arcade (that offers seating and protection from sun and rain); a pub (The Market Porter), and a number of restaurants and small stores.
The territorial productions are multiple and partly subjected to the dif-ferent rhythms of the market, the delivery schedules, the commuters and the opening hours of the café, stores, restaurants, and pubs. The extensive mixture of functions attracts a broad variety of people to the place. The material constitution, the spatial order and the figuration of artefacts allow people to stay, meet and gather in varying constellations. This observation led to the choice of this particular space for a more detailed micro-study.
In a marketplace, the material features that guide consumption be-haviour are normally weaker than in ‘regular’ shopping facilities. ‘Regu-lar’ here implies shops and stores situated in buildings, typically organised according to well-known shopping behaviours, such as for example en-trance facilities that clarify the territorial boundaries, guiding personnel, a number of display elements, a cashier counter, etc. The architecture of the open-air markets investigated here seems to influence the way regular stores in the nearby neighbourhoods are arranged, materially and spatial-ly. Particularly the entrance situations seem to be affected by the mar-ket culture. When entering most adjacent stores one crosses over several material boundaries, such as thresholds, sometimes a few stairs, a door – possibly with a doorbell that additionally marks one’s entrance – and once inside the store, one is in a space that is obviously someone else’s pri-vate territory. Several stores bordering the investigated markets imitate the market situation by having gradual and easy access. Some stores have no stairs, no thresholds and no doors directly to the street. Instead, they may have an outdoor area for the display of merchandise, or they may open up their façades as much as possible; some have open-air entrance foyers or simply no regular doors at all. Some stores even trade their merchandises from counters or tables directly on the streets or pavements (photographs 95, 97). This spatial adaptation to the market situation is more common around Borough Market and Brixton Market than at Portobello Road and
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Petticoat Lane. The treatment of the entrance situation opens up for ter-ritorial superimpositions and enables different material actors to become enrolled in multiple networks, connecting the public space and the private (consumption) space. The territorial complexity as well as the possibilities for exchanges between strangers thereby increase. My observations of this phenomenon concur with Quentin Stevens’, who argues that
The social liminality of thresholds can arise from a softening of distinctions between inside and outside which is made possible by wide, transparent and open frontages, floor surfaces continuous with the footpath. (Quentin Stevens 2007a:175)
The Monmouth Café opens early and the rolling shutter to Stoney Street opens up (photographs 88, 90). The counter virtually sits on the pavement, and the threshold between the public and private space almost disappears.
A queue to the counter forms immediately and persists practically all day long (photographs 89, 92). The queue facilitates territorial productions as well as social exchange among the queuing people, with the café guests and with people just passing by.
Some customers use the two benches that are fixed to the façade out-side the entrance to have their coffee (photographs 83, 91, 93). When the benches are occupied, people stand on the pavement or move across the street to sit on the foundations of the arcade-columns.
At lunchtime the arcade fills up with people eating takeaway, usually from the market. At this time of day even the pavements are used for sitting. The pub is open and its customers initially stay on the pavement along the façade, using the window ledges to put their drinks (photo-graphs 121, 122). When the pavement is crowded, people move to a place at the opposite side of the street, where a group of artefacts (a lamp post, two bollards, pavement signs and an electrical utility box) form a protected area (photographs 88, 90). Those who can’t find a place to sit start colo-nising the street, clustering in groups. Passing cars and delivery vans seem to accept the crowding in the street and slow down, seemingly without frustration. Around midday there are about 150-200 people gathered in the space (photograph 111).
Clusters of interrelated actors – human and nonhuman – encourage people to stay in the space and thus trigger exchange, passively or actively.
Most people prefer to sit when they are eating or drinking, or at least to have somewhere to put their food or drink. The people standing up are searching for areas with artefacts that can protect them from flows of mov-ing people or vehicles – such artefacts are fences, columns, bollards, posts and signs.
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Material and spatial variation give room for a range of diverse uses in close proximity. People from different collectives and citizen categories visit the arcade, such as: people eating or drinking, tourists, market work-ers, pub visitors, shoppwork-ers, flâneurs, etc. The mixture of mundane mate-rialities, rough surfaces, ‘back stage’ and ‘front stage’ activities (Goffman 1959), incentive architectural features, high-profile market merchandise, etc. attracts a large variety of people and allows for social diversity. Hence, the physical accessibility of the Stoney Street/Park Street space is obviously high, but from a social or class perspective, the accessibility can be experi-enced as more restricted. As a whole, although the people visiting may not reflect a complete selection of citizens, the mix is rather extensive.