Battle Lines: E.1027

Beatriz Colomina


What the word for space, Raum, Rum, designates is said by its ancient meaning. Raum means a place cleared or freed for settlement and lodging. A space is something that has been made room for, something that is cleared and free, namely within a boundary, Greek peras.

A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing. That is why the concept is that of horismos, that is, the horizon, the boundary. Space is in essence that for which room has been made, that which is let into its bounds.

Martin Heidegger, "Building Dwelling Thinking," Poetry, Language, Thought trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1971)