Attraction to small spaces
I’m attracted to small spaces, maybe because I’m tall. If I have to consciously move my body to avoid bumping into a wall or a pendant lamp, I’m forced to engage the space as an object rather than as a backdrop. My interactions with really small spaces have been limited though- I ride a subway every day, but that’s not so small, just crowded. I love sitting right near the kitchen at Momofuko across from someone I like, our hands splayed on the ash countertops as we wait for our soup; especially when it’s cold outside and the kitchen’s damp warmth is drawn as a gradient towards the door. The bowls of soup are huge here though, and again, the space wouldn’t be so small if it weren’t packed with eating people every night
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So maybe physical smallness isn’t what gets me. Small spaces are somewhere between environment and product: they’re designed to be used instead of just inhabited and convey a specific, deliberate set of meanings. The smallness I love so much in a space might then be the small number of different ways it could be interpreted due to the richness and completeness of the world it creates.
Physical smallness is dear to me though; it moves me like dull unfinished materials, simple geometric handles, atonality, distortion, the flash of pain from hot wax. There’s a tendency among product designers to make things as easy as possible, to analyze how humans behave and then design things that tiptoe around that behavior without touching or constricting it.
The people who design womens’ shoes understand this- while they might not try to make these gorgeous specimins uncomfortable, the feeling of the leather pinching and abrading your flesh and the marks that this treatment leaves are a strong component of their appeal.
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