BUILDING FUNCTION 93
▲5.26 Centraal Beheer Office Building, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, Herman
Hertzberber with Lucas & Niemeijer Architects, 1972. Columns subdivide the cafeteria
into more intimate spaces.
years old, according to one staff member, office workers really enjoy
working in it.
Articulating circulation
Structure has a long tradition of articulating circulation. Arcades and
colonnades have defined circulation for thousands of years. Due to its
ability to provide order to a plan, structure often functions as the spine
that inevitably defines the primary circulation route. As Cook writes:
‘Where ceremony is not involved, a central row of columns or a spine
wall is a highly satisfactory way of generating built form. This spine can
be formed by a corridor and we then have a brilliantly forceful gener-
ator, the spine being the route, the operational generator and also the
focus of the structure from which all other parts of the system develop.
Stretch the diagram and you have the Gothic nave.’^6
By virtue of their physical presence, columns, walls or other structural
members can literally and virtually restrict movement to along a single
axis. The way the walls within the Contemporary Art Wing, Hamburg,
confine and direct movement has already been discussed (see pages 87–8).
Structure can also play less directive roles by merely suggesting a circu-
lation route. Often these more subtle roles are played by horizontal
structure, such as beams, that exhibit a directional quality. Both of these
contributions of structure to circulation are examined, beginning with
examples where structure defines circulation.
The first floor of Colegio Teresiano, a Barcelona convent school, pro-
vides a most memorable example of structure defining a corridor. The