What is a room?  A room is both exclusion and freedom.  A room is defined by what it keeps out, and at the same time, rooms afford action and bring about freedom.

“True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.”

– Mortimer J. Adler

Architecture shelters us from the harsh elements of the world and the dangerous beasts beyond.  Shelter makes space for human activity. We cannot do everything we want in the wilderness, so architecture was born. The primary building block of architecture is the room, and the primary elements of a room are floors, ceilings, and walls; the most important of which is the wall. A building can be a single room, and rooms can subdivide interior space. In both instances, rooms allow space to be useful through separation.  Rooms keep things out, and in so doing give us freedom.  Within a room we are free to cook in a rainstorm, sleep in a forest full of wild animals, or think apart from the din of other human activity. 

A home keeps out neighbors, burglars, and bears.  A bedroom keeps out siblings, sounds from the living room, and smells from the kitchen.  An art gallery keeps out damaging sunlight and thieves.  A classroom keeps out everyone who is not a child of a specific age range, or an educator.  An office keeps out anyone who isn’t an employee or a guest of the company.  A private study keeps out distractions.  A tree house with a child-sized entry keeps out adults.

The word room comes from the Proto-Indo-European word reue, which means “to open; space.”  Rooms are places that give us the flexibility of use by making space.  Through the exclusionary nature of walls, rooms allow space for our actions and our thoughts. 

Rooms express a sense of place, they are where we dwell, and they are settings for our social interactions, including conversations, shared meals, and group endeavors.  All communities and social groups are inherently exclusionary; rooms for specific purposes keep out those who do not belong.  A church or a synagogue excludes non-believers and those who would otherwise distract from their functions.  Personal rooms are extensions of ourselves, and shared rooms are extensions of shared values and beliefs. There exist constricting rooms that reduce our freedom; but there are two sides to this coin.  Rooms should allow us to be free and to think freely even when they are full of other people.

When we think about rooms, we see them as additive things, wherein we add elements and objects to create space.  Perhaps, instead, we should see the creation of rooms as a subtractive exercise.  The world exists, and by building a room we remove things from the world, or at least we remove things from our perception of the world.  In designing a room, we should consider what things we exclude as attentively as we consider what things we include. 

People rarely notice architecture; what they notice, and remember, are the people in the space and the interactions they have with those people.  Which things should be excluded from a room to afford specific actions and interactions?  How can the exclusions of a room produce certain mental states?  If we are at home in nature, then we should start from this place of wholeness and subtract elements away rather than the other way around.  Biophilia should not be an additive and synthetic process, it should start from nature and then remove in order to shape our activities and mental states in a space.

It is said that windows are often the right size in ordinary buildings, but in architecture the windows are either too large or too small. Our awareness is drawn to the inclusion or exclusion of a thing when it is dramatized. The exclusions of rooms should be expressed. People in space need to understand where a room has intentionally diverged from convention and from reality.  It is important that the things excluded from a room be considered alongside the freedoms it is intended to afford.

The removal of things brings us freedom.  Simplicity makes space in our minds.  Rooms are places where we can relax, be ourselves, and dream.