The Space Within: Interior Experience as the Origin of Architecture - Hardcover

McCarter, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1780236603 ISBN 13: 9781780236605

Publisher: Reaktion Books, 2016

Synopsis

Alvar Aalto once argued that what mattered in architecture wasn’t what a building looks like on the day it opens but what it is like to live inside it thirty years later. In this book, architect and critic Robert McCarter persuasively argues that interior spatial experience is the necessary starting point for design, and the quality of that experience is the only appropriate means of evaluating a work after it has been built.
            McCarter reveals that we can’t really know a piece of architecture without inhabiting its spaces, and we need to counter our contemporary obsession with exterior views and forms with a renewed appreciation for interiors. He explores how interior space has been integral to the development of modern architecture from the late 1800s to today, and he examines how architects have engaged interior space and its experiences in their design processes, fundamentally transforming traditional approaches to composition. Eloquently placing us within a host of interior spaces, he opens up new ways of thinking about architecture and what its goals are and should be.
 

About this title

About the Author:

Robert McCarter is a practicing architect and the Ruth and Norman Moore Professor of Architecture in the Sam Fox School of Art and Design at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of many books, including Frank Lloyd Wright, also published by Reaktion Books.

Review:

“Inhabitation is the soul of architecture. This important and thoughtful book is one of the very first to discuss the primal nature of the interior experience, which we believe is the place where design begins. The Space Within initiates a conversation that is essential to all who study, practice, and think about architecture.”
  (Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, architects)

“A succinct, erudite study of the experiential qualities and meanings of interior space. Using his unique knowledge of the design work, writings and thinking of the masters of modernity, Robert McCarter shows that the geniuses of architecture have always grasped the experiential and mental essence of their art form. The Space Within is highly recommended as a significant antidote to today’s formalist aestheticization and shallow digital ecstasy.”
  (Juhani Pallasmaa, architect and author of The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses)

“Ever entered a building and been captivated by the quality, layout, and use of the interior space? How it directs you along the path you need to travel? How it makes you feel as though you are in a space designed for your enjoyment? McCarter persuasively argues that this consideration is the necessary starting point in design. He insists that one cannot know an architectural design without inhabiting its spaces. To support this position, the author delves into the process used by various designers and examines how they have engaged with interior space and the experiences it can provide. McCarter focuses on modern architecture throughout the world, examining familiar buildings by renowned architects. Highly recommended.” (Choice)

About this edition

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1780236603
• ISBN 13: 9781780236605
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 176