James Corner: Intimacy VS Immensity

Exploration of the contrast of intimacy and immensity:

James Corner was infamous for his design of the High Line in New York.  defines landscape architecture as being ‘about the planning and design of space under the sky’ and uses the High Line as an example of how a perceived non-space can become a highly valued component of an urban landscape design:

"As a young person in school, I was really interested in an exercise called intimate immensity which still shapes the way I think today. Intimate immensity is what it’s like to be in a forest where things are immediate and intimate and tactile and intimate, but at the same time you are in the forest and the forest seems immense." - James Corner

This theme is a contrast I want to explore for the North Place design project because there is scope to create a series of spaces with different levels of seclusion. 

Why do we enjoy spaces that occupy the balance between intimacy and immensity? It goes back to the prehistoric man who sought shelter and a view outwards to see oncoming predators. An example of this is sitting under a tree, looking up at the branches with your back against the tree trunk. This feeling also relates to the concept of biophilic design as one feels intimately connected to nature. 

In his 1958 work The Poetics of Space, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard traces connections among the human consciousness, intimate spaces, and poetics—thus devising a philosophical approach for better understanding our thoughts, daydreams, and memories. 

For Bachelard, "immensity in the intimate domain is intensity, an intensity of being, the intensity of a being evolving in a vast perspective of intimate intensity. . . . When the dreamer really experiences the word immense, he sees himself liberated from his cares and thoughts . . ." As such, the poetic image that seeks to communicate the concept of immensity must be translated into a space easily recognized and embraced by our human psyche, which is in the intimacy of the home.

Intimate Immensity

MASS/SOLID VS VOID

Solid is a matter of presence, and Void is the absence of it. Architects also play with convex and concave forms, either invading the space or giving way to other elements. 

Architects mostly work with structural forms – the solids, and landscape architects work with the empty space in between buildings and that is the most meaningful cavity to explore and will affect all of its surroundings.