Sunday 4 October 2009

Space

When I started reading the David Harvey text on 'Space as a key word', I started to examine my initial interpretation of how I understood space.
I looked around my office and asked myself to define the space that surrounded me. The space could only be defined by the elements in the room that the spaces related too. The walls creating the container I occupy, the desk and cupboards, defining the small, dark cramped space of my office. Space has an existence but it is not until we relate objects to one another that we can grasp the concept of this existence. This seems to be explored within the text as material space, “…simply the world of tactile and sensual interaction with matter, it is the space of experience” (D.Harvey)

“Architecture is the thoughtful making of space” Louis Kahn

I then read on to explore Harvey’s deeper interpretation of space. How he sees space become a concept better connected too Social, Literary and cultural metatheaories.
He examines how space and space-time in different key words allowed him to define certain conditions of possibilities for critical engagement.

Architecture‘s relationship to space come hand in hand. Yet how architecture responds to space can be somewhat different, some buildings are seen as objects within a space, others become the shapers of space, like suburban buildings in relation to the urban.

“Our Experience of an architectural space is strongly influenced by how we arrive in it.”(Mathew Frederick)

The key point of Harvey’s text on space that inspired me was his general matrix of spatialities. How space becomes more than just material but also conceptual and lived, and how these different terminologies relate to absolute space and space in time, may it be relative or relational. I guess before now I had never really explored the idea of how space exists in time, and yet now that is all my mind wants to explore. How I never pondered over the concept that space-time is a constant feature in my vivid imaginations, my emotions and fears, and especially in my intricate dreams is now something my mind is constantly exploring.