The Concept of Space in Architecture : Emergence, Hegemony and Transcendence
Patrik Schumacher, London 2008
To be published in: O.P.4 Editrice Compositori, Bologna, Italy 2008

Abstract:
The self-conception of architecture as being concerned with the making of spaceemerged at the turn of the century, came into prominence with the advent of the modern movement during the 1920s, and for most architects still counts as the most essential definition of architecture. For the current avant-garde the concept of space has lost its lustre. Contemporary avant-garde architecture is operating with new concepts, logics and methods that are no longer captured by the idea of space-making.

The Emergence of Architectural Space

Space seems to be the essential goal of the architect. His task is to configure space, to shape space, the formation of urban and architectural space. Architecture is the art of space-making. This is perhaps the most compelling summary definition of architecture, the seemingly self-evident self-conception of the discipline.
However, this was not always the case, and no longer holds with respect to the most advanced ideas within contemporary avant-garde architecture.

The concept of space entered architectural discourse at the end of the 19th Century, via art history and aesthetic theory[1], and made indeed a decisive contribution to the progressive advancement of architecture,
The art historian August Schmarsow was perhaps the first to explicitly insist that space (“Raum”) is the essence of architectural creation. He talked about “Raumkunst” – the art of space – and interpreted the history of architecture – in Hegelian fashion – as the progressive unfolding of man’s feeling for space (“Raumgefuehl”).
Prior to this “discovery” of space architecture was concerned with the design of definite buildings that followed a small set of strictly predefined stereotypes: churches, palaces and villas, each fixed with its function, form, tectonic order, symmetry, proportional system and detail motifs. In the world of classical architecture there was no need for the discourse to descend to the deep level of abstraction that is implied in the concept of space.
The initial intellectual impetus for the art historians of space was given by Kant’s striking idea that the Euclidian logic of space – alongside a series of other fundamental principles like time, substance, cause and effect which together seem to structure the external world  -  derives its inviolate universality from the constitution of the perceiving/experiencing subject and therefore cannot be attributed to the world itself. Hegel followed to inquire into the origin of the subject and historisized its constitution via the notion of the “spirit of the age”. This in turn inspired the attempt by arthistorians to identify this unfolding spirit/subject in the various époques of artistic expression. This meant that architectural phenomena were to be understood in very general, abstract terms that could manifest the spirit on this broad level of abstraction. Each époque could now be identified with a particular sense of space.
As a principle of historical explanation this back-projection of the newly discovered abstract category of architectural space is rather implausible.[2] As a principle of historical orientation with an eye towards future ambitions it was rather influential, and references to space rapidly took root within architectural thinking. But intellectual influences are never sufficient to account for radical transformations within the self-conceptions of a (practice-oriented) discipline like architecture.
Besides this intellectual impetus there was also a strong practical impetus to push this new, deep level of abstraction into architectural thinking.
The socio-economic development of the 19th Century produced an explosion of divers building tasks: office buildings, apartment blocks, department stores, hospitals, museums, railway stations, factories etc. The classical repertoire and theory  – oriented towards churches and palaces –  was overstretched. More general, abstract notions and principles about how to compose volumes and arrange functions were required.
The concept of space that became available from art-history could facilitate these requirements of a generalized, abstract approach and discourse (without loosing the elevated academic tone of a principled and idealizing mission). The traditional straight-jacket of tightly predefined building types was torn off and replaced by a free game of composition  - the open-ended disposition of planes and volumes in space –  that was much more versatile and adaptive to the varied demands of the emerging industrial/metropolitan civilization. Soon the divers architectural results had at least one thing in common – they were shaping space.
This abstraction initially implies very little and offers no foothold for architectural theory until different sensibilities and types of space can be distinguished. This initial abstractness/vagueness is an important liberating force. What is the universe of possibilities opened up and constrained by the new task: configure space?

