Researching the refiguration of spaces

This Working Paper summarizes key findings from the second funding phase of the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1265 “Re-Figuration of Spaces” and outlines the research agenda for the third phase. The CRC’s approach is based on an understanding of social change as refiguration, i.e., as spatial processes of reordering emerging from tensions between different spatial figures and their associated logics of action. Following an introduction to the topological spatial figures as a central analytical tools, the paper presents selected results from Project Areas A (Knowledge of Spaces), B (Spaces of Digital Mediatization), and C (Circulation and Order) and links them to overarching findings of the CRC. The empirical studies demonstrate how spatial dynamics of change manifest as variations of refiguration in diverse fields, such as migration and displacement, ecological transformations, protest movements, or digitalized practices, revealing global entanglements alongside counter-movements of closure. In the third funding phase, the CRC aims to consolidate the theory of refiguration, to further refine its empirical and diagnostic value, and to make it applicable to design- and planning-oriented practice fields. Central to this endeavor are the cross-cutting description of “figurations in transition” and the further specification of spatial-figure analysis. On this basis, a spatial-theoretical model of interpretive explanation will be developed and linked with a design model for application-oriented practice. Moreover, the diagnostic capacity of the refiguration concept will be expanded through research in three conflict fields (“Limits of Pluralization,” “Politics of Infrastructuring,” “Ruptures of Ecologization”). This work relies on the CRC’s close interdisciplinary collaboration, its international research networks, and the methodological concept of multiple spatialities, which enables comparative perspectives beyond territorially defined spaces and systematically integrates spatial positionalities into the analysis.