Is It or Isn’t It?

Abstract

French philosopher Michel Foucault first mentioned heterotopia in a lecture to architects in 1967. Up to this time it had been a medical term (one also used in biology and zoology). It denoted the presence of unusual tissue that can co-exist with normal tissue in a body; the heterotopic tissue shouldn’t be there but it does no harm. Foucault applied this term to ‘those singular spaces to be found in some given social spaces whose functions are different or even the opposite of others’ (Foucault, 1991). Places that contain layers of meaning or relationships that aren’t immediately obvious.