A whole new series of distinctions is called for and indeed has been called forth by this theoretical move: For instance the distinction between open, free-flowing space vs closed, bounded space, inviting architecture to take a stance. The emerging modernism made its choice on the side of free-flowing space. Space can be compressed and expanded, articulated or smooth. The concept of space also gives opportunity to import distinctions like isotropic vs an-isotropic space and to give them an architectural meaning. Space is thus not a mere abstraction, but opens a new conceptual field, a new perspective about how to think and design in architecture.

Sometimes such conceptual mutations  - like this introduction of space into architecture -  catch fire quite quickly and thus become innovations that can be build upon. They strike a cord, suddenly unblock and give expression to slumbering tendencies that leap at this opportunity and claim these new concepts for their development  - often quite against the original intentions of those who first introduced the new term. New terms are rather fluid and always up for grabs. They engage in creative co-evolution with emerging practices. They might help to solve a lot of stored up problems suppressed by the previous paradigm - that suddenly collapses like a house of cards. This was also the case with the introduction of space into architecture The historicist canon of building types ran up against the proliferating diversity of construction tasks which could not be subsumed under the classical canon imposing a closed set of building types. A lot of construction had gone “underground” during the final years of classical architecture and remained outside of architecture proper. “Space” soon took all this hidden and despised non-architecture (engineering structures) under its wings and took off, charging forth with all this pent up energy. Space opened up a whole new domain and trajectory of exploration.

The Hegemony of Architectural Space

This fertile notion of space became the key category within the self-descriptions of modern architecture. The related design method of “free” composition  - the open-ended disposition of planes and volumes in space –  became naturalized as the prerogative of the creative architect. To take such creative liberties would have seemed to be an unheard of audacity for any old school classical architect. Now this liberty was to be taken for granted.
The liberated canvass of abstract art was enlisted in this exploration. Abstract art was indeed breaking through to the idea of free composition and free construction in space even before architecture did so. In this respect modern architecture also depends upon the revolution within the visual arts  - painting and sculpture - that finally shook off the burden of representation at the dawn of the new century. Modern architecture was able to build upon the trail-blazing of modern abstract art as the conquest of a previously unimaginable realm of constructive freedom. Hitherto art was understood as mimesis and the reiteration of given sujets, i.e. re-presentation rather than creation. Architecture was equally the re-presentation of a fixed set of minutely determined typologies and complete tectonic systems. Against this backdrop abstraction meant the possibility and challenge of free creation. The canvas became the field of an original construction. To take this step  - that now nearly seems trivial[3]  -  was indeed a monumental break-through with enormous consequences for the whole of modern civilisation. Through figures such as Malevitsch and vanguard groups such as the DeStijl movement this exhilarating historical moment was captured and exploited for the world of experimental architecture.

This new discourse and practice of space-making had reached its full blown potential in the modern movement of the 1920s, pushed and aided as well by the new construction technologies of reinforced concrete and steel that allowed the classical proportions and symmetries of safe and balanced stone construction to be cast aside. The power of these new possibilities of conquering space had already been demonstrated outside of architecture proper, in the amazing engineering structures of the late 19th and early 20th century, like bridges and railway halls etc. Now these possibilities were claimed for architecture and its space-making mission. The most striking and paradigmatic projects of this early modernist architectural “space-age” were manifesto projects that remained unbuilt: Leonidov’s Lenin Library and  El Lissitzky’s Sky-hooks a.o. There are also paradigmatic built projects that fully demonstrate the principle of dynamic equilibrium compositions: Rietfeld’s House Schroeder and Mies’s Barcelona Pavilion a.o. give shape and rhythm to abstract, free-flowing space.

