Space
Prior to 1890 space does not exist in the architectural vocabulary Since the 18 th century volumes and voids are in use, with the occasional use of space as synonym for void (Sir John Soane) Uses of the term today are many, partly because of the philosophical concept being confused with physical experience It is a thing in the world and simultaneously a mental construct through which the mind knows the world Henri Lefebvre s The Production of Space (1974) aimed to clarify this but is still not sufficiently understood/used today (Adrian Forty, Space, in: Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture)
The development of space as an architectural term took place in Germany In German: Raum means room (enclosure) as well as general space Space depends on its definitions and its historical contexts: it does not mean the same in the 1920s and 1990s
The preconditions of modernist architectural space The use of the term first developed in philosophical aesthetics. Two traditions in Germany: 1 Creation of architectural theory out of philosophy (Gottfried Semper) 2 Psychological approach to aesthetics (derived from Immanuel Kant s philosophy) 1 Gottfried Semper, German architect and theorist introduced space as the principal theme of modern architecture He is the first one not to refer to the architectural orders in doing so He proposed that the first impulse of architecture is to enclose space Space creation is the future of architecture for Semper (his idea probably derived from Hegel, for whom in enclosure lies architecture s purposiveness) Enclosure existed as an idea among German architects in the 1840s but no one proposed it as the fundamental property of architecture like Semper
On the proto-modern architects of the early 20 th century, Semper was the direct influence (Adolf Loos, H.P. Berlage) All these architects saw space as a matter of enclosure Adolf Loos H.P. Berlage
A further influence was the Viennese architect Camillo Sitte, City Planning According to Artistic Principles (1889) Urban design is an art of space (Raumkunst) He transposed the notion of spatial enclosure to the architectural exterior, not just interior This means that space doesn t belong just inside buildings but outside this was influential on the modernists of the 1920s
2 Theory of aesthetic perception The philosopher Immanuel Kant key figure: space is a property of the mind Only in the 1870s, with the development of the empathy theory, something was made of this Robert Vischer saw empathy (projection of bodily sensation) as a means of interpreting the meaning of form Another important philosophical strand: Friedrich Nietzsche He divided all cultural practice into two strands: Apollonian realisation of images presented to the mind in dreams and Dyonisian the intoxication experienced in song and dance The Apollonian principle provided pleasure in appearance, vision, while the Dyonisian involved the whole body The superfluity of force, as expressed through rhythmic dance, is enacted in space, which, in turn, is animated by that activity Space: a force field generated by the dynamism of bodily movement
In 1893 three important essays appear independently of each other: The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts by the sculptor Adolf Hildebrand The process of the perception of things in the world reveals inherent themes in sculpture, painting, architecture; the idea of form appears here, emphasising movement of the eye and the body He suggested three ideas important for the 1920s: space itself is the subject matter of art; it is a continuum; it is animated from within
The Essence of Architectural Creation by August Schmarsow Like Hildebrand, he denied that the aesthetic of architecture lay in its material components But proposes a different conception of space, derived from the theory of empathy: in perceiving things the mind projects into them its knowledge of bodily sensations Theory of empathy before him was applied to solids he applies it to space The history of architecture is the history of the sense of space
Raumaesthetik und Geometrisch-Optische Taeuschungen by Theodor Lipps Also concerned with empathy but he is more interested in space as a way of visualising the inner life of matter His ideas were less directly architectural All three had direct influence on the Jugendstil architects Victor Horta, Hotel Tassel
By 1900 the conceptions of space are various, developed to answer particular questions: 1 to describe the original motive of architecture 2 to describe the cause of aesthetic perception in architecture 3 to satisfy the expectation of 19 th century art theory that works of art reveal movement
From space to spatiality Around 1900: the incorporation of some of these ideas into the language of architecture August Endell, Munich, 1908 Rudolf Schindler, 1913 To architects, Schmarsow s ideas were least interesting but in the field of historical thinking they were the most influential Between 1900 and 1914, a productive period within the history of architecture: Alois Riegl and Paul Frankl
Riegl, Problems of Style (1893) and Late Roman Art and Industry (1901) Ways of seeing manifest in art in the antiquity didn t depend on purpose, material, technique, but on sense of spatiality If our ability to interpret the material world has followed a historical progression, it is to be found in the built architectural space This implied that modernity if indeed it was novel was to be accompanied by a new spatial perception
Frankl, Principles of Architectural History (1914) Analysed space in Renaissance and post-renaissance architecture, following Schmarsow and Riegel in assuming that space is the essential subject in the history of architecture He distinguished between additive space and spatial division in these two periods By doing this he lost space as an effect of the mind and only focused on the geometric space found in buildings
Built space By 1920 space established in the architectural vocabulary but there is little built work to show architecture is about space, not materials Berlage, Behrens, Loos (before 1914) none spatial at that time The only one Frank Lloyd Wright but he uses the term space only in 1928 Wright, Dana House
1920s see many and various efforts to realise architecture as an art of space This means that the vocabulary was in place before the work The development of space in modernist architecture is an outcome of other processes as well but the term space and spatiality offered a focus for developing a specifically modernist architecture The term also offered a non-metaphorical category for talking about architecture
1920-1930 a multiplicity of meanings of space produced, broadly reducible to three different senses: 1 Space as enclosure came from Semper s definition and was developed by Berlage and Behrens. This was the most common understanding. Adolf Loos s Raumplan, used to describe his interiors in the 1920s, belongs to this group 2 Space as continuum inside and outside are continuous important for the Dutch De Stijl group and Bauhaus around Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitsky 3 Space as extension of the body developed from Schmarsow space is a continuous force field activated by the body s movement Moholy-Nagy gave a very sophisticated synthesis of these in The New Vision in 1928
