Residual Space

Definition

Venturi's term for the space left over between dominant spaces and their enclosures — the space between detached linings, layers, and perimeters — analyzed in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966, ch. "The Inside and the Outside"). Detached linings "leave spaces in between," and "the architectural recognition of the in-between varies": at Edfu the residual space is closed and dominates the small center; in Charles V's palace at Granada and the Villa Farnese at Caprarola the courtyards "make the primary space; the rooms of the palaces are leftover space"; in SS. Sergius and Bacchus, St. Stephen Walbrook, Vierzehnheiligen, and Neresheim the residual spaces "define residual spaces which open on the dominant spaces." The two poles are named closed poché ("determined primarily by exterior spatial forces rather than the inherent structure of the form… almost unknown in Modern architecture except for Aalto's unique Concert Podium") and open poché ("Kahn's 'servant space' which sometimes harbors mechanical equipment, and the poché in the walls of Roman and Baroque architecture… alternative means of accommodating an inside different from the outside"). Aldo van Eyck's "in-between places" is quoted as the concept's programmatic statement: the defined in-between that "induces simultaneous awareness of what is significant on either side… the common ground where conflicting polarities can again become twin phenomena."

Residual space is evaluated, not merely described: "Residual space is sometimes awkward. Like structural poché it is seldom economic. It is always leftover, inflected toward something more important beyond itself" — the cogency of Kahn's "bad spaces as well as good spaces." At city scale, the fora of late Roman planning are the historical case; the modern failure is the waste of it: "I am thinking of the open spaces under our highways and the buffer spaces around them. Instead of acknowledging and exploiting these characteristic kinds of space we make them into parking lots or feeble patches of grass, no-man's lands between the scale of the region and the locality."

Key Thinkers

• venturi-robert — the concept's author (1966); residual space as the interior register of the inside-different-from-outside argument and its urbanistic corollary.
• Louis Kahn — "servant space" and "bad spaces as well as good spaces"; the poché alternative (PAGE NEEDED — see log).
• Aldo van Eyck — the "in-between places" formulation quoted by Venturi (PAGE NEEDED — see log).

Related Concepts

• poche — the thick-wall substance residual space runs through; closed vs. open poché.
• in-between-densities — the urban-density band; the city-scale in-between as Jacobs-adjacent problem.
• thick-edge — the inhabitable edge-zone; residual space's social-urban descendant.
• double-functioning-element — the servant space as element doing structural and spatial work at once.
• inside-outside-dialectic — the broader inside/outside problem of which residual space is the wall-thickness register.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• *Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture* (Venturi 1966) — the concept's chapter (pp. 73–88): the linings catalogue (Edfu, St. Basil's Moscow, Granada, Caprarola, Villa Giulia, Stupinigi, S. Chiara at Bra, Aalto's Imatra); closed vs. open poché; the van Eyck quote; highway residual space; Polish synagogue vaulting and Aalto's Concert Podium.

Open Questions

• Residual space is "always leftover, inflected toward something more important beyond itself" — can it be designed as primary space without ceasing to be residual (the Stupinigi ambiguity Venturi himself notes)?
• Venturi's highway no-man's-lands diagnose the 1966 infrastructural city. Does contemporary post-industrial leftover space (terrain vague, interstitial lots) call for exploitation on his terms or for the preservation of its indeterminacy?