Language of Space

Bryan Lawson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781136389320
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

This unique guide provides a systematic overview of the idea of architectural space. Bryan Lawson provides an ideal introduction to the topic, breaking down the complex and abstract terms used by many design theoreticians when writing about architectural space. Instead, our everyday knowledge is reintroduced to the language of design. Design values of 'space' are challenged and informed to stimulate a new theoretical and practical approach to design.This book views architectural and urban spaces as psychological, social and partly cultural phenomena. They accommodate, separate, structure, facilitate, heighten and even celebrate human spatial behaviour.

1 Space as language

The physical environment that we construct is as much a social phenomenon as it is a physical one.

Harold Proshansky

Architecture is the art of how to waste space.

Philip Johnson, New York Times

Why a language?

It is well known that communicating by telephone is different to communicating ‘face to face’. More recently we have had to learn to communicate by fax and by e-mail. It is now well recognized that all the new artificial and technologically supported media of communication have their strengths and weaknesses. All are useful when we are not co-located, and some are useful when we want to communicate asynchronously. I use e-mail extensively every day of my life, and could now hardly do my job without it. However, if we have to tell someone difficult, unpleasant or perhaps even tragic news, you and I know that e-mail is not ideal! What distinguishes all the other methods of communication from live conversation is that the latter takes place in space. The very phrase ‘face to face’ is implicitly makes reference to space. It tells us how people are arranged in space. They are not ‘back to back’, because they actually want to see each other's faces! This is very basic stuff. Unfortunately, it is so fundamental that we often forget about it when designing spaces. At the moment I am sitting in front of my computer writing this book. Well actually no, from your point of view, that was some time ago, because you are now sitting I know not where, reading it many months if not years later! I can assure you that although the text on your page looks continuous, the writing was not. I have re-ordered it, re-phrased it, and re-worked it many times. But more importantly I am forced to use a style of language I would never use ‘face to face’. At times I also lecture about this subject to large groups. On such occasions I use yet another style and begin to interact with my audience a little, albeit in a rather formal way. I assure you I would far rather be able to sit down in space and talk to you ‘face to face’ about this subject than write this book, for then I could see your expression and know when I am either losing you or labouring my point.

Not all behaviour in space involves conversation, but much of our behaviour in space involves communication in some way or other. If truth were told, throughout our lives we probably communicate far more through space than we do with formal language. When we walk into a room, others are reading this spatial language long before we speak. What we wear, how we smell, the manner of our walk, our facial expression, where we choose to sit, the way other people look at us and acknowledge us.

We use the language of space, then, for many purposes. Through it we can express both our individuality and our solidarity with others. We can indicate our values and lifestyles, allegiances and dislikes. We can use it to help generate feelings of excitement or calm. We can communicate our willingness or otherwise to be approached, interrupted, greeted and engaged in social intercourse. We can control the proximity of others. We can demonstrate our dominance or submission and our status in society. We can use it to bring people together or keep them apart. We can use it to convey complex collections of rules of acceptable behaviour. We can also use it on occasion to signal our intention to break those rules!

So throughout this book I have likened our behaviour in space to a language. Of course, we often behave in space to some particular purpose, such as shopping, playing sport, moving from room to room. On other occasions we are less purposeful, as when strolling, relaxing in an armchair and even taking a nap! However directed and purposeful our behaviour it also communicates, whether we intend it to or not. Even when we are not there, spaces that belong to us or come under our control still communicate through the way we have laid them out and decorated them. This language of space is a global one, since many of its roots can be found in fundamental characteristics of the human race. Whilst Mandarin, English and Spanish are spoken by many millions of people in many countries, the language of space is truly international. And yet the advanced student of this language can often recognize where someone comes from by careful observation, since the language of space has regional dialects that comprise important features of local cultures.

The art of architecture

Wherever you find people gathered together collectively inhabiting some part of our world you will also find rules governing their use of space. Some of these rules may be purely a matter of local social convention, but many are a reflection of both the deep-seated needs of our psyche and of the characteristics of human beings. In our modern world most of the spaces we use have been designed for us professionally by architects, urban designers, interior designers and their ilk. It was of course not always so, nor is it so now in all societies. Before professionalism, the design and creation of space was a more social and vernacular process seamlessly integrated with all other aspects of a culture. However, if you are reading this book then it is highly unlikely that you now live in such a society. In our sort of world, space has also become a matter of economics, of technology and of art.

