The undefinable space of architecture (original) (raw)
2011, Conference: Theory for the Sake of the Theory: ARCHTHEO '11
It’s a possible assumption that today at the most of the architectural schools the concept of space is built as an anachronistic and quasi-homogeneous element. Especially through architectural history lessons and architectural design studios, the concept of space is being established with only traces of certain periods of the history of Western thought disregarding its complex and obscure nature. It’s also thought-provoking that in an educational system, introducing space as one of the integral parts of the discipline, there is a huge ambiguity and recklessness about the history and nature of the concept of space. It can be argued that after the intensive interest of architects to the concept of space between 1890-1970 and finally after the stabilization of the concept as a key stone of architecture, the discipline has begun to shift out of the spatial studies (excluding ‘place’ theories between 1970-1990). Although space has become the dominant paradigm particularly in social sciences with the spatial turn after 1980s, it seems like that this socio-political transition of the concept of space has not so much affected the architectural theory deep inside its epistemology. Herein it may play a role that in a Cartesian/capitalist direction matured and freezed epistemology of space of the architectural practice, which has to take part directly in the market being used by whether public or private sector as an economic/politic regulatory, is not exactly corresponding to the spatial approaches which were shifted from aesthetic to social, building critical thinking in subjects like social injustice or bio-politics and hence organizing directly or indirectly resistance against present power and political institutions. In order to trace the way how the concept of space positions itself inside the epistemology of architecture and how this position configurates the discipline, it must be asserted first that space is a historical (1980s) and spatial (Germany) early modern concept diffused into the discipline of architecture rather than being an essential part inherent to it. Therefore the concept of space in architecture has to be read as a historical phenomenon within Western history and in relation with modernity.
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