The Language of Spaces
Published in ATÖLYE Insights · 7 min read · March 13, 2025
Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Accept That Cities Talk Back
Author: Güray Oskay
Introduction: Where I Start Questioning Everything
So I've been traveling a lot lately. Planes, airports, the occasional frantic taxi ride where I contemplate my life choices while gripping the door handle like it's a life raft. And after all this movement, being exposed to so many places, each with their unique landscapes and their unique set of communities - I woke up this morning feeling somewhat... philosophical. Which is always dangerous.
See, when you spend enough time wandering through cities, staring at buildings, watching people interact with their surroundings, you start asking yourself big, existential questions like: What is space? How do communities form? Did I cancel my fitness app subscription?
And that's what I want to talk about today: communities, spaces, and the strange, yet undeniable, relationship between them. Because let's face it, we spend all our time designing for communities, talking about them, including them in processes, but do we really understand them?
We're All in the Business of Change (Even Those of Us Who Fear Change Like the Plague)
Change is terrifying. I can barely switch toothpaste brands without a full existential crisis, and yet, here we are, professionals in the creative industry, constantly orchestrating transformation.
Architects, urban planners, policymakers, cultural curators - we're all just actors in a grand performance called Change Happens Whether You Like It or Not. Everything we do has to do with transformation. Even when we claim to be designing from scratch, we're still transforming something that already exists. Because nothing - and I mean nothing - happens in a vacuum. There's always something to begin with. The bare minimum for a design need to arise. And that bare minimum is, a place and people.
But change doesn't just happen in design - it happens in life. You change. I change. My hairline? Let's not talk about that.
And although there are a plethora of frameworks as to why and how change happens, what I'm really curious about is: Where does change happen?
The Two Interfaces of Life: Spaces and Language (and Maybe Love, but That's Complicated)
If you really boil life down, there are two fundamental ways we experience it. I call them the two interfaces of life: the tangible (spaces) and the intangible (language).
1. Spaces: This is where we live, work, and awkwardly avoid eye contact with our neighbors in the elevator. It's the physical world - the streets, the buildings, the cafes where people pretend to work while secretly scrolling through their phones.
2. Language: This is how we make sense of it all. Language isn't just words; it's the filter through which we experience reality. It's the reason that in English, we have twenty ways to say "I'm fine" while meaning "I'm absolutely not fine."
And if I really wanted to get poetic (which I do), I'd argue there's a third interface: love. But love is complicated. You can live without it, but it makes life better when it's there. Kind of like Wi-Fi.
So let's stick to the first two.
Jean-Luc Godard, Heidegger, and My Sudden Realization That Language and Space Are Basically the Same Thing
The other night, I was rewatching an old Jean-Luc Godard film because, clearly, I don't believe in light entertainment. In this film there is one scene in which, a boy asks his mother, "What is language?" And she replies, "Language is the house that man lives in." (1)
Which, first of all, is an unreasonably poetic way to explain something to a child. Most parents would say, "Language is how you ask for ice cream." But no, this woman had to go full existentialist philosopher on a six-year-old. Anyway, maybe it was the cinematography, or maybe I had just had too much coffee, but this hit me.
Language is a house? A structure? A space we inhabit? That means we don't just speak language - we live in it.
And then, as if the universe was determined to send me down a spiral, I glanced at the book I've been reading on my coffee table. It begins by stating that, it is no coincidence that the art form and the space it takes place in are both called "theater". (2)
So now I'm thinking: Wait a minute. This isn't a coincidence. Spaces and language aren't just related - they're practically Siamese twins.
Mosques, Churches, Villages, and What They Teach Us About Community
Let's take a quick linguistic tour, shall we? The Turkish word for mosque is cami, which comes from cemaat, meaning community. The word for church? Kilise, from the ancient Greek ekklesia, which means to gather or community. It's not only religious spaces either. Any space where people gather, even villages, Mura in Japanese, Pueblo in Spanish, Kylä in Finnish.
All these words aren't just describing places. They're describing the people who occupy them. The spaces are the communities. Or to put it another way: you don't just design for people; people are the design.
Walter Benjamin and the Realization That Architects Are Just Translators With Better Handwriting
At this point, I feel like I'm having a revelation. Wouldn't it be great if I thought of all of this? But sadly, Walter Benjamin already wrote about this more than a century ago. (3)
He talks about the language of things, saying everything - buildings, objects, cities - can be understood as language. It is why I arrive at the conclusion, that designing is just another form of translation.
Think about what a translator's workflow looks like:
1. They understand the source material.
2. They interpret it.
3. They rewrite it in another language.
This is exactly how we approach it at ATÖLYE Architecture. It's not a pre-determined methodology or manifesto or anything, but in retrospect, I see this is what we have been doing all along: We listen, we interpret, and then we translate communities into spaces. We rewrite them in physical form. We've been translating all along.
And, like any good translation, if we do it well, it feels seamless. If we do it badly, well... let's just say Google Translate still struggles with idioms, and bad architecture isn't much different.
Why This All Matters (And Probably Means I Should Travel Less)
Here's the big takeaway: Communities are not an afterthought. They are both the material and the tool of design. When we design with communities as our source language, we create spaces that feel lived-in, embraced, and - most importantly - used. And when spaces are used, they don't fail.
Because at the end of the day, people don't fall in love with buildings. They fall in love with what happens inside them. And if we get it right - if we really listen, interpret, and translate - we don't just design buildings. We design experiences. We ensure belonging. Belonging goes a long way.
Anyway, that's my takeaway. I'll let you know if I change my mind after my next flight.
Thank you. And if anyone wants to discuss this further, I'll be at the airport lounge, overanalyzing the design of the cocktail napkins.
The line "Language is the house man lives in" from Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film Two or Three Things I Know About Her (Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle) is an interpretation of Martin Heidegger's 1947 Letter on Humanism, where he writes, "Language is the house of Being. In its home, man dwells."
Güçbilmez, B. (2023). Zaman - Zemin - Zuhur: Geçmişin Tiyatral Temsili. Kolektif Kitap.
Walter Benjamin introduces the concept of the Language of Things in his 1916 work titled On Language as Such and on the Language of Man (Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen).