The Spaces Between Rooms
On the architecture of movement
Corridors are an afterthought in bad buildings. They are the space left over once the rooms have been arranged — a necessary connector, dimensioned to code, finished to budget, and forgotten. In our practice, we have come to believe the opposite is true. The spaces between rooms are where a building reveals its character most honestly. How you move through a building, how you arrive at a room, how one space prepares you for the next — these are not secondary concerns. They are the architecture.
This shift in thinking happened gradually. We noticed, reviewing completed projects, that the moments clients described most vividly were rarely the primary spaces. They spoke about the entrance sequence, the turn at the top of a stair, the narrow passage that suddenly opened into a double-height living room. The rooms themselves were appreciated — but the transitions were felt.
Thresholds as design instruments
A threshold is more than a doorway. It is a moment of psychological preparation — a signal that one kind of space is ending and another is beginning. The width of a threshold, the height of its opening, the material of the floor on either side — all of these communicate something to the body before the mind has processed it.
In one of our recent residential projects, we deliberately narrowed the entrance corridor to 900mm before opening into a kitchen and dining space nearly twelve metres wide. The compression and release of that sequence produces a genuine physical response. Clients who have lived in the house for two years still notice it. Their guests always comment on it within minutes of arriving.
We design thresholds the way we design facades — with intention, with an understanding of what they are asking the occupant to do, and with a clear sense of what comes before and after.
Staircases and the vertical journey
If thresholds govern horizontal movement, staircases govern the vertical — and they are among the most spatially complex elements a building can contain. A staircase is not simply a means of changing level. It is a reorientation. As you climb or descend, your relationship to the building shifts. Views open and close. Ceiling heights change. The materials around you may transition entirely.
We design staircases as spatial events rather than functional requirements. This means treating the void around them as deliberately as the stair itself — considering what is visible from each tread, how light enters the stairwell at different times of day, and how the structure of the stair reads from the rooms it connects.
Designing for the everyday
There is a practical argument for all of this. Buildings are inhabited daily. The grand room — the living space, the principal bedroom, the boardroom — is experienced occasionally and with a degree of conscious attention. The entrance hall, the corridor, the landing are experienced dozens of times a day, almost always unconsciously.
Spaces that are only considered at the level of the room produce buildings that feel thin over time. The initial impression may be strong, but daily life reveals the gaps. Spaces that are considered all the way through — room, threshold, circulation, transition — produce buildings that reward long habitation. They do not exhaust themselves quickly. They continue to offer something new depending on the light, the season, the pace at which you move through them.
That is the architecture we are trying to make. Not buildings that photograph well on a single afternoon, but buildings that hold their interest across years of daily use.
