Third space aesthetic
Collective spaces as an aesthetic imaginary
I Miss My Bar is a website that no longer exists, but I often find myself thinking about it. It reminds me of the lockdown, when it was created, during which bars were closed and city life seemed to have crystallized in a suspended time. Above all, it reminds me of the places I used to frequent before moving back to the suburb where I grew up: everyday landmarks that are now beginning to unravel in my memory, replaced by the sparse landscapes of the outskirts and the occasional attempts at socializing in anonymous venues on the city’s margins.
I Miss My Bar was a simple but effective website: at the center of the interface, a stylized profile of a bar counter; on the sides, a series of players to reproduce the sound environment and recreate the feeling of being inside a busy venue: the clinking of dishes and glasses, the murmur of background conversations, the noise of traffic beyond the window, the muffled sound of rain against the glass. Each element was isolated and adjustable, as if nostalgia could be modulated at will, memory made malleable to suit a specific inner need.
As I said, today I Miss My Bar no longer exists: it was an advertising campaign for Maverick, a bar in San Pedro Garza García, Mexico, created in collaboration with two local design studios. With the end of the lockdown, the project lost its purpose and was shut down. Other virtual spaces have taken up the idea, reinterpreting it.
A few examples: I Miss My Office recreates the sounds of a visibly romanticized work environment, where printers emit a comforting white noise and coworkers’ chatter is always pleasant, while I Miss My Cafe faithfully replicates the Maverick interface, but adds tools designed to boost focus – such as a customizable timer and a daily planner to help define your goals. The same approach is mirrored by I Miss My Library, where you can track your to-do list while being lulled by the crackling of a fireplace and the rhythmic rustle of pages being turned in the background – a perfect atmosphere, marred only by the inexplicable decision to simulate the sound of someone typing on an iPad:, even online, we are denied the pleasure of imagining the click-clack of a typewriter. The list goes on, the websites set in very similar environments: bars and coffee shops, libraries and universities – public or semi-public spaces portrayed in an idealized, intimate, and welcoming light.
Many of the virtual spaces born in the wake of I Miss My Bar actually fall into a specific category: ambience videos designed to enhance productivity. In part, they follow the same logic as lo-fi radio – sonic loops meant to accompany work, studying, or browsing online. But here, the approach shifts: these are digital experiences that reconstruct real places – bars, libraries, neighborhood cafés – by isolating specific sensory elements and presenting them in an electronic, detached, and idealized form. What’s offered is not a space in which to have an experience – not even the recollection of a familiar place – but an interactive soundtrack to inhabit with the mind. Everything works together to create a cozy, imaginary elsewhere in which to feel safe. I miss my bar, yes – but not to socialize – to focus, work, answer emails, and keep alive the desire for order and calm in an environment shielded from the hostility of real life. The background noise of work, consumption, and other people’s lives is reduced to a distant audio track, switchable at will.
As an article in InsideHook explains, analyzing the rise of these virtual experiences since the pandemic, the popularity of ambience videos simulating bars and libraries seems directly linked – on one hand – to the disappearance of so-called “third spaces” – informal social venues outside of home and work – and on the other hand, to the increasing difficulty of accessing those that still exist. A difficulty that is often tied to very concrete factors like distance and cost.
Prices at places like coffee shops, bars and restaurants have all been on the rise, and given today’s economic climate, it’s not a complete shock to say people — and not just young adults — are having a hard time keeping up. These videos are, in a way, another form of experiencing these third places without actually having to spend the money and go in person.
The issue of the disappearance of third spaces has recently resurfaced in public debate, especially online, where many news outlets highlight the growing difficulty of finding gathering places capable of generating a genuine sense of belonging. I had already written about this some time ago in a newsletter, referencing the definition proposed by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his book The Great Good Place:
According to Oldenburg, the concept of the third space includes public places such as parks, community centers, public libraries, and markets, as well as small businesses like cafés, pubs, bookstores, and theaters.
What distinguishes a third space, however, is not simply its accessibility to the public, but the type of atmosphere and participation it is able to foster: third spaces are all those that encourage both personal and collective enrichment, that ensure inclusive engagement without economic barriers or affiliation requirements, and that serve as neutral grounds welcoming people from vastly different backgrounds.
A year ago, while writing, I pondered on the emergence of surrogate third spaces: digital or hybrid environments driven by the logic of an emerging online economy, where the search for new social connections is turned into a service, often one that must be paid for. This category includes apps that promise to reinvent the idea of the neighborhood through local chats and geolocated events; private clubs (one in London is literally called Third Space); and social platforms where the concept of community is constantly mediated and filtered.
But if this model remains problematic, then so, at least in part, does the ground on which we attempt to build a critique or an alternative. During the pandemic, the loss of direct contact with physical space and the search for virtual simulacrums gave rise to a third space aesthetic – a comforting imaginary stripped of the more complex dimensions of physical presence. And while this produced forms of symbolic presence that were useful as daily palliatives or even conducive to productivity, it also contributed to a progressively distorted, aestheticized gaze, one that reduces space to a representation, forgetting the living, material conditions that make it part of a community. In a Guardian feature on Gen Z’s rediscovery of public libraries, one young interviewee revealed just how deeply this link between third space and aesthetics has taken root.
“I want to cultivate an aesthetic when I go to the library,” the 20-year-old Cooper Union art student said. “And, honestly, I dress up to see if someone will come up to me and say hi.”
When the problem is no longer (or not only) the replacement of physical environments by digital ones, a deeper issue remains – namely, how the very concept of sociality, and the kinds of interactions that are nurtured in warm, generative, interesting spaces, is being transformed to adapt to the increasingly tight connection between identity, community, and aesthetics that the internet has helped to intensify. This is not a matter to be tackled with moral judgment: the growing importance of the virtual dimension, understood as the ability to abstract the sensory and material qualities of physical experience and translate them into moods, vibes, or cores, is now an inescapable part of contemporary Western culture.
Still, it remains essential to remember what Oldenburg identified as the defining feature of the third space: not just a point of reference for a neighborhood or wider community, but a place where one has the concrete opportunity to meet people one would otherwise never meet, to experience informal interactions that lie outside the logic of work, family, or social group affiliation. This is exactly the opposite of what many current trends – whether aesthetic or digital interface – are proposing today: environments designed to cater to familiar tastes and refined sensibilities, to confirm curated and selected identities, to deliver only what one wants to see – or reproduce, as in the case of I Miss My Bar. In this sense, the third space risks being transformed from a place of openness and encounter into a personalized refuge. Not a space to inhabit, but an aesthetic interface to replicate.