105to breadth and height, which can be projected onto a single
plane upon which we gaze at right angles, or to depth,
which extends in the direction of our gaze and movement,
expansiveness is non-directional. The concept is also distin-
guished from that of distance, which shifts further and further
away from us in the course of movement, thereby remain-
ing unattainable and preserving tension, while expansiveness
is experienced and grasped dynamically as it unfolds bodily
(> extension).
The counterpart to expansiveness is constriction. Dif-
ferently from proximity, which refers to relationships of dis-
tance, narrowness is a property of spaces that constricts free
movement through cramped boundaries or hindrances, and
from which we are in turn freed by spatial dilation. Hein-
rich Schmitz refers to expansiveness and constriction as el-
ementary physical conditions, and has characterized spatial
narrowing and dilation as physical sensations (1966, 1967,
1998). A sense of physical constriction is not only oppres-
sive; in weakened form, it holds the body together as a unity,
heightening awareness of one’s own physicality. Countering
this, the breast expands, the self becomes enlarged, one feels a
‘largeness around the heart’.
Decisive, to be sure, for an impression of expansiveness is
size, but such effects do not emerge simply because a space
is large, but instead because it continues beyond boundaries
which seem to dissolve, for example in the ‘unbounded interi-
ors’ of the Baroque, where one tends to wonder whether any-
thing solid exists beyond layers and vistas (Bollnow 1963).
Ulya Vogt-Göknil (1951), describes the effect produced by
a hovering, evanescent atmosphere, when everything solid,
corporeal, is transformed into the purely planar, and delimit-
ing walls touch the floor gently without actually resting on
it. Seemingly suspended walls have no > weight, they ap-
pear to float, to experience a virtual expansiveness. On the
scale of the > landscape, expansiveness is among the most
defining impressions. An additional dimension of expanse is