3.1
Space as a Product of Bodily Movement
The experience of containment for every individual starts with the womb, and already there must be some haptic sense of being carried about, perhaps even some awareness of mother’s direction of walk; certainly of whether she is active or resting. The womb is the first centre of the child’s world; birth the first crossing of a threshold. Thereafter, mother’s embrace and her breast become centre, then the bed, the room, the house, the settlement or village, gradually discovered from the centre outwards as a nesting series. This idea of centre versus periphery is essential to human beings and basic for architecture, reflected in indigenous buildings throughout the world. The temporary Aborigine shelter was semicircular, centred on the small fire that kept everyone warm in the desert night.1 The Mongolian yurt and the Native American tipi (Figures 3.1.1 and 3.1.2) are circular buildings, again with a fire at the centre, both also with altars to connect with the powers above: the tipi with a square of bare earth to connect with powers below.2 When Native Americans came together in celebration, they would pitch their tipis in a circle, usually in clan order and with some medicine tipis for spirit contacts placed within the ring (Figure 3.1.3).3 The camp therefore had a protected centre of social space, while beyond the ring was the wild, the uncontrolled.
When the child starts to crawl, he or she creates a linear path, moving towards or away from things, and confronting other people. This is the beginning of an essential linear principle to complement the central one. The shared path out of the door of the yurt or tipi is the child’s introduction to the outside world, but it also changes the space within, generating an implied axis. The place opposite the door is presented most directly to the incoming visitor, and so becomes the place of honour, where the head of the family and honoured guest take their seats. In addition, with both examples, although they come from different continents, the internal space is gender divided, men on the right and women on the left in the case of the tipi, the reverse with the yurt.4 An order of seniority may also be observed, increasing towards the place of honour. Social relationships and hierarchies take many forms, but nearly always carry spatial implications.5 The axis made by the door is usually also orientated so that the dwelling’s entrance faces the rising sun, though there may also be reason to avoid the prevailing wind or, in a communal settlement, to face the centre. But awareness of direction is crucial, as it relates the house and village to world and cosmos; to sun, moon and stars.
Figure 3.1.3 Plan of a Cheyenne camp: north is top. The numbers 1–10 designate the position of different tribal divisions, A and B the religious lodges of the Medicine Arrows and Buffalo Cap, respectively
Source: After Grinnell 2008 [1923]
For hunter-gatherers, paths are needed, which become the starting point for roads: shared paths. Landmarks are necessary for finding one’s way and one’s way back, and so awareness of the topography is essential. Passes between hills and places to cross rivers are especially memorable, as are springs and water holes at which one can quench one’s thirst, or places with fruit trees or trees used as medicines, places good for game and places risky because of predators. Only with high densities of walkers is a permanent road generated merely by footsteps, and so, on a thinly populated continent, the way demands more subtle definition, moving from landmark to landmark, perhaps taking advantage of animal trails. But even with as sparse a population as constituted by the Australian Aborigines before European arrival, there was a complete network of known paths right across the continent, which allowed peaceful relation with others, respecting their rights and practices and intermarrying with them.6
The space of action
The central principle, the linear one, or both, are needed to define a space of action. As the child is never alone, this is social from the start and may begin with observations of the comings and goings of others and gestures of greeting and eye contact. As consciousness grows, so does the awareness of the relationships between people’s bodies and the paths they routinely take. In the tipi, for example, people were expected to move in a clockwise direction, and there was a particular order to be respected in the passing around of the pipe of peace.7 The choreography of activities matched the organisation of space, each supporting the other. To put it another way, the space was accompanied by implict rules about its use as understood and enacted by the users. Such rules did not need to be declared explicitly, for they could be learned through observation, but persons charged with the laying out of space (in this case, the setting up of the tent) had to know them.
The relationship between space and social choreography has not ceased in modern societies, but it is more complex and difficult to trace and, therefore, perhaps most clearly visible under the most marginal of conditions. The game of hopscotch, for example, is constantly rediscovered in different forms by children across the world. It needs a pitch marked on the ground, against which your footsteps and my footsteps can be measured.8 When we play it together, we recognise that we share knowledge of the rules, and, if it is my first time, I have just learned them from you. In this case, the defined space has just served as a demon -stration, a temporary bearer of knowledge about how space is organised for this purpose. All kinds of game and sport need marked out spaces, as defined by rules of play, and the scale is easily changed, as evinced by chess and chequers. The higher the social status of the game, the more pedantically rules tend to be enacted and space defined, but even children walking home from school can invent a football pitch by marking the goals with their coats and bags, which shows the presence of the shared idea.
At the opposite end of the scale – the most definite and defined – is the Greek open-air theatre. That at Epidaurus is among the most enduring demonstrations of a multitude gathering around the few and, thus, of the central principle (Figure 3.1.4). Roundness tends to suggest togetherness and implies equal participation, which is why we talk about round-table discussions, King Arthur’s knights sat at the mythical round table, and the medieval chapter house was round or polygonal.9 Conversely, when a long, rectangular table is used for a meeting, the chairperson tends to occupy the end, which we customarily call the head of table, and this gives him or her added status. In the patriarchal Alpine farmhouse, the father of the family traditionally sat at the end next to God’s corner (the Herrgottswinkel or Coin du Bon Dieu), distributing food down the table, with the women on the left and men on the right, in order of age and seniority, and servants at the bottom (Figure 3.1.5).10 Kings, queens and judges preside in the highest seat, on axis at the end of the hall, which seems to be a universal, cross-cultural instance of hierarchy respecting the linear principle (Figure 3.1.6).11 The Chinese emperor in his audience hall, sitting at the centre of the forbidden city and at the culmination of the south–north axis, is an extreme example, following the central principle as well as the linear one, as he is also enfolded in many layers of walls and gates.
If, after millennia, Epidaurus exemplifies togetherness, it is sobering to reflect that its construction post-dated the golden age of Greek drama by several centuries, confirming an already long-established tradition. Monuments often have this consolidating and memorialising role and can catalyse the reactivation of the events for which they were intended. So, at
