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Kinds of Space
Space, by definition, is all around us. There's the space we use for work or school and the space we use for play. There's public space and private space. Some space is designed or determined, like a classroom or the rooms in a house and could be the space we use for studying, sleeping, relaxing, cooking, listening to music, or watching a movie. Other space is a variable, like the space that exists between two people during a conversation and which depends, among other things, on how well the people know each other, whether they are friends or co-workers, what the situation is, and what country or culture they're in.
Most people probably don't spend much time thinking about how the space they use on a daily basis is determined. In the case of room sizes or seating arrangements, those decisions are often made by someone else. For things like the distance we maintain during conversations, we generally don't have to think about it-it just comes naturally. However, for the architect, interior designer, and industrial designer, almost every project will include some decisions about space. For example: how much to allow or allocate for a specific task, how close to place one space next to another, how high to place a shelf for a particular age group, and so on. To help him or her make these decisions, the designer can go to a large selection of Ergonomic or Anthropometric (Human Dimension) reference texts that will provide sufficient factual information about heights and widths, etc. to design for specific tasks. Because the answers to anthropometric questions can be looked up in a book, they're both easier and ultimately less interesting than some of the other questions about space.
Proxemics
In 1966 anthropologist Edward T. Hall published a text entitled The Hidden Dimension, a seminal work dealing with the way that people determine, at least in part, the spaces that they use. I say "in part" because Hall showed that there are a number of factors that come into play in the determination of these dimensions, perhaps the most important being culture....