Investigation
Three Places of Investigation
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In the following chapters, I will investigate the space of three places: the interior place in the chapter Framed Space, the exterior place in the chapter Outer Space, and the virtual place in the chapter Informed Space. Next, I will show that the concept of design space has been used in all of these three places. I will use the concept of design space to analyze and investigate, how it has been used, framed by the question, whether there has been a dependency between the place of the architectural action and the construction of a particular design space.
By siting space at specific places, I propose two things:
First, that the specific focus of an architectural attention influences the construction of design spaces. In other words, where an operation takes place influences which operands are included in the design space, and how that design space is constructed.
Second, that using a ‘topological’ structure of space and place can ‘unlock’ the investigation from a schematic historical context of modern, postmodern and information architecture and instead expand the discussion to reflect the spatial concepts and constructions that we just left in Unfolding.
Such an approach is also a critique of the supremacy of time that both Michel Foucault and Edward W. Soja conducts and could be positioned somewhere between Franz Xaver Baier’s spatial specificity and Soja’s inclusive aleph. Each of the three spaces has a distinct character, in the way that they construct specific design spaces, while the three places contain or reflect a wide range of other places. The interior place is still present in the urban exterior place, as a dynamic border between the private and the public, for instance, while both the interior and the exterior places are present in the virtual place as simulation, flow of signs or mass media. So, the part Investigation may be read as a map of specific places, which have specific spatial foci and thus specific design spaces.
In Framed Space, the place is inside contained space – in the rooms of R.M. Schindler’s buildings as well as in the ‘reference frames in space’ that he constructed with his unique Unit System. I suspect that the design space of this place has an interior focus and is a constellation of technical, tectonic and aesthetic operands, which all contribute to a different view on Schindler’s application of space; space as manifest and space as module.
In Outer Space, the place is outside – displaced in the urban landscape of the North American suburb as described by Schindler, Robert Venturi and Dan Graham. I suspect that the design space of this place is social, political, economic, critical, symbolic and diffused.
In Informed Space, the place is virtual, digital and mediated – in the design of applications by architect William J. Mitchell and software designer John Walker (AutoCAD), and in the design through applications, carried out by Greg Lynn, MVRDV and Peter Eisenman. I suspect that the design space of the virtual place is collaborative, synthetic, parametric, programmatic, diagrammatic, process driven and informed.
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