ABSTRACT
In Japanese, ‘design’ is madori (間取り), ‘grasping space’. The following
attempts to do just that, to grasp what ‘space’ means when seen through the
prism of another language. The exegesis of the term and its cognates employs
a twofold ‘methodology’: it locates them in the context of writings on art and
architecture; and uses what might be called ‘an etymological archaeology’,
digging beneath the surface of the pictographic content of the Chinese
characters (kanji ) that ‘represent’ the terms. These two exegetical strategies
reveal nuances of meaning missing in the one-for-one equivalences given in
dictionaries, and uncover ways of seeing and thinking architectural space that
differ fundamentally from those structured by the English language.
