Ma(間)of Space, in-betweenness
Pavilion on Teshima Island, Japan —March 2024
When I was in architecture school I always admired Japanese architecture – it felt expansive, the ways certain building codes and laws allowed for things that weren’t allowed in North American architecture. While I loved the European references that were shown to me in history class, I never got the same feeling. It wasn’t until I heard about this lecture last year on this concept of “Ma of Space” that I fully understood why Japanese architecture has this unexplainable energy about it.
Ma(間) of Space which was explained as space left between the notes in music. I’m really interested in etymology because it shows how the meaning of a word is embedded into the language. Ma combines door 門 and sun 日. Together these two characters depict a door through the crevice of which the sunlight peeps in 間. And this character is the same in Chinese, the term in which we use to describe “time” = 時間. Translating to time-space. So even the characters to communicate time include space. How zen.
In the “Ma of Space” lecture, architect Toshihiro Oki explained that one of the partners that he worked with at SANAA, Nishisawa said architecture in the west is like a noun - solid, monumental, permanent whereas architecture in the east is like a verb - flexible, impermanent, light. Perhaps this is also because of the reality of earthquakes in Japan so the relationship you have with the land is literally unstable. And as a result, perhaps eastern architecture is more in tune with nature since it has to move with it. And the shrines that were built so long ago exist within nature, around it - respecting it. We build with nature rather than trying to control or destroy it.
It always felt so strange to me that in architecture school we idolized so much western architecture…and now that I’ve been to Asia I understand why I felt so spiritually and architecturally impacted there. Being Chinese Canadian is a feeling of being in between 2 worlds and now I can see the strength in merging these worlds in a new way to make something new and shed some awareness to building in harmony with our environment. We are nature and oftentimes we forget this…in my experience spending prolonged time in nature brings us back to our ancestral bodies and helps tune ourselves back to the pace that our bodies truly desire.
Brush collection with a slide showing an entrance court to a restaurant in Kyoto. The textures on the ground call for attention and presence.
This past weekend I attended a class on Japanese brush calligraphy. The class was called “On the Veranda: The way of brush(Shodo)”. Going in with an open mind, I was excited to learn more about technique, philosophy, and mindfulness. What I got out of the class was so much more. The class was led by Hirokazu Kosaka, who was born in Japan and was a Shingon Buddhist priest, a master of the art of Japanese archery — moved to America to study art and is now the artist in residence for the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center. What a life!
Installation pavilion by Sejima in Inujima Island, Japan —March 2024
The first half was a lecture on space. Or rather the space in between. And in his interpretation of that, it is spaces like verandas, similar to ink, it’s the shades of grey - infinite possibilities of maybes is like a veranda. This in-between space is similar to Ma of Space. To me, it’s like being in the space of meditation. Hyper presence, really in our body experiencing, and noticing. It is a space where you are free, free to not think, to feel textures, witness nature, and sounds. This in-between feeling has always been with me even as a child. It’s the space of awe, wonder, of just pure delight. In the moment sitting there in the art room, I felt this major sense of home, of alignment and peace. I feel really grateful I get to merge my inner world and outer world together in this way and being able to grasp now fully how that might look like. I want to create spaces that make people pause in this way, to create spaces that are like meditations…and that to me is a lifelong practice that is expansive and worth exploring!