This study investigates the construction of potential space as an alternative design methodology in contemporary architecture, with a particular focus on SANAA’s educational and cultural facilities. Drawing on philosophical discourses on virtuality and relationality, the research explores how architectural space can transcend fixed hierarchies, typological rigidity, and programmatic determinism. Through a multi-stage methodology combining theoretical analysis, spatial mapping, and case study examination, the study identifies walls, transparency, and circulation as primary mediators in shaping relational environments. Case analyses of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, the Rolex Learning Center, and the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art reveal SANAA’s distinctive strategies: decentralization of spatial organization, use of transparency to blur boundaries between interior and exterior, and the employment of sloping floors, curved glass, and minimal partitions to dissolve rigid functional zones. These strategies produce three key characteristics of potential space: 1) impersonal space, defined by non-hierarchical, rhizomatic circulation that allows users to negotiate personalized spatial trajectories; 2) spherical space, where programmatic boundaries are fluid, fostering de-territorialized environments; and 3) multimaterial space, where transparency and material ambiguity create temporal and mutable conditions shaped by environmental context and user behavior. The findings suggest that potential space offers a critical architectural language that combines philosophical depth with pragmatic social relevance. Particularly in educational and cultural facilities, this approach restores community relationships, enriches spatial experience, and positions architecture as an evolving medium of interaction, flexibility, and transformation in the 21st century.