As a Designer, I sense Space around us is extremely the “Key” .
Space around us in every day life, means “living” and movements for human; this is why many psychologists believe we born in a space around us and we leave the space when we are gone!
The first step in Design path is to learn and understand the space being; this means, considering the placing of buildings next to each other or observing the placement or hight of windows in interiors, the way placing the furnitures make us move or sit and the distance between our selves and other furnitures.
The second and significant step is using the space around us to build our needs and design our wants. There are many example here which can be written to communicate what I am trying to send through but the most obvious one to me is the design of chairs or stools. In past chairs had shorter legs because human’s body was shorter so they did not need or want to have high chairs or standard size chairs as we have today. If you go to historical museums you can see old chairs where they look like toys in our eyes but believe it or not, real people used and sat on them.
We as humans, can communicate strongly with “shapes” and “scales”. Shapes and Scales are the two main elements in any design process where the process develops a realistic and understandable result. While sketching or model making, elements can stay close, far, in perspective, next to each other or equally spaced. Placing things or even a line on a paper can communicate and have different meanings every time when it is placed in a way.
When a Line is drawn on a paper, it has length, direction and location. A sketch of a Line can end up to length and width and it will become a shape. A Shape will have a volume and space around it. Can you understand how one simple line can become something realistic and the space around a shape is actually a major part of the shape itself?
Understanding the elements of design might seems confusing but it is actually very simple and needs practice. Even a point or a dot can have many meanings; it can be two ends of a line, the intersection of two lines, the connection of corner of shapes or even it can be a centre of a shape.
I am sure after reading this article you will feel and look at the space around you differently and this is how you can imagine and design ideally. Good luck !
