Diseño

El Tercer Lugar

The third place (also known as Third Space) is a term used in the concept of community building to refer to social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace. In his influential book The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg (1989, 1991) argues that third places are important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement, and establishingfeelings of a sense of place.
Oldenburg calls one's "first place" the home and those that one lives with. The "second place" is the workplace — where people may actually spend most of their time. Third places, then, are "anchors" of community life and facilitate and foster broader, more creative interaction. All societies already have informal meeting places; what is new in modern times is theintentionality of seeking them out as vital to current societal needs. Oldenburg suggests the following hallmarks of a true "third place":
* Free or inexpensive
* Food and drink, while not essential, are important
* Highly accessible: proximate for many (walking distance)
* Involve regulars – those who habitually congregate there
* Welcoming and comfortable
Both newfriends and old should be found there.

Postmodern Conception
Homi K. Bhabha wrote about hybridity and third space from a postcolonial perspective in The Location of Culture (1994). In an interview, Bhabha explains how his conception of third space as "differential temporal movements within the process of dialectical thinking and the supplementary or interstitial 'conditionality' that opens upalongside the transcendent tendency of dialectical contradiction" developed from Walter Benjamin's work.[1]
Political geographer and urban planner Edward Soja also developed a theory of Thirdspace, in his 1996 book Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-And-Imagined Places. His postmodern conception draws on and is influenced by Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucalt, and postcolonial thinkersGayatri Chakravorty Spivak, bell hooks, Edward Said, and Homi K. Bhabha. Soja's concept of Thirdspace "breaks the Firstspace-Secondspace dualism and comprises such related concepts as ‘place, location, locality, landscape, environment, home, city, region, territory and geography’ (50) that attempts to come to terms with the representational strategies of real and imagined places. He proposes a‘trialectics of spatiality’ (57) which is a process, a dynamic force and ‘recombinational and radically open’ (50)."[2]
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Virtual Third Places and Spaces
Since Oldenburg’s writings, there are people in the computer and internet industry that have declared that third places are observed or shifting to the virtual world or virtual third places.[3] This descriptive practice is easily adoptedbecause of the similarities in descriptive characteristics found between the virtual and physical worlds. It is possible that there are some interesting notions in relation to the transitional sequences or observed phenomena, which have occurred in the evolutionary focus in social life.
In combination with the Industrial Revolution and as media transitioned from the public space to the morecomfortable roles inside our homes there was a large shift away from public activities because they could be enjoyed within the confines of one’s home. With the advent of online technologies these virtual third places have been observed in online communities and multi-player gaming. The characteristics observed in these communities vary from their physical application but meet the context ofpersonalization, permeability, approachability, and comfortability.

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Oldenburg's Characteristics
There are eight characteristics that define a Third Place, as described by Oldenburg.
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Neutral Ground
Occupants of Third Places have little to no obligation to be there. They are not tied down to the area financially, politically, legally, or otherwise and are free to come and go as they...