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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.

arcade faces a rather busy street, visitors seem to perceive the setting as both tolerant and safe; there are mothers breastfeeding their children and young lovers occasionally exchanging signs of affection.

The presence of porcelain cups and real glasses that people bring across the street from Monmouth Café – especially the sound of metal spoons against china – domesticate the soundscape of the arcade space and cre-ate an ambience of intimacy (photograph 99). For some, this ambience probably can be perceived as unpleasant, or even as a threat to the public anonymity of the site; for others, though, it can be seen as a sign of privacy in a public domain that signifies the complex sensation of being a private individual in a public situation, and bridging the duality between one’s private and public personalities.

One might assume that the sun is an actant with a major effect on the usage of the arcade’s southwest-facing column foundations, but visiting the place on cloudy days showed that sunshine is not crucial for the at-tractiveness of the place. Earlier and later visits in autumn and mid-winter confirm the same.

The Monmouth Café and Façade Benches

People use the Monmouth façade benches for a quick rest or to drink their coffee; occasionally interacting with the people queuing outside the café. A small utility box between the benches acts as a sideboard for cups, glasses, cakes, etc. (photographs 83, 89, 91, 113). In the afternoon, pub customers cross the street to use the benches when there is a seat free. Even people with takeaway food from the market sometimes make use of the benches.

The benches are apparently considered public and not reserved for the Monmouth guests. When the café owners first put up the benches several years ago, they were accompanied by small tables, fixed to the ground.

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According to a long-time café employee, the tables were swiftly banned by the local council and taken away. The tables were experienced as obstruct-ing passage on the pavement. Obviously there is a limit to the extent to which a private enterprise is allowed to colonise a particular public space through fixed artefacts. In this example, the tables seem to exceed that limit, whilst the benches are accepted.

The geometry and positioning of the benches is important. They are convexly arranged over the rounded corner, which increases their indi-vidual availability and thus their accessibility as public seating. The little gap between the benches where the utility box/table is located reinforces this condition. People using the two benches are naturally aiming their visual attention in different directions and the level of intimacy with po-tential bench neighbours thus probably becomes more tolerable. The fact that benches are fixed to the façade gives them a certain status in relation to other seating nearby. Observations suggested a priority for café guests.

Given the multiple categories of users, however, the benches can be regard-ed as public, albeit in a broad sense of the term.

The utility box/table acts as a divider between the benches, but it also constitutes a mediating artefact. Since it is rather small, different users have to negotiate how to use it in collaboration. Hence, the shared artefact prompts a mutual responsibility for the use of it and frequently results in verbal exchange.

The space between the Monmouth façade and the street is a territorially complex boundary area. Different material conditions allow for various territorial productions to take place simultaneously and partly overlap. For example, the absence of entrance doors makes a spatial intersection be-tween indoor coffee shop culture and the outdoor public pavement culture possible. The counter, which is placed very close to the pavement,

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utes to this phenomenon (photograph 90). The different floor levels in the indoor space and the high-mounted windows produce several territories within the coffee shop space itself (photographs 114, 115); customers sit-ting on the higher level overlook the market and the arcade, while those sitting on the lower level mainly relate to each other and the indoor space.

Customers on both levels connect visually and acoustically with each other and the working staff behind the counters. Through territorial association, the aromas of coffee and baked goods produce a scent territory that over-laps all of these spaces, including the pavement and the street.

All of these territorial productions take place in a relatively small geo-graphical area and are made possible through an elaborated architectural form and distribution of artefacts that allow for a complex use: the Mon-mouth façade (with high-mounted windows), the differentiated floor lev-els, the openness to the street, the benches with the utility box/ table, the design and position of the counter, the height of the indoor space, etc.; all of these material conditions and spatial configurations must be taken into account to fully explain how the complexity of this space is accomplished.

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The urban fixtures Corner

A corner by the southern entrance to the market is crowded with ar-tefacts, mobile as well as fixed (photographs 116-120). A lamp post and some pavement signs share the space with a utility box and a few bollards.

The place is occupied for most of the day by different people and for dif-ferent reasons. The assembly of space-making artefacts seem to render the spot unexpectedly attractive. People use the protected area for a peaceful moment – making a phone call, eating a sandwich or just having a short rest. During my observation, some tourists stopped there to unfold a map, perhaps to figure out their position or to discuss their further itinerary.

An elderly man appropriated the place for a fairly lengthy time to make watercolour sketches (photograph 120). When the number of pub guests peaks in the afternoon, this little refuge is very popular; the small utility box is repeatedly used for gathering empty beer glasses (photograph 117).

This space is not consciously planned or designed to be a gathering place;

it is merely a strategically-positioned place that is coincidentally defined and protected by mundane artefacts.

The Window Ledges at the Market Porter

Since smoking was banned in all enclosed workplaces in the UK on the 1st of July in 2007, the gathering of guests outside pubs, bars and restaurants is a frequently encountered phenomenon. Consequently, smokers and their loyal friends need somewhere to put their glasses. All horizontal fittings and details on the façades have acquired a new and specialised function, and innovative material arrangements have been designed to meet the de-mand for outdoor horizontals to hold beer and wine glasses (photographs 121-122). The window ledges at the Market Porter are wide enough to hold glasses and the guests regularly occupy the pavement around the pub

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façades. Two empty wooden barrels have been placed in the street outside the pub entrance, where they function as tables or surfaces for stacking glasses in the afternoons, when the space outside the pub is crowded. The guests seem to prefer the window ledges, which are colonised first. When the ledges are filled and the pavement is crowded, people seek other lo-cations, such as the pavement outside the Monmouth Café, the façade benches, the arcade and the ‘urban fixtures corner’.

The congested pavements and the quest for horizontal surfaces generate a dynamic social situation with its own set of informal rules and behaviour.

The number of people in the human clusters and the material qualities that they request determine how they use the space, where they locate them-selves and how they move within the space. Two individuals can easily find a spot by the windows, and they usually position themselves parallel to the façade. Other clusters, containing more than two people, usually stand in free groups and use the ledges or other horizontals to place their glasses temporarily, when they have to use both hands, for example to light a cigarette. On one occasion I noticed a man and a woman standing by the façade and using the window ledge for their drinks who were repeatedly interrupted by a cluster of men standing next to them on the pavement every time they put their glasses on the ledge between the couple by the façade. The situation resulted in some stern glances and an exchange of words between the members of the two clusters. The horizontal surfaces frequently mediate different kinds of social exchange between individuals as well as between clusters; from acknowledging glances, affirming the use of an already-taken spot on a ledge, to short conversations and negotia-tions on the positioning in the space.

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