40 Spaces

SPACES.

SPACES IMAGE WITHIN SPACES.

There are many forms of spaces within spaces, including: cupboards, shelves, draws, mouse holes, and the concept of negative and positive space, within a house.  But we are not too interested in the smaller spaces, as long as they are neatly tucked in, yet a tea-pot in a kettle conjures the concept we are after.  A negative space would be under a table, and a positive space would be the space on top of it for which it was purposefully built.  A space under a table allows feet to hang and for legs of the table, and in some instances a table against a wall is used for stacking and storing things.  But that is all fairly mundane.  Spaces within spaces also include awkward space and alcoves.  In a church there is normally a crypt of roman quadrangular arches, alcoves for candles, and a sequential series of spaces for worship, up to the altar and organ behind.  The naive directs the space towards east, and various spaces dwell in the cruciform shape of the church or cathedral. 

Spaces rise from an old monastery basement to bell ringing towers, and roof space.  But predominantly space is set out on the ground floor from front to back in an elliptical movement or straight vector back and forth.  It defines, an end point in society’s route, like a home or shop and therefore direction is important.  Space is a difficult matter to describe, as it is always seen as negative, just air, however light and reflection allows light and shadow on a wall, floor, and ceiling to define atmosphere and drama.  Spaces under tables are the most difficult to clean, and a furniture maker just tends to be concerned with an ingenious method of holding the table up.  Tables are dressed, with cloths and mats to hold smaller spaces on plates, in bowls and in cups.  A glass full is worthy of drinking assuming the drink is to the taste of the drinker, and table sitter.  Why not a hole for the plate and cup?  Candles may dress a table but are used less so these days for their susceptibility to starting fires.

Space is a valuable commodity in real estate, and a house with five bedrooms can easily fetch £1M.  But houses are not planned as they should be.  A pool or garden can take precedence.  A basement or rooftop garden may be a priority.  To be in the trees, or the depths of the dark may be a requirement, and therefore space is not as it once seemed.  Space images walls, floor and roof, particularly flat rooves, and box like dwellings for their modern enigma.  There are of course many ways of making space.  A picnic at home, or a tent or den in the kitchen.  Children tend to find the most interesting spaces to be, to stay calm, protected and find new adventures in their own world.  For the diplomatic intellectual artist of most mature adults; space is defined as an ambition and therefore a goal beyond the page, but difference secludes them to an answer of modern living.  To design a room inside a room creates a theatre of dreaming.  A space inside a space inside, to perform. 

Not the regular mezzanine space within a barn, but space as a source of wisdom.  Think beyond the space itself and build four walls.  Within a maze there are many walls, and spaces, but they form conceited, and direct routes to the centre, only to be found again and again by the public.  Whilst we need a route through and around.  A space to form shadow in the middle of the room could seclude or divulge from the rest of the house.  Elements in an elemental layout.  Piece by piece.  Shadow by shadow.  Elements are extremely important to vestige the fundamental practicalities of a surrounded space, like a bedroom or cupboard to enrol.  The space acts as a divided whole.  From plan and section, floors off level, spaces above and below a floor allowing views through.  It is the only way to make a home, in order to create, constructively, through its post-ruin, continuation, deconstruction and it’s static nolli plan of positive, black, and negative, white volumes, and obstacles, of form, in modern day living.

The ghetto: (etymology: getto = foundry, & borghetto = district), formally a Jewish quarter in Venice, was built as a walled courtyard, with bathing, eating, conversation and life all within the surrounding walls.  A guard would stand in the door way, much like present day Jerusalem, and allow visitors in and out, the Jews described by a red hat.  Occam’s razor tells us the simplest is best but without narrative to a home or building there is no route through.  To proclaim allegiance to a form of architecture helps the architect to make their claim in a train of thought, for that imagined and realised becomes a reality of disseminating promulgation. 

From children, to mature architect, we once had an idea about space and the damage of colloquial design and cottage like housing in cul-de-sacs that lead nowhere but the stark reality of their own siphon.  But a wall at the end of the day is a wall, a barrier to be penetrated, and a walled edifice makes sense.  Children when they first draw a house often begin with a castle, and so the most original building form takes precedence in our formative years, as an answer to the kindest form we can dwell in.  It is all about protection, and a concept of thus:

‘In the middle of the twentieth century, the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget studied how children’s abilities to reason increase as they mature.  Piaget’s research culminated in a theory of cognitive development that stated that children of different ages are equipped with (or have access to) different inventories of logical inference rules as a basis of their reasoning.  The main assumption in Piaget’s highly influential theory of formal operations was that human reasoning relies on a mental logic consisting of formal inference rules (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958).  During the same period, the influential work of Henle (1962) suggested that competence in human reasoning is achieved through use of logical rules.  From this point of view, inferences are conceptualized as equivalent to the proofs in formal logic.’i

There is without doubt a formal logic to a castle, and its following form a walled community.  We, after all, all want to be King or Queen of our abode.  However formal logic is not enough to be creative in the realm of building, and a reference to language can open up a plethora of different experiences and modes of thought for living in.

