Design Nomenclature / Form & Geometry

Void

Also called negative volume, aperture, gap

This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.

Space treated as a designed element rather than as leftover: a slot, a courtyard, the gap between a handle and the body it serves. A void is bounded and given shape by the mass around it, and it is read as a positive part of the composition. Unshaped space is not a void — it is absence.

A torus seen face-on in orthographic elevation, its ring of mass drawn as a wireframe and the hole through it filled with a flat tone and outlined heavy, its width dimensioned as an aperture — so the gap reads as a shape in its own right, with its own outline and proportion, rather than as leftover background.

In practice

The three-dimensional sibling of negative space, and the same argument: the space between the parts is a part. In architecture the void is frequently the primary form and the mass the residue.

Not to be confused with

How this term connects

Figure–groundMassNegative spaceSilhouetteVolumeVoid
Related Confused with