Sentences Designers Have Read: How to Build Space from Thought Before Form

A designer's work is the work of seeing the visible differently. That difference is not made by visual creativity alone. Only when we expand the gaze of thought and observation does a new form of design, made for the user, come into being. This piece introduces the books that became a solid foundation for the SPACEBASE designers. We share the books that expanded each designer's own way of seeing, and take time to retrace the attitude with which we look at space and the roots of design.

『The Meaning of Seeing』

Designer Kim Young-eun's Pick — How to Rearrange the Asymmetry of the Gaze

Image source: Kyobo Bookstore

“Seeing is an act of choice.”

\-John Berger, 『The Meaning of Seeing』

This sentence by John Berger tells us that every scene we look at is already the result of interpretation. This is also why designer Kim Young-eun has remembered this book for so long. In the process of planning a space, the following question naturally arises.

“In this space, whose gaze is placed at the center, and whose gaze is excluded?”

Through this lens, she says she has worked through ways to restructure hierarchical organizational structures, or to rearrange the gaze along user-centered circulation. She says that turning a structure centered on executive offices into a collaborative one, or creating a horizontal image of an organization, is likewise connected to the insight she gained from this book. Berger emphasizes that the gaze is never neutral. This book becomes an important point that helps a designer question the neutrality of the senses and place the user's gaze back at the center during the process of designing space.

『Books Are an Axe』

Designer Cho So-yoon's Pick — The Sense of Discovering Beauty Within Familiar Scenery

Image source: Book House

“In the end, what becomes the foundation of creativity and ideas is everyday life. The answer lies within the everyday. Everything is speaking to me. But most of the time we have no intention of listening. Yet if the willingness to listen arises, that person is a creative person.”

“I always think this. A creative person is not someone who sees the world anew, but someone who sees the world again. Someone who discovers unfamiliar beauty within familiar scenery, that is a truly creative person.”

_Park Woong-hyun, 『Books Are an Axe』

These are the sentences designer Cho So-yoon held most deeply in mind from this book. For her, to see again is less about forcing oneself to find some special inspiration, and closer to the work of discovering the beauty hidden within familiar scenery. She means an attitude of letting the gaze rest on the details of daily life, like the angle at which light seeps in, the sense of a surface revealed by the grain of a material, or the natural flow created by a person's movement.

She says that as each project changes, her perspective changes too, and there have been many moments when an unexpected idea surfaced in a space she had long looked at. So she has deliberately kept her eyes and ears open to her surroundings, observing and recording, and through that repetition her sense has grown a little firmer. Through this book, designer Cho So-yoon learned the gaze that discovers depth within ordinary things.

『The Thought of Le Corbusier』

Designer Do Geun-hee's Pick – Space That Begins with a Question, Before Form

Image source: Youlhwadang

“ One must make the effort to attend to the space of a place. This is the effort of being a Constructeur (builder). The builder is clearly a new profession that, for the art of construction, intimately connects both hands, the engineer's left hand and the architect's right hand, through a diligent dialogue. ”

_Le Corbusier, 『The Thought of Le Corbusier』

Designer Do Geun-hee says that before reading this book, she leaned more heavily on interpreting space around function and form. After reading this book by Le Corbusier, she says the attitude of seeing space as a single organic being, where human sense, light, and proportion come together, gradually widened.

That space is not a mere structure, but a device that adjusts and redefines the relationship between humans and their environment. Le Corbusier's perspective left designer Do Geun-hee “good design begins not with form but with a question” as her standard.

“Why must this space take this form?”

It became a book that engraved in her the meaning that this question is the starting point for determining the roots of design.

Design is not work done with the eyes alone. The time spent reading, recording, and reflecting adds depth to a designer's way of working. The sentences and experiences the SPACEBASE designers discovered in their respective books point in different directions, yet they gather into a single sense. The depth of their contemplation, the posture of observation that tries to see differently, completes the atmosphere of a space.

That design is not simply the work of making form, but the work of first refining the gaze and the attitude that make form possible. The SPACEBASE team believes that this time of contemplation determines the direction and density of space design, and they continue to expand their gaze through diverse texts going forward.

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