nothing
for everything
Space is the fundamental tool of architecture.
But space can difficult to talk about since space is a paradox. It seems to be made of nothing yet it contains the whole world.
What’s more is that space is only perceived in relation to solid objects—to that which is not space. We only know the shape of a space thanks to its edges. We only know the volume of a room thanks to its walls.
But there’s a set of qualities contained in space, and not in the things in themselves—not in the objects, the floors, the walls, and so on. In space, there’s light and shadow, sound and silence, temperature and humidity—there’s a whole climate of qualitative potential that project themselves from space onto these objects.
But these qualities, in turn, require the things in themselves—the objects, walls, floors, ceilings, etc. as they receive the qualities of the space around them and respond in their own specific ways. They show their shape, their texture, their softness, their scent. This is the beauty we see and sense. This is the magic of real things.
This reciprocity between objects and space is the foundation of a sense of place. The interplay of space and material is what creates presence in the world around us and touches all of our senses.
This all begins with a paradox. And architecture operates in this paradox. So architecture, too, can be difficult to talk about. But there is an undeniable sense that one gets upon entering certain spaces.
We often call it atmosphere, or vibe, or ambience, or mood, and our descriptions begin to fall apart here. We can’t quite pin it down, but we all know it intimately. It is a felt-sense that we all can share and, at its best, architecture presents us with just this kind of specificity. This is one of the many intriguing qualities of architecture. That it’s comprised of nothing yet it makes a place—it is essentially open space but it has the capacity to create this shared sense that we are specifically here.