Space

Space, the final frontier. It’s all about the space now; outer space, inner space. Space, there seems to be plenty of it knocking around but we invariably can’t get our hands on enough of it to meet our needs.

We notice that the principal protagonists on our beloved home renovation shows no longer refer to rooms, they are called spaces. The judges on Super Garden no longer refer to gardens, these too are called spaces. Every space, it seems, needs to be explicitly referred to as a space whether it is inside or outside, large or small, spacious or otherwise.

We are lucky on this island, we have plenty of this thing, this much coveted space. So much in fact that we don’t know what to do with it. We look for ways to use it up, we build autonomous unconnected sprawling single storey buildings one after the other as far as the eye can see. Then we spend a small fortune on the compulsory tractor lawnmower to maintain oceans of grass we never needed in the first place but sowed because it’s the done thing when you have a population of around four million on an island this size and you’re just trying to fill it up, to give it that lived in look.

South Korea covers the same area as the island of Ireland. The only slight difference is that their population is 50 million. That’s right 50 million. How would we feel having twelve times less space to play with here? Can you imagine how would that change the rural housing dynamic, and more importantly official policy on it? Consider for a moment the practical impact of having 50 million people on the island, consider how flippant and complacent we currently are about our private and public space, consider how much more protective and precious that level of population would force us to be.

It’s all about the space and how we use it in every setting. Create space, lack of space, waste of space, space management, relationships between spaces, flow, manipulate movement by configuring a space in a particular way, what a great space. It’s all about the space; sizes of rooms, widths of hallways, distance between kitchen island and sink, proportions of the patio, size of the TV relative to the size of the room, open plan kitchen dining room and living room or just kitchen and dining, how big will that tree grow? Will it be too big for my garden? Terrorised by decisions over size, space, proportion, relativity, balance, composition, harmony, scale.

Pretty much everything we agonise over in 2016 is either related to the management of information or space.

Data and space. We are being pushed around by data and space. Everywhere we look we see information that needs to be corralled, marshalled, compartmentalised, secured. No location is secure enough, no filing system detailed enough, no flash drive or cloud spot is spacious enough to house the ever burgeoning collection.

The big box stores are packed every weekend. Packed with couples looking to unravel the mysteries that are coming between them and successful participation in modern life. The clues are there, we just need to hone our abilities to untangle them, to unearth the code that will open the gateway to happiness, or at least effective spatial and data management and isn’t that the same thing? The information is all there, it just needs to be unscrambled to make the right call on memory sticks, bistro sets and sectional sofas.