The abstractness of space constitutes an invitation for unconstrained creativity. But we should also pay attention to the more specific thrust of this particular abstraction: space. It shifts the focus from the solid building that needs to be constructed to the void that can be filled with activities. It was no accident that the concept of space came hand in hand with functionalism. Adolph Behne’s seminal 1923 book “The Modern Functional Building” displays the following progression of chapters:

1. No longer a Façade / but a House
2. No longer a House / but Shaped Space
3. No longer Shaped Space / but Designed Reality

In the final chapter Behne is calling for “the optimum functional articulation of the proposed living space” and insists that “architecture is no more than a fixed and visible structure of the final organisation of every movement, every occupation, every purpose and use of the building”.[4]
The new technologies of steel and reinforced concrete also played their part in the shift of focus from the solid mass that needs to be constructed to the space of activities. These new technologies constitute a veritable dematerialization of architecture if compared with the massive, solid stone constructions of the classical age. (Architectural drawings are no longer to be filled with the thick poche of stone designs.) That the focus of attention should shift from the solid to the void makes sense in a situation where the question of what needs to be built can no longer be simply answered by reverence to a fixed, predefined building type.
This shift of focus from solids to voids implies the shift of attention from the particular tectonic elements that need to be constructed to the prior question about the activities that need to be organised and shaped. It also focuses attention upon the experiencing subject. The subject of modern architecture is a subject that has to navigate the dense urban environments of an industrial civilization. This subject is not just placed in front of a single, easily recognized monument. The concept of space allows architecture to take the position of the modern subject that is thrown into a much more complex scene where multiple buildings are arranged into ever-changing constellations without any guarantee of forming easily recognized wholes. To avoid descend into pure chaos, new ordering principles have to be conceived that are able to absorb and structure more complexity with more versatility. Notions like rhythm or dynamic equilibrium are helping to characterize such constellations and turn them into modern spatial compositions.

 

The Transcendence of Architectural Space

Once the notion of space has been established it is possible to go back to describe traditional architecture in terms of space and recognize that traditional space is tightly bound space, at all scales, from the walled city to the segmentation of buildings into discreet rooms. Perhaps the most important aspect to consider in relation to different concepts of space is the primary ordering principle that is implied with each respective concept of space. This question of order directly connects to the vital issue of orientation.
Apart from the simple orientation via monumental landmarks, traditional spatial orientation has been operating primarily on the basis of relations of containment  -  the Russian doll principle of nesting domains. Spatial position is defined as series of relations of containments: continent, country, region, city, district, neighborhood, estate, building, floor, apartment, room. Each domain has a clear boundary and is fully contained within a larger domain with an equally crisp boundary. This is how you know where you are at any time. A change of position implies the crossing of a boundary. Orientation is traditionally further supported if the domains can be identified with easily recognizable platonic/geometric figures like circles, squares or rectangles. It should be obvious that the scope of this system of ordering is limited. A sense of order could only be maintained by denying the realities of modern life.
Modern architecture enhanced the capacity of spatial ordering via a number of new devices: the urban grid, the series, the principle of articulation (specializing separation)[5], and the compositional trope of dynamic equilibrium (balanced asymmetry). Space is no longer tightly contained in buildings and rooms within buildings. The articulated volumes project into space and their interior becomes porous. Space flows continuously from inside to outside. However, this space is still shaped by compositions. Compositions are constituted from no more than a “hand full” of simple, discrete volumes. No matter how free the relative size, the proportions and the relative disposition of those volumes – compositions remain constrained by these two crucial limitations: each element is a discrete (usually cubic) volume, and the number of elements is very much restricted, usually 3 – 5 and mostly not more than 7. Above this number the human cognition demands chunking  - like one does when trying to remember telephone numbers. In terms of modern architectural composition chunking translates into the hierarchical build up of the composition in a small number of composed groups of volumes (clusters) in turn containing a number of composed sub-volumes. The difference to classical arrangements is that these clusters are not fixed into strict relations of nesting, proportion and symmetry. However, a restriction to an orthogonal system of disposition remains.
Modern architecture shapes space via composing volumes and planes in space. Space flows through and so does the modern subject. His trajectory has been ordered by the rules of composition outlined above. These rules offered sufficient scope to absorb and structure the exigencies of modern industrial society. But society did not stand still since 1920. The first 50 years the construction of modern space could proceed on a massive scale without encountering the need for a qualitative shift. Since the late 1960s the underlying socio-economic dynamic changed.[6] On the back of a secured material base, during the 1970s and 1980s, a marked increase in life-style ambitions and diversifications implied a quest for rapid cycles of innovation, and attendant fluidity of work relations, which in turn implied a surge in the complexity of ordering required from both urbanism and architecture. The modernist method of “freely” composed space started to show signs of being over-burdened. Space finally lost its progressive force after about 80 years of hegemony.
The reactive post-modern scavenging into the treasure house of historical motifs was short-lived, and driven out by a neo-rationalist and minimalist counter-currents.  With Minimalism, once more, a sense of order can only be maintained on the basis of a radical reductionism that is antithetical to the realities of contemporary life. The complexity-barrier remains. This contradiction can only be surmounted by an ordering system that can structure more complex arrangements. As long as there is only this one simple system of order this contradiction leads us to one of two equally untenable reactions: On the one hand this predicament leads to the fallacy of minimalism craving for an artificial simplicity, and on the other hand to the fetishistic embrace of disorder as in the celebration of Tokyo’s visual chaos. Deconstructivism took on the challenge to express the contemporary complexity but was not able to build up a sufficiently powerful ordering capacity.

