The plan to reduce working hours and distribute employment amongst more individuals, with a view to guaranteeing a freer, happier existence, is one of the main aims of socioeconomic research, which endeavours, also experimentally, to identify the right balance between production, income and quality of life. This research departs from the observation that free time and leisure for the individual do not represent an absolute value to be maximized, since an absence of work and total lack of commitment could create a void that is just as harmful as hyperactivity and the inability or impossibility to perform activities different from those related to one’s own profession. Moreover, nowadays, free time follows the rules of consumerism and therefore requires financial commitment, which inevitably ends up by becoming a socially discriminating factor, also in relation to leisure. Departing from these premises, subsequently analyzed as concise extracts from the book “L‘Utopie du temps libre” written by French sociologist Daniel Mothé, with this issue, Area selects a series of architectures and places designed to inhabit temporal spaces, dedicated to leisure; hence different from houses and workplaces.
…the scenarios of leisure
If we wish to seriously discuss the theme of leisure…first of all we need to know exactly what is meant by this term. Let’s imagine that it refers to time spent out of working hours: it would therefore include sleep, rest, domestic activities, amusement and culture; or varied activities chosen according to the time each individual wishes to dedicate to them. […] But leisure time can also be considered as time in which the individual, out of working hours, finds himself without activity, having exhausted all the “free activities”, owing either to a lack of imagination or money. […] In any case, it is impossible to scientifically establish the amount of leisure time required by an individual. The way in which he occupies his time does not just depend on the individual, but also on the world in which he lives. […] The increase in leisure time should only increase the consumption of … goods. We need to know whether or not this increase will have negative effects on the quality of goods, and if it will be positive for the majority of people. […] Individual forms of amusement must be differentiated in terms of whether or not they are free of charge. In this ambit, for the inhabitants of megalopolises there is only television as a free and popular form of diversion (which can be used by everyone) […] Nature or streets no longer constitute places of popular diversion. Instead, television does, since for the majority of people living in cities, the visual consumption of nature involves costly travel for poorer people. Since television programmes are free of charge, their consumption is boundless, and the fact that they do not involve personal or collective effort gives them an enormous advantage in relation to other free public activities, which require intellectual effort. […] The widespread diffusion of show business through means of television […] competes enormously with social activities. […] It is not a case of grieving the past but understanding that it is not due to a lack of time that individuals no longer socialise and wish to remain solitary: it is because the strategies of play available exercise their attractiveness on individual choices. Why invent and put to the test one’s creative spirit when from one’s very home a product gives the illusion of living with the rest of the world? […] A public with leisure time at its disposal requests diversion that it doesn’t find in its forced activity: the public is therefore open to all products that would distract it, make it laugh, incite emotions, frighten it and give it pleasure. […] Nowadays, people with free time socialise voluntarily and not out of obligation. So it is possible to live in solitude, yet being perfectly informed about worldwide events, without having to confront one’s fellow men, without having to imagine a form of social behaviour. All we need is a television set and we can have shows, meals and all products existing on the market delivered to our very own homes. […] The development of leisure products on the market, as well as the popularisation of long-distance communications, favour individual play products to the detriment of socialising products, and this is thanks to the simple play of costs. A TV show is free; a concert, a cinema or theatre ticket, or a ticket to the stadium are inaccessible to those with low incomes. Since the market is the most effective system of selecting diversion. […] People in our societies love to consume: they are continually tempted by advertising; but the individuals lack the financial means to have access to the available forms of amusement. The pay claims of wage earners […] can be interpreted in this way: they want more money to be able to exploit their leisure time better. […] When we talk about leisure time, we refer to different times according to income and cultural levels, since leisure time is not the same for everyone. […] The possibility of gaining access to better leisure facilities increases the more one works. […] The new needs for diversion derive from available free time and […] those who do not have available time consume less. […] The increase in leisure time paves the way for new forms of media: radio, television and now Internet. Contrary to appearance, these new instruments more selectively operate the social separation of the poor from others, and the State invests more in helping those who have been excluded from the party. The increase in leisure time accompanies a paradox: with the standardisation and evolution of techniques, it will be increasingly necessary to regulate, ration and control the use of this time which will be truly free only for those who can pay the price.
