You were different. Not only did you refuse to give up the problem of space, you actually foregrounded it. Why do you cling so tightly to the notion of space? BT: For the same reason that a fish would not question water. I believe certain components to be irreducible from architecture: space, event, and movement. My ambition, even in the theoretical work, has always been architecture. To remove the question of space eliminates the possibility of architecture. Excerpt from Screenplays: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
JK: To take up the problem of space in architecture requires an acute sense of what constitutes and what constructs architectural space. Do you consciously work to develop this acuity? If so, what are the mechanisms you employ? BT: Of course! It is crucial to develop this sense. Perhaps the best method is to visit the great buildings in history and analyze their spatial configurations and variations. Clearly this is not always possible, so one must also hone an ability to analyze drawings and photographs.
Excerpt from Screenplays: James Whale’s Frankenstein
After you have done this for some time, you may begin to speculate that there are only so many moves to be made, that all the possible configurations of walls, floors, and ceilings have been exhausted. This thinking leads to the suspicious realm of typology. Typology relies on reduction: subtle differences are ignored in order to reinforce overt similarities. I would advise all of you to be on guard against this tendency. For in those differences that typology erases, those subtle contingencies of materiality and light, of movement and space, we might uncover entirely new possibilities for architecture—possibilities that refuse to conform to established typologies.
17