From Space to Field

A radically different, alternative mode of ordering and orientation is afforded by the concept of field, and the principles of the continuously differentiated field. The field we are thinking about is not the field of agriculture, although a corn-field might take on field-qualitities in our sense when a helicopter is approaching to land and the corn is beautifully animated by the air-turbulence. The concept of field in contemporary avant-garde architecture rather has the following two primary sources of inspiration: the field concept from modern physics, especially in reference to electro-magnetic fields on the one hand and the concept of field from the psychology of perception, especially Gestalt-psychology, where field is juxtaposed to object as the diffuse background or substrate from which the process of perception extracts the object (figure) that focuses the subject’s attention at any time.
Space is conceived as empty and isotropic, like an unstructured vacuum. Fields are full, as if filled with a fluid medium. We might think of liquids in motion, structured by radiating waves, laminal flows, and spiraling eddies. Swarms of birds or shoals of fish[7] have also served as paradigmatic analogues for the field-concept that the contemporary avant-garde is trying to bring into architecture. Dense, moving crowds of people constitute an example that is directly engaging with architecture, literally creating temporary architectural fields that are arguably more significant to the event in question than the shape of the framing space. The vocabulary and conceptual schemata we require to describe the dynamic order and formation of these kinds of crowds are precisely those we need to build the conceptual apparatus that will supersede the concept of space in architecture.
But instead of limiting us to describe crowds moving through space we would like to think of swarms of buildings that drift across the landscape. Or we might think of large continuous interiors like open office landscapes or big exhibition halls of the kind used for trade fairs. Such interiors are visually infinitely deep and contain swarms of partitions, swarms of desks and swarms of light fixtures. The roof over such an interior might be held up by a forest of columns or by the infinite thicket of a continuous space-frame. In each case the constitution and order of the territory is no longer composed of a small number of parts, but by an uncountable mass of particles. (“From parts to particles[8]” has been one of the key slogans of the mid-nineties.) This is one of the key characteristics of working with fields. One has to handle so many elements that any attempt to pay attention or track all or any individual element in particular is utterly hopeless. With respect to compositions and the spaces that they shape every individual element matters, is noticed and carefully placed into the overall balance. With fields only the global and regional field qualities matter. Elements become effective only as they amass, coalesce and accumulate to create emergent field effects: biases, drifts, gradients, and perhaps even conspicuous singularities like radiating centres. But any such feature is a result of a rule-based accumulation of much smaller features and therefore always subject to gradual emergence and disappearance. There are no discrete entities with sharp outlines. Here figures and domains need not sustain platonic simplicity. Their deformation does no longer spell the break down of order but the lawful inscription of information. Figures/domains do not have to remain neatly separated because we have developed lawful rules of mutual inflection, and lawful rules of gradual transformation.
Orientation in a complex, lawfully differentiated field affords navigation along vectors of transformation – for instance a morphing trajectory -  rather than snapping from position to position via boundary crossings.  Field-qualities usually co-exist with other reference systems – even in the case of the most ambitious avant-garde projects.
In the extreme case of a territory based on pure field conditions named landmarks, bounded domains, and shaped space would have disappeared and orientation would have to rely fully on the navigation of lawfully modulated field qualities like density, directionality, agitation in the field etc. There would be no nameable locations to refer to, and no specific place could be named as destiny of the journey. Instead the lawfully changing vectors of transformation – like increasing density - would afford orienting inferences and anticipations. The destiny would be a desired field-quality rather than a specific place. The contemporary condition of arriving in a metropolis for the first time without prior hotel arrangements, without a map (and with meetings scheduled only for the following day) might instigate this kind of field-navigation. The gradual build up of the degree of urbanity will lead you to shops and restaurants. To allow oneself to be pulled by such vectors of transformation affords a very efficient form of navigation  - as long as there is no need to find a specific address/place. To move through such a field would be akin to being thrown into a deep forest where trees have no name and where thickets and clearings emerge and fade gradually, and where topographic features are translated and accentuated by shifts in vegetation.
This navigation on the basis of field-qualities operates with the same navigational logic that guides nomads across the wilderness. (In this sense it also makes sense to speak of urban nomads). Deleuze and Guattari[9] have been describing this logic in relation to their distinction between smooth and striated space. Striated space is the space of architecture, plotted out between stable reference points and dissected by boundary lines. Smooth space is equivalent to the nomads’ field of exploration. Here everything is structured via intensities like climatic gradients, and shifts in vegetation. Here the lines or trajectories of movement  - following the vectors of intensity/transformation – are prior to any moments/points that might be encountered on these paths. This logic overturns the logic of space where lines (of movement) can only be defined on the basis of prior fixed points.

