Form of the Space in Between Objects

Through our daily lifes, space is nothing more than a cartesian plane, where we operate our lives. The objects we use, or even our body as object, operates through this plateau. Nevertheless, this referential is more than just a relational medium for objects. Through Bruce Nauman’s The Cast of the Space Under My Chair, we want to rethink space not as emptiness of forms, but as the form itself. As a methodology, we propose the juxtaposition between two works, Skyspace Seldon Seen by James Turrell and Houghton Hut by Rachel Whiteread, both as references in space. In James Turrell we find the classical approach of spatial representation, the habitable technical object, the architectural archetype, the space-delimiting membrane. In Whiteread we find exactly the opposite, space treated as a technical object itself, a clear result of crystallized space and visible only through intervention, a memory, a monument. This now uninhabitable archetype encapsulates the form that was imperceptible as an object of its inner space. In the process of analysing the two works, the fundamental research basis is to address the questions of how form generates space or, on the other hand, how space can generate a form. In other words, to conduct a dialogue between the disciplines of Architecture and Design, clarifying the ergonomic relationship between the two ways of generating space.