By Father Myron J Pereira
The three most difficult things to design, said the German architect, Mies van der Rohe, are — a chair, a stair, and a public square.
Having sat in chairs of every variety all my life, climbed stairs of every description, and observed the sad decline of public spaces in urban India, I can heartily agree.
Furniture, buildings, city grids — each of these is an attempt to use space to communicate. Yes, space communicates, as much as words, sounds, and images. Perhaps more, in ways we often take for granted.
Physical space
At one level communicative spaces are physical spaces created by architects, city planners, landscape designers, and others with the purpose of providing settings for people to interact.
Such settings and locations make specific assumptions about people’s needs. They are culture-bound and have a symbolic dimension.
An Indian bazaar and an American supermarket are both places where people go to buy food, but there is absolutely no comparison between the noisy, odiferous ambiance of the one and the pastel-toned, squeaky-cleanliness of the other.
Religious architecture, for example, provides real and symbolic spaces for people’s communal worship of God and interaction with each other.
Churches, mosques, and temples thus have a specific function, and express a particular cultural tradition. A sacred grove, a belfry, a rock garden, a dome a colonnade — each architectural expression molds space to a dynamic peculiar to itself.
In his study, The New Landscape, architect Charles Correa observes that urban living involves much more than the occupancy of a set of rooms. The room, the cell is only one component in a whole system of spaces that people use. And this system is hierarchical.
In India, for example, Correa argues there are four levels of spaces. Firstly, the space needed by the family for its exclusive use, such as cooking, sleeping, storage, and so forth.
Secondly, the areas of intimate familial contact, such as the front doorstep where the children play, and where you chat with your neighbor. Both these areas of “communicative space” are private and restricted. They are a kind of “womanspace” to which strangers have no access.
At a third level are the neighborhood meeting places, the village well, or the friendly paan shop where you become part of your community.
Finally, the principal urban area, the “manspace” — the maidan, the riverside ghat, and the public forum. These are not for unaccompanied women or children.
All public spaces reveal a hierarchical order, the struggle to seize the “high ground.”
In medieval cities, ethnicity and caste were determining factors; in modern cities, the battle is between pedestrians and motorists, between the urban middle-class ensconced in their tidy cottages or their ‘gated communities,’ and the migrants dwelling in slums and basties, between avaricious builders and the ecologically aware.
Communicative space is related to power.
Psychic space
At another level, communicative space is spiritual, or psychic, if you will. It is “in here” at the very same time as it is “out there.”
Space is to the eye what the pause is to the ear — the background which allows us to focus. It is more than visual; however, it is tactile as well.
Space is for touching, caressing, intruding, and possessing. In this sense, space is defined by closure — or more precisely, by enclosure. We build walls, rooms, and bridges, not as solids but as hollows, to enclose what we would like to possess. To keep “the other” out. To reach out and draw within. To create a sense of belonging, and ownership. To deepen a way of understanding.
In this sense, everyone has a personal space that needs to be acknowledged and respected. The sharper one’s sense of individuality, the larger one’s personal space.
How does such space communicate? Not by actively doing, but by allowing to get done, by providing a receptacle, an ambiance for creativity. Most of the time we are hectic doers, never at rest until every deed is done, and every place is filled.
It takes a while to realize that in human communication, listening is more important than speaking, receiving than giving, spacing out than filling in. This is the interval of rest, the emptiness, and the silence filled with good vibrations.
Spiritual writers call it “the place of the heart.”
“Any fool knows the difference between wise talk and silly chatter,” goes the Zen saying, “but only the Master knows the difference between wise silence and foolish silence.”
Communicative space is the area of friendship, intimacy, and prayer. – UCA News
*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