There are many projects within the oevre of Zaha Hadid Architects that are pursuing this thesis. Here I would like to illustrate one urban and one architectural project:
The Master-plan for One North, an urban science and business park in Singapore, deploys an elastic grid that squeezes and stretches in adaptation to topographic conditions and in response to incisions that radiate and ripple through the net. The vertical extrusions that are developed from this grid further amplify the lawful and continuous differentiation of the field. The resulting urban fabric distributes intense field qualities: directionality, density, grain, and light-intensity.

The Central Building for the new BMW factory in Leipzig operates as a field of flow. The constructed components  - the walls, the roof-trusses and roof-beams – are strongly directed, in line with the primary orientation of the building. Everything is structured by lines of flow.The Central Building is the active nerve- centre or brain of the whole factory complex. All threads of the building’s activities gather together and branch out again from here.This planning strategy applies to the cycles and trajectories of people  -  workers (arriving in the morning and returning for lunch) and visitors -  as well as for the cycle and progress of the production line which traverses this central point - departing and returning again.
This dynamic focal point of the enterprise is made visually evident in the proposed dynamic spatial system that encompasses the whole northern front of the factory and articulates the central building as the point of confluence and culmination of the various converging flows.
It seems as if the whole expanse of this side of the factory is oriented and animated by a force field emanating from the central building. All movement converging on the site is funnelled through this compression chamber squeezed inbetween the three main segments of production: Body in White, Paint Shop and Assembly.
The fertile and pliant formalism of flow lines has been pursuit obsessively. Every system was forced to contribute to the intricate play of bundling, diverging and converging trajectories: structure, partitions, circulation, lighting, conveyors etc. All are treated as if they were under the spell of a powerful force-field. The field displays its own typical correlations between structure, infra-structure, movement and natural light. Collectively they create architectural field effects that are crafted to accommodate and orient the movement and communication processes that represent the essential purpose of the building.