ROOM AND BOUNDARY

A reflection on the concept of space, its overall role, what the concept means, how it can be categorized, its parameters, systematics and examples.

 The purpose of this discussion is to find the spatial properties that affect the experience of the physical environment and how it affects us. I try to learn a way to see and interpret the surroundings so that they become available for ideas for improvements. By discovering universally valid parameters, it is my hope that it is possible to form a language for the understanding of spaces at all levels. Through this language, I hope that one can formulate existing contexts to uncover inherent possibilities for refinement.

Throughout this idea, environments that we experience on a daily basis are addressed. Nothing about this is new. We all know the things that will be mentioned.

Space, time and context have structural similarities that allow them to be partially understood through each other. In the Swedish language, the same words are often used in the different domains of space, time and context. Example: take place, inside, outside, home, away, fit in, exclude, fix, stop, move, turn, straight, small, big, long, short, before, after, delimit, etc.

 The room itself can be regarded as the fundamental element of architecture. I once heard a lecturer say that the architect's job is to divide rooms. At the time, I thought it sounded poor and too simple. Later I realize that it is true.

Admittedly, there are also other sides to the profession, but the central part of the subject concerns the room.

Space is an intangible phenomenon. Walls, floors and ceilings are not in themselves the goal of architecture, but they are means to define the space. Space cannot exist without something else that separates a piece of space from the rest. Rooms are everywhere, in all sizes. They are more or less detached, dissolved, dynamic or transient. As we move from one room to another, we change our physical context. We experience continuity through our memories and expectations that the world we experience in the former room still exists when we abandon it and enter the next. We have a learned expectation that we can come back to it again at any time. However, we are only in one room at a time. Our senses are limited to a selection of rooms – the primary room and secondary rooms. The primary space is the one that most closely encloses us, the one that is in direct contact. The secondary rooms are adjoining rooms that can be heard, seen, or otherwise witnessed.

To quantify rooms and to measure rooms.

In order to analyse spaces, it needs to be possible to describe their properties objectively. There are different ways to measure them: the dimensions in different directions in all dimensions, the areas of the different boundary surfaces and the volume of the room. The proportions of the room can be calculated. It is also possible to set measurements of boundary depth, boundary density, the size of the resolution of borders or fine-grainedness. Distance to borders beginning. Space and its boundaries can be united as a unit. An example of this could be being in a forest glade surrounded by spruce forest. Boundary distance is the distance from where you stand to the beginning of the trees. The boundary depth is how far it is possible to see through the forest between the trees until it stops. A boundary with depth is at the same time a secondary space in relation to the viewer as long as there is some distance to the boundary’s beginning. When the viewer has moved in the boundary, in this case out of the clearing and into the middle of the land of the spruce trees, this becomes the new primary room and the clearing a secondary space until one has moved so far away that it is completely obscured behind vegetation. Then the distance to the clearing is greater than the boundary depth in that direction.

Another example is being in the middle of a pine forest. There, the boundary depth is much greater than for a spruce forest. There is also the primary room and boundary in one. Forest landscapes typically have a high degree of homogeneous spatiality that is similar in direction and position. Urban landscapes on the other hand, often have a heterogeneous spatiality that differs in direction and position.

All measurements apply to their direction. They vary in all directions. The parameters of the room apply both locally, i.e. based on a viewer's position. They also describe a room based on its entirety, i.e. how is the room regardless of the viewer's position.