“Blank space in painting and architecture and ma (interval) between sounds are very important factors in these arts in which yojō is respected.” (suggestiveness, lingering charm, lasting impression
In an exhibition entitled "MA, Space/Time in Japan”, the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki introduced a culturally specific concept of an interval in both space and time.
In an architectural context, ma refers in a conceptual manner to a space or interval between two posts—a distance between two elements, but also a room–as in dining room or bathroom. Ma is also an ancient unit of surface area for measuring the size of a room one ken on the side. This terminology is multiple and equivocal. The units of measurement in Japanese construction were relative, and they varied in their absolute size until their universal determination during the Meiji restoration. But despite these difficulties, given that Japanese construction was more often defined by its plans than by its volumetric arrangements, we should consider the architectural ma, with all its semantic variations, as the essential organizing element in the layout of buildings
At least in part, the concept has functioned as a way into the question of Japan-ness—of what can be considered distinctively Japanese. As such it becomes implicated in issues of “Orientalism” and “Occidentalism”, of ways to imagine an “other”.
For the German architect Günter Nitschke, “The Japanese sense of space is ma, best described as a consciousness of place, not in the sense of piazza, an enclosed three-dimensional entity, but rather as … the simultaneous awareness of the intellectual concepts of form + non-form, object + space, coupled with subjective experience. (…) So – this Japanese sense of ma is not something that is created by compositional elements; it is the thing that takes place in the imagination of the human who experiences these elements. Therefore one could define ma as experiential place, being nearer to mysterious atmosphere caused by the external distribution of symbols.”
The traditional tea house is a definitive example of Ma in architectural design. There are no decorative fixtures or ornaments. The emptiness of the interior enhances appreciation for the ephemeral experiences that pass through – the momentary gatherings of people and objects. The walls are merely walls, the tea house is about the life that occupies the space.