space

Even as a boy I liked to wander along deep paths in the fields, especially along those which — carved into the terrain — followed its rolling waves. Once, unobserved, I stood at the edge of a small cherry orchard in which my uncle was cultivating trees. The image of a solitary orchard keeper, whose hands lovingly touch small branches as if they're conversing together, the image of an individual and nature at the moment they're mutually sharing secrets, has always stayed with me, as has the image of fields of rye and sugar beets, and childish curiosity about what might be happening in the middle of a hidden world with its little paths and animal burrows. Perhaps it was this curiosity that later kept urging me to think about a plan for suspended walkways in the crowns of trees ... In other words, I was fascinated by any defined space, its beautiful sensuousness.

And then I came to the realization that space could be captured on drawing paper; not only the space that I could see but also space that I imagined. And the hardest lesson of all: it's possible to calculate how to make a bridge that won't collapse, but it's impossible to calculate how to make a thing beautiful.

-- Josef Svoboda The Secret of Theatrical Space
Translated by J.M. Burian