ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how an analysis of built space might proceed, focusing on some of the conceptual aspects of such analysis. The study of space in social, political, organizational, and cultural contexts is a unique research site from a methodological perspective in that it combines both phenomenological and hermeneutic elements. Space data may be elements in an ethnomethodological, symbolic-interactionist or they may be the exclusive concern of research seeking to establish the ways in which spatial elements communicate contextually specific meaning. The role of the researcher's body in discovery suggests the potential utility of nonverbal communication categories for analyzing data in both the kinesthetic stage of fieldwork and the more sedentary stage of deskwork. Design vocabularies are usefully analyzed in terms of their meanings in a broader societal or cultural context. Attention to all part of the researcher's sense making in spatial analysis and the sense making has to be sensitive to the situational, contextual, and cultural specificity of meaning.
