My investigation of Borough Market in London explores how public space operates as a living system shaped by sensory experience and human movement. Observing the market over three weeks, I documented how smell, sound, people, and hunger guide how individuals move, choose, and eat. Georges Perec’s chapter The Street in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (1997, pp. 46–56) offers a methodological framework for this study, while Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage (1967) provides a thematic lens for understanding how such spaces communicate.
In The Street, Perec advises us to look at everything, to decipher and classify our surroundings, to notice the mundane, the obvious, or something that strikes us. His method is one of patient listing, repetition, and accumulation, where the street becomes a text to be read line by line, event by event.
My point of observation was an array of steps overlooking a sandwich shop. At first, it felt like there was too much information to process, as everything demanded attention. Gradually, as I began to watch without expectation, the most obvious details revealed meaning: how hungry people were, how they waited in queues, wiped their mouths, exchanged food, photographed their meals, or fed each other in gestures of love. Some were lost in thought, others talked continuously without knowing if the other was listening. Individuals appeared more introspective and observant, while groups were louder and more animated. Their different ways revealed how social configurations shape sensory and emotional engagement within the same space.
Perec invites the reader to attend to the passing of time, to wait, and observe more—to carry on till a point where the place becomes strange from your observation (Perec, 1997, p. 9). His approach transforms perception into inquiry, allowing the ordinary to become extraordinary through close attention. Following Perec’s suggestion, I recorded, patiently, everything from sketching letter forms from objects, gestures, overheard phrases, to photographing movements. I noticed patterns: people pointing at food, photographing before eating, and the intertwining of smell, sound, and movement as sentences that described how space was inhabited. Queues formed social patterns; hunger intensified with waiting; and conversations increased once food arrived. These repetitions, subtle, human, often overlooked, revealed the market’s internal system of relationships. Perec’s method guided my process of observing not from a distance but through active participation within the rhythms of the space itself.
McLuhan’s ideas complement this process by shifting focus from observation to the environment’s role in shaping perception. He argues that all media are extensions of human faculties—they amplify one sense and alter the balance of others (McLuhan, 1967, p. 18). Borough Market, in this sense, operates as a medium that extends and reorganises human perception. The aroma of food heightens smell, the visual abundance intensifies sight, and overlapping chatter and music stimulate hearing. As McLuhan states that media by altering the environment evokes unique ratios of sense perceptions (McLuhan, 1967, p. 24). The market operates as a sensory technology that structures experience and behaviour. Its environment “massages” visitors, shaping perception before thought. This creates a loop where smells attract people, queues intensify hunger, food consumption elevates mood, and elevated mood encourages conversation and further consumption. The space functions as an ecosystem that structures experience, encouraging immersion, and digital documentation.
Thus, Borough Market functions as more than a physical site. It is a dynamic medium of perception and interaction where it overplays the senses, reorders perception, and shapes collective behaviour. An environment that reshapes how people sense, communicate, and ultimately, how they are worked over by the very medium they inhabit.
References
McLuhan, M. (1967) The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. Gingko press Ink
Perec, G. (1997) Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. Penguin Books Ltd,
pp. 46–56.