Many design theoreticians and critics write about architectural space as if it were some entirely abstract substance. They discuss such ideas as form, proportion, rhythm and colour as if they were parts of a private language used by designers and design critics. Through such criticism, architecture and the spaces it divides and encloses become seen as a refined art to be appreciated by the educated connoisseur. This is of course an entirely understandable and reasonable position. It is possible to argue that there is a distinction to be drawn between architecture and mere building. If we accept this position, then buildings can probably only become architecture once they exhibit characteristics that we might also use to identify art. This takes us into very difficult territory beyond the scope of this book, since commonly accepted definitions of art are rather difficult to come by. Somewhat cynically, Marshall McLuhan suggested that art is ‘anything you can get away with’, and some contemporary artists do seem to be trying pretty hard to live up to this challenge! However, a test of whether something is art as opposed simply to craft must surely demand some element of expression. The prolific architectural historian Nicolas Pevsner not only explicitly drew such a distinction, but he also took up a more extreme position by denying that architectural qualities could be attached to humble structures:

A bicycle shed is a building; Lincoln cathedral is architecture.

The philosopher Wittgenstein, who became very interested in architecture, was surely making a similar point:

Where there is nothing to glorify there can be no architecture.

An excellent and very concise discussion of this problem of architecture as art and its relation to meaning can be found in Nelson Goodman's discussion of philosophical positions on art (Goodman and Elgin 1988):

A building is a work of art only insofar as it signifies, means, refers, symbolizes in some way.

We could of course move from here into a debate about architecture as a system of signs and symbols. The post-modern period has produced much analysis of architecture on this basis, and such arguments are most often predicated on the fundamental notion that buildings can be read as texts. Often such analysis depends heavily on the supposed use of reference within the building to other architectural precedents or ideas. Although we shall deal later with the idea of buildings expressing ideas beyond their simple purpose, that is not the primary purpose of this particular book.

The social art

In this book we shall use a rather different interpretation, which is both more pragmatic and behavioural and social. Of course buildings can be seen in many different ways – they can, for example, be viewed as works of art, as technical achievements, as the wallpaper of urban space and as behavioural and cultural phenomena. Primarily this book will treat architectural and urban spaces as containers to accommodate, separate, structure and organize, facilitate, heighten and even celebrate human spatial behaviour. In so much as they do that, they will also be viewed as psychological, social and partly cultural phenomena. This does not mean that the author only regards them that way. One of the intriguing and endlessly fascinating things about the study of architecture is that one may come at it from so many different angles. Some authors, and regrettably very many architects, will try to have you believe that their perspective is somehow right and superior to all others. This is not new; Pugin claimed his ‘gothic’ architecture to be the only truly Christian one (Pugin, 1841). Gropius thought his new architecture to be ethically necessary (Gropius 1935), and James Stirling had a deep conviction of the ‘moral rightness’ of the path he followed (Stirling 1965). That path was at the time one of modernism, although by the time he died Stirling's work was viewed by critics as ‘post-modern’!

Some commentators have argued that modernism inevitably led architects away from their consumers. Whilst there may be some truth in this argument, the curious paradox remains that along with its stylistic outcome in the International Style, modernism had its roots deeply interconnected with social intentions, if not even Socialism. However, Jenks in particular invented and defended post-modernism on the grounds that it was more readable by the general public (Jenks 1977). Whether this is really true has hardly been tested.

However, recent studies have shown empirically what many have thought intuitively. Architects as a group think about architecture in a distinctly different way to the rest of humanity. This is not surprising, since all professional groups begin to develop highly sensitized and specialized ways of both conceptualizing and evaluating the work in their field. They develop jargon as shorthand for some of these concepts, and communicate in ways that make it difficult for outsiders to penetrate. One study has shown, for example, that town planners quite clearly use different values about architecture to the public they serve (Hubbard 1996). The difficulty we have here is that planners are supposed to protect the public from wilful architects, who in turn present themselves as designing for society at large rather than just their clients! Architects have also defended their professional status on the grounds that they champion the quality of the environment on behalf of all of us. This seems to be the main justification for the Act of Parliament in the UK, recently revised, which legally protects the title of ‘architect’. Wilson has, however, shown that, in spite of much rhetoric to the contrary, architects do indeed seem to use quite different evaluative systems to others (Wilson 1996). She has also shown that this tendency is significantly acquired during higher education, and that there is a strong correlation between the architectural preferences expressed by students within a school of architecture. Depressingly, her data also show these preferences to be strongly linked to stylistic attributes. This suggests that even now schools of architecture knowingly or otherwise still teach architectural style!

