How to Compose Space: Things and Architect Should Know

The most fundamental role of an architect is to design space and organize rooms.

Central Space
Space can be organized around a central point. The Villa Rotunda by Palladio is a good example of central space. The rotunda serves as the key organizational element around which smaller rooms are designed.

Linear Space
Linear space organizes space along a line or path. This has a person move through the space to understand it. An early example of this is Greek Agora which were a series of shops in a marketplace.

Radial Space
Radial space starts with a central point but moves out from it. Frank Lloyd Wright used a pinwheel composition in many of his works. Mies van der Rohe’s Country Brick House Project show space radiating out into infinite space.

Clustered Space
Clustered space is a grouping of several spaces that are grouped together by proximity or a common identity. A type of clustered space is additive space where it appears volumes of space have been added to each other.

Grids
A grid can be used as an organizational tool for space. Space can be regulated by a two- or three-dimensional grid.

Overlapping Space
Spaces can overlap creating complex compositions of space. This was used in church design such as the Hagia Sophia in Turkey.

Space in a Space
Space can be enclosed in a larger space. In Renzo Piano’s Academy of Sciences building, he puts balls in a box. The spherical spaces are enclosed by the larger square space.

Subtractive space
A space can be subtracted from another space or from a mass. We often see this in Italian Mannerist architecture, where a space seems to be removed from a wall or a larger mass.

Penetrating Space
One space can penetrate another. This was often done in church design of the Renaissance. Here space doesn’t just overlay another, but has movement both visual and physically.

All these spatial concepts can be combined in multiple ways to provide infinite spatial compositions.