Mies van der Rohe s writing in 1933 illustrates the use of space The problem is how to be modern, and space was the concept offering this in the sense of living in the present, free of constraints of history, which translated into free movement of the subject, the unfolding of life, but also the rejection of historical massiveness, materiality It also offered the eradication of symbolism The Barcelona Pavillion and Tugendhat House both broke in 1929 into this new territory Space, for Mies, is the essence of architecture, but of modern architecture specifically
In English the term was adopted very slowly Siegfried Giedion s Space, Time and Architecture in 1940 significant enormously wide readership in the English-speaking world By the 1950s and 60s space is an integral part of the architectural discourse In 1972 Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown in Learning from Las Vegas state that space has become the most tyrannical aspect of architecture 1970s and 1980s lessen the importance of space in the postmodern architecture and the approach to space is deliberately ambiguous and unambitious
The discourse of space was kept alive throughout the 80s and 90s in reaction to the linguistic models of architecture Bernard Tschumi and Bill Hillier illustrate this In 1975 Bernard Tschumi s first essay proclaims that the architectural object is not pure language and architecture a manipulation of the grammar and syntax of architectural sign He recognised quickly that space is not just an experience but also a concept The exploration of this paradox preoccupied him in the coming years; his thinking owed a great deal to his familiarity with the work of Henri Lefebvre
Bill Hillier, architectural morphologist developed a syntax of space It was his reaction to the use of linguistic models in the architectural discourse Architecture is defined by spatial configurations, not physical matter The paradigm of architecture is a configuration paradigm. This is still derived from the idea that the only valid theories of architecture are those taken from what is unique to architecture and space is still seen to be so
Heidegger and Lefebvre The limits of specifically architectural notions of space become evident when looking at major works of philosophy in the twentieth century Martin Heidegger: space is neither a property of the mind (Kant) nor extant prior to one s being in the world. There is no space independently of one s being in it. Space cannot be known independently from things, but only by their relation to other things In Building, Dwelling, Thinking (1952) he discusses these ideas with relation to building Buildings never shape pure space; Space ( that for which room has been made ) can only occur in an already existing locale Accordingly, spaces receive their essential being from locales and not from space
This distinction between space as contingent upon objects and being (and lacks boundaries) and space as mathematical abstraction that can be plotted by co-ordinates and has boundaries defined externally, is fundamental to Heidegger s definition His approach contradicts most notions developed 1890-1930: he abolished quantifiable aspects but also bodily resonance (empathy, Schmarsow) He was later critiqued regarding the body s own spatiality by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
His influence on architecture became evident in the 1960s: Place superseded space in some accounts; and the idea that space is unmeasurable and non-quantifiable is still on the agenda today More influential on architecture were the books by Christian Norberg- Schulz and Gaston Bachelard
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (1974) is the first and only comprehensive critique of space which also attempts a general theory of it It called into question everything prior to it Space: mind thinks it, but does so within a space which is conceptual as well as physical, an embodiment of social relations and ideology He discusses the relationship between the space produced by thought and the space within which the thought happens The separation between the two he sees as a characteristic of modernity
Important category: social space It is what the cultural life of a society takes place within It is simultaneously work and product a materialisation of social being Societies secrete space Modern societies reduce the complex space, which is simultaneously perceived (through the social relations of everyday life), conceived (by thought) and lived (as bodily experience), to an abstraction Lefebvre s project: to regain consciousness of social space
He drew a distinction between architectural space and the space of architects The former produces social space, through experience The latter is the manipulation of space affected by architects in their professional practice and the discourse in which that activity takes place All disciplines are involved with space, architecture has no more right to it than any other No individual discipline is capable of giving a satisfactory account of social space - each will render it into an abstraction appropriate to its own purposes
1 Space that an architect encounters is not neutral (as in Euclidian geometry): it has already been produced This space has nothing innocent about it: it answers to particular tactics and strategies; it is, quite simply, the space of the dominant mode of production, and hence the space of capitalism. Lefebvre 2 Architects do not operate in the condition of pure freedom since they are constituted through the space in which they live 3 The apparatus employed (drawing technique, etc.) is not transparent, neutral, but itself part of the discourse of power; drawing is one of the primary means of turning social space into an abstraction 4 Drawing techniques, as well as the practice in general, privilege the eye above other senses; image and spectacle take the place of reality (characteristic of modern capitalism) 5 Architecture, in modernism in particular, partly responsible for making space appear homogenous ( the reduction of the real to a plan )
Underlying the critique of the space of architects is Lefebvre s critique of abstract space Abstract space is the form in which social space was rendered by capitalism It separates mental space from lived space, which alienates human subjects not just from the results of their labour but from the experience of everyday life Abstract space - constructed by philosophy and the sciences is formulated in the head before being projected onto social and physical reality - resulting in the consciousness of space coming through its representations, not its lived experience Modernist architects are particularly guilty of this: architects and city-planners offered - and an ideology in action - an empty space, a space that is primordial, a container ready to receive fragmentary contents, a neutral medium into which disjointed things, people and habitats might be introduced Lefebvre
Lefebvre s critique sets him apart from all the other discussions of space that preceded him Social practice is an extension of the body - but it is also specific to the production of space in time (it is historical) Both Heidegger and Lefebvre showed that the space architects talk about was not general, but specific to their practice and its purposes At the same time, space is part of a dominant discourse of power in modern capitalist societies