As a foreign observer, my research focuses on an M&S Foodhall located between Finsbury Park Station and the UAL student residence Sketch House, examining how non-place and place coexist and overlap in this space. Taking M&S as a site that enables ‘local connections,’ I look at how it generates a pull between a fleeting sense of temporariness and a subtle sense of belonging, and use this to reflect on the relations between circulation and dwelling in the contemporary city.
I draw upon French anthropologist Marc Augé’s theory, which defines non-places as spaces traversed by people yet offering little genuine belonging (Augé, 1995). But Augé does not suggest that supermodernity is all-encompassing: places still exist outside non-place and tend to reconstitute themselves inside it. This insight provides a crucial framework for understanding M&S, where space, between standardisation and emotionalisation, is not a binary exclusion but a continuous permeation and reassembly.
The M&S food hall exemplifies this blurred boundary. Its spatial layout and product display adhere to the logic of globalised retail systems, shaping the consumer experience through fluidity and anonymity. Yet for local residents, it simultaneously serves as a repository of everyday memories and a social nexus. When diverse flavours on the shelves bring people, goods, and cultural imagery together under one roof; in fulfilling multiple needs, the environment itself becomes an imagined displacement. Within this liminal space, the supermarket transforms into a site of localisation practices within a non-place, bearing micro-narratives of migration, difference, and belonging. Thus, the supermarket generates differentiated meanings through varying perspectives. For commuters, it serves as a rapid resupply station; For residents of the surrounding neighbourhood, the regular comings and goings, the banter with shop assistants, and the repetitive walking routes gradually form a perceptible ‘micro-geography’, a small-scale society. For international students like myself, however, recognition and misplacement coexist: the familiar foods are unfamiliar versions adapted to the local context. This oscillation prompts a repositioning of my own place and a learning of local rules. This layering of multiple perspectives forms a ‘narratable localisation’.
Drawing inspiration from Perec’s advocacy for rediscovering the everyday through writing (Perec, 1997), and Mattern’s discussion of using tools to intervene and reconfigure perceptions of the urban landscape (Mattern, 2013), I regard writing and visual practice as means to embody locality. Accordingly, I employ notetaking, diagramming, and photography to document and remake commodities, transforming them from everyday consumer items into visual carriers of cross-cultural narratives. This compels us to respond to the dislocation of personal rhythms, initiating spatial practices from local experience and transforming M&S Foodhall into a place that can be perceived, narrated, and continuously generate meaning. Through this process of inscription, it acquires a public dimension that is open to discussion, critique, and extension.
References:
Augé, M. (1995) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London / New York: Verso.
Mattern, S. (2013) Infrastructural Tourism. Places Journal, July. Available at: https://placesjournal.org/article/infrastructural-tourism/ (Accessed: 14 October 2025).
Perec, G. (1997) Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. Translated by J. Sturrock. London: Penguin Books.
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