Unfolding
Unfolding Space
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The new monumentality of space will symbolize the limitless power of the human mind. Man trembles facing the universe.
RM Schindler, “A Manifesto” (1912)(1)
The aim of the first major part of the dissertation is to unfold, how we understand space – to unfold the conceptual frame for our endeavor. Space is indeed understood and described in many ways and as many different manifestations.(2) Space is not just one thing; it may describe specific parts or structures of the world that surrounds us in the minutest detail, or it may describe the all-containing, diffuse ‘nothing’ between the things that we interact with. Space is both a phenomenon of the reality we manipulate, form and occupy, and a silent partner that comes along to separate the artifacts that construct our life.
As one goes through what has been argued on the subject of space in an architectural context, it becomes clear that there has been established two distinct views on how to describe architectural space: the space of the finalized building and the space of the art historical analysis. The former being a view mainly based on movement, surfaces and perception – in other words, the body in space – the latter being a view mainly based on visual ‘decoding’, composition and intent – in other words, the interpreting eye standing outside looking into space. Space seen as something that is produced or something that is analyzed. However, there is another view of space: the space of the process before anything has been given a distinct reality, before it can be perceived and decoded by anybody outside that processual space. A view that accepts the two views mentioned above but at the same time articulates them as it establishes its own position. The third view on space is the space of process – in other words, the space that is used in the architectural design process before the final space is realized or analyzed by the art historian.
In a Danish context there has recently been two substantial contributions to the two more traditional views on space: Rummets arkitektur – arkitekturens rum by Lars Marcussen, which accounts for the development of the built architectural space primarily seen through a mathematical projection, and Rumanalyser by Lise Bek and Henrik Oxvig (eds.), which account for developments in the art historical view on space. Both of these publications may be seen as contributions to further establish the two traditional views on space, and thus display a need for a critical position that is not contained within any of these two views.
In the next three chapters, I will move from the very broad understanding and conceptualization of space, to the more narrow focus on space as a cultural construction, and end with a definition and discussion of what we may call a design space. It will be a traveling focus that will frame the view on space in this dissertation.
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(1) Schindler, R.M. (1912), “A manifesto,” in Gebhard, David (1971), Schindler, San Francisco CA: William Stout Publishers, p. 148.
(2) I do not intend, however, to construct a taxonomy of all the different concepts of space; it is not the aim of this dissertation and it has already been done by others. Nevertheless, some sort of overview is needed. Space in Architecture by Cornelis van de Ven first published in 1977 offers a good overview, as does Der Raum by Franz Xaver Baier from 2000 in a broader context. We will return to Baier in the following chapter A New View on Space.
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