The reason for space being confused with end points means there is much scope to route, and concept, as a concentric space hold’s.  A form of ‘other being’ allows motion captured in space, and a space within a space allows a prominent projection of a verisimilitude in defining how spaces are used.  The use of space comes with a function and that is its fundamental floor to be misrepresented as pure efficiency as opposed to artistry. 

There are a number of ways the architect may hone in on space making, by using history, graphics, sociology, statistics, and syntax to define new ways of making a castle.  A castle is after all four walls surrounding a mount, somewhat like an inhabitable walled garden.  Conceptually the castle is flagged with issues of natural ventilation, and serviceability if we were to inhabit the whole, but inhabitable walls makes it a reasonable use of space, with one larger dwelling at the centre, hidden from view.  Mental models are the conclusive argument to much of architectures vanquishing dreams into a new 21st century utopia:

‘What I think actually defines a mental model is solely that it is an integrated representation of the information presented in the reasoning problem.  That is, the diverse pieces of information from a reasoning problem are not kept as separate entities in one’s mind.’ii

‘Or as Johnson-Laird puts it: “The parts of the model correspond to the relevant parts of what it represents, and the structural relations between the parts of the model are analogous to the structural relations in the world” (Johnson-Laird, 1998, p.447).’iii

To find an analogy to garden and home, home and garden, is the ideal vestige to the new home.  Nature is inherently becoming a mainstay in our need to live in green environments, and a native horizon is one to own.  But it takes a life to find ourselves and our original idea, if only through the element of critical theory beyond initial solutions.  I have always felt suburbia needed triangulation, both in plan and in 3 dimensions.  The tepee seems like the ideal model to cosy living.  But for the bespoke home, anything goes, based on the origins of the pitched roof, four windows, front door and chimney.  It takes contemplation to find another route, and a worthy creation of being new:

‘Pylyshyn (2006) might be right that the visual theory of reasoning is largely triggered by our introspection, and even psychological theories occasionally benefit when they concur with our personal experiences.’iv

‘A picture may be a thousand words, as the saying goes.  But if a visual image contains visual features that are irrelevant to our thoughts, that can impede the process of reasoning.  Hence, a less visually detailed representation that gives our mind more space to reason is needed.’v

Definitely, it takes a spatial image pre-ordained in likenesses to our utopian ideal to find a way forward. While thought processes govern the process, unless completely original, we may look to Herzog and De Meuron or Valerio Oligati for a companioned and affirming image as to what we want to achieve.  After all architecture is very graphical, and with computer science, not only are we combining weather and light conditions but also new reality visualisations, with a computer element defined by the softwares capabilities to create 3 dimensional virtuousness.  

‘Several computer scientists have proposed an alternative to the pictorial image-based account of machine reasoning.  The core assumption of these scholars is that qualitative representations of spatial relations, together with appropriate inference engines, could be a more efficient way to enable computers to reason about space.  This research field is called qualitative spatial reasoning (QSR).'vi

Qualitative reasoning certainly only comes from computational design, and now we have a whole new realm of thinking, allowing reason in (through the enlightenment), and personal experience in the ease of its applications.  There are without doubt a thousand ways to put the tea-pot in the kettle, but fundamentally it has to function.  Once functioning, i.e. its construction of four walls, there are endless re-interpretations of the box and its flight into the para-normal, of a narrative conceit designed for the end-user who will fall in love all over again by its form of unique individuality. 

The eclectic has been thrown out in favour of invention, and to invent is the ideal space within space of the image of the architect.  Parsimony is not an option in detail, until a paragon is achieved.  The dispatch of a new ensign will encompass the issuance of a tagline like: ‘This space just came from the mind, and that’s why the mind is all there is!’  Once disincentives of sameness through stained timber, brass handled, breakfast bar, kitchen-diner, living space, and four bedrooms is re-created as a labyrinth of pandoras box, then we will be living with and for our architectural force, and not asking them to compromise.  In every jewellery box are jewels, so let us have them, when it is only reason to promulgate the imagination.

i Knauff, Mark, Space to Reason, A spatial theory of human thought, MIT, 2013, London, UK.  Pg.21.

ii Knauff, Mark, Space to Reason, A spatial theory of human thought, MIT, 2013, London, UK.  Pg.24.

iii Knauff, Mark, Space to Reason, A spatial theory of human thought, MIT, 2013, London, UK.  Pg.24. 

iv Knauff, Mark, Space to Reason, A spatial theory of human thought, MIT, 2013, London, UK.  Pg.222/223.

v Knauff, Mark, Space to Reason, A spatial theory of human thought, MIT, 2013, London, UK.  Pg.224.

vi Knauff, Mark, Space to Reason, A spatial theory of human thought, MIT, 2013, London, UK.  Pg.136.