Investigation
Design Space in Three Places
Previous Chapter | Next Chapter
From investigating the interior, exterior and informed places of architecture, and the different design space that are associated with these places, we may conclude that:
The lesson from R.M. Schindler was that we could indeed construct a passage between the imagined design space, with its abstract intuition and the reality ‘out there’, as he did by connecting ‘reference frames in space’ and ‘unit system’. This became evident in the way, he applied his grounding understanding of Space Architecture as manifest and modules of space. Even though Schindler was initially situated in an interior and formal place, it expanded into an exterior and symbolic place through the ‘odd’ projects from the early 1930s.
The lesson from Robert Venturi was that in spite of the confusing character of the symbolic world, there was still an order and a potential in what seemed useless and formless. Even though Venturi’s space was primarily situated in an exterior and symbolic place, it did not reject the formal potentials of that place as ‘contained intricacy’. Just as it was the case with Dan Graham, who gave architectural form to design spaces that he otherwise published as printed strategies.
The lesson from informed space was that the medium, which eventually developed into an advanced form-synthesizer, began as a diagrammatic tool for programming architecture, and especially for the disposition of space. We saw that the construction of informed space may both be formal as in the case of Greg Lynn and Peter Eisenman and symbolic programmatic as in the case of MVRDV.
The aim of this investigation was quite straightforward: To investigate, whether there was a correlation between the place of an architectural operation and the construction of the design space, which was used for that operation. Did it influence Schindler’s design space that it was applied to the interior of architecture and Venturi’s design space that it was applied to the exterior of architecture? Did these design spaces change as their focus changed?
After investigating the three places, we may conclude that the design strategy, which Schindler used in his early buildings, up until the late 1920s, was in fact constructed in another design space and by other operands, than the design spaces of his later buildings, which had an exterior focus on the urban space. The same could be said about Venturi’s design space – that it was limited to ‘contained intricacy’ in his 1968 book, while it was unfolded as ‘symbol in space before form in space’ in the 1972 book. Likewise, the development of a digital synthetic space was developed through several levels of spatiality until a high degree of parametrics and simulation was reached in the late 1990s as the digital medium had moved on to another place and another function.
Therefore, it seems that the design space evolves as the focus changes between different places of operation. There is, in other words, a tight connection between place and space, when it comes to design spaces.
However, this does not mean that the former design space is entirely abandoned; it may transform and be embedded with new operands, but the very idea of a design space stays the same. Borrowing the words from Rikard Stankiewicz, we could say that the architect still operates within his own design regime, but that the constellation and operands of that spatial regime has changed.
From the investigations, we may therefore suggest an even closer description of design space, as a constructive design method, which at the same time is embedded by formal and symbolic operands, and is both descriptive and prescriptive in function. The design space is just as dynamic and changeable as the architect’s mind may be. The concept of design space may be described as diverse design procedures from Schindler’s formal exercises in module space, to MVRDV’s creation of a symbolic space based on data in the architectural manifest of METACITY/DATATOWN.
Previous Chapter | Next Chapter
|
|
