Time-based spatial design. Chronotopes as measurements

Spaces are not inanimate volumes fixed in time. When we live in a space, we stay with all the senses and we experience many times, not just the present. Time must be stimulated, involved, to become tools for designing the spaces, to be part of the experiential performances. We have to learn how to analyze, to map and to design with time, reshaping the forms and writing systems of notation to describe the experiences, the rhythms, the duration of our experience in the spaces. First the digital revolution and then the pandemic, have made it clear that new forms of time – simultaneity, co-presence, slowing down, displacement, extended spaces, etc. – are designing the spaces of physical presence and absence. The objective of the chapter is to return, to senses and time, the role of key ingredients in the architectural design of places. The dimensions of architecture are multiple and complex: the known metrical coordinates of the surfaces and volumes; the more complex psychical plans of the mind; the anthropological dimensions of the social experiences; the sensitive quality of the human body. The involvement of time in spatial design will be managed between the linearity of Cronos and the fluidity of Kairos, but in both cases, we need to design new measurements, chronotopes, to help designers to answer correctly to the new places. We need a semantic of signs and symbols to represent and express the qualities of time. Notation is not only an instrument of relief and storytelling, but also the way to start the project, because the construction of sense-time language is the first design choice to involve them in the DNA of the next spaces.