I have tried throughout this book not to take such a stance. Of course I too have my stylistic preferences and my weaknesses for some periods of history, particular architects and certain building materials. However, I have tried not to present any of these as somehow endowed with special value or having a fundamental rightness. This treatise then, like all others I have ever read about architecture, is extremely limited! It presents one way of looking at the forms and spaces that comprise architecture. It views them not as abstractions but as expressions of ourselves. It explores the deep needs and compulsions we feel, which frequently we are unable to express in more explicit and conventional language. Indeed, it views our behaviour in space and the architecture that contains it as part of a vital language that is central to human communication. Consequently, this book does not only look at our relationship with architecture but at the way architecture mediates our relationships with each other. Harold Proshansky, one of the pioneers of environmental psychology, is quoted at the top of this chapter expressing the view that buildings are as much a social as a physical phenomenon (Proshansky, Ittleson and Rivlin 1970). Tom Markus, in his fascinating treatise on ‘buildings and power’, takes an even firmer view of this (Markus 1993):

I take the stand that buildings are not primarily art, technical or investment objects, but social objects.

Of course, places are often very complex in terms of the opportunities they afford us for analysis. Two people visiting the same place at different times in their lives may be able to extract quite different character from it. In their study of how boys perceive places as they grow, Malinowski and Thurber show a consistent developmental trend that may seem intuitively reasonable, but has been rather neglected by scientific investigation. This shows that very young boys probably appreciate places in terms of who they associate with them. As they grow older they come to value them for the activities located there, and eventually to see them aesthetically (Malinowski and Thurber 1996). Thus, as they summarize it, the lake may initially be a place to swim, but later a place to see a beautiful sunset. In recent years, my wife and I have been lucky enough to stay on a very small island in the South China Sea (Plate 1). To me these occasions offer good company, wonderful swimming and snorkelling, exotic wildlife, and a hot and sunny climate with stunning sunsets every night. Sadly our very presence there to some extent also encourages a tiny nascent industry that ultimately could threaten the coral reefs around the island and the rain forest on it, and thus the whole ecology of the place ultimately hangs in the balance. Therefore, what few native inhabitants there are, environmental scientists, economists and many other groups will no doubt ‘see’ this place differently to me. For them it may stand for quite different things. Indeed I might see it differently were I forced to live there indefinitely rather than visit occasionally. However for me, and for now, this is as near to paradise on earth as I have found!

The language of space

Space, and consequently that which encloses it, are much more central to all of us in our everyday lives than purely technical, aesthetic or even semiotic interpretation would suggest. Space is both that which brings us together and simultaneously that which separates us from each other. It is thus crucial to the way our relationships work. Space is the essential stuff of a very fundamental and universal form of communication. The human language of space, whilst it has its cultural variations, can be observed all over the world wherever and whenever people come together. In particular in this book we are interested in the space created in and around architecture. Architecture organizes and structures space for us, and its interiors and the objects enclosing and inhabiting its rooms can facilitate or inhibit our activities by the way they use this language. Because this language is not heard or seen directly, and certainly not written down, it gets little attention in a formal sense. However, we all make use of it throughout all of our lives as we move about in space and relate ourselves to others. Perhaps we tend only to notice this language when it is in some way abused.

When a person pushes in front of you in a queue, you feel offended not just because you are one place further back but also because they failed to respect the rules (Fig. 1.1). In most situations where we queue there are almost token signals from the physical environment that we should behave in this highly artificial way. The rope barriers sometimes used to form queues in public places are hardly able to contain a crowd physically, and yet without them the crowd wou...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgement
• 1 Space as language
• 2 Space and the human dimension
• 3 Mechanisms of perceiving space
• 4 Ways of perceiving space
• 5 Space and distance
• 6 Proxemics
• 7 The territory
• 8 Space and time
• 9 Recording space
• Bibliography
• Index