READING THE LANGUAGE OF SPACE

"Of course good architecture does not actually waste space" (Philip Johnson).

We often need space to tell us how to behave. In fact it creates settings, which organize our lives, activities and relationships. In good architecture space does this for us without our noticing, hence the possibility of joking that such space is wasted.

Great architects seem to be fluent in this language many probably without consciously studying it. It is as basic a tool of the trade for an architect as body language may be to an actor. The great Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger has shown an extraordinarily high awareness of the language of space, not only in his buildings but also through his writing.

He explained this by likening an architect to the famous detective who always solves the puzzle of which character committed the crime. In such novels the detective has no more information than the rest of us he sees what we see and hears what we hear but he has learnt to read the behavior and motivation behind the actions and words.

As Hertzberger says, the architect too must watch what people do. Yet sadly, all too often architects seem interested in buildings but not in their occupants. How often do the architectural journals even show people in the photographs?

 I find that undergraduate students of architecture come to university with a very wide range of expectations. Gradually during their studies many seem to learn to match their expectations about architecture with those of their tutors.

I’m enrolled at Hazara University focused entirely on buildings as social objects. I continued to wish to see them as social objects instead of physical objects. I’m learning about architecture not through the glossy pictures in books, instead by actually observing buildings being used. Consequently I grew impatience about studies hence It drove me to study psychology of subjects using a particular space.