107as a liberating release. A continuation through open space
accommodates the drive towards expansion of our > personal
space.
Literature: Schmitz 1966, 1967, 1998; Vogt-Göknil 1951The decisive thing is the way in which architecture is experi-
enced. Upon entering a café, we notice the striking colour of
the counter in passing. What we actually see, however, is not
just its colour, not its squarish shape; we perceive the counter
in its immediacy. Strictly speaking, we cannot even isolate the
counter from the other elements that make up the room: the
walls, the curtains, the flooring, their colours and forms. To be
sure, we perceive all of these elements, but what we actually
experience is a room in its overall appearance – and moreover
not as formed volumes, but in its specific character, together
with the other individuals who are present and the particular
atmosphere we encounter immediately upon entering the
room, without distinguishing details, as a total impression.
Upon entering, we are all aware of how our sense of space,
our personal sphere, seeks to engage with the space, how it
expands either hesitantly or instantaneously, taking in the
space and feeling it out or filling it up in its various directions
and forms through the spatial > extension of our own sub-
jectivity. For the most part, architectural phenomena can be
characterized through the specific unfolding of such processes.
It will be claimed, to be sure, that in contrast to elements
such as screens (> screening), walls and > openings, architec-
tural space is a fiction (Feldtkeller 1989). In fact, however,
we experience these elements as space, and in particular as
a corporeal being-in-space. This ‘as’, which is expressed in
phenomenology as intentionality, through which we attribute
contents to every perception, also conditions our experience
of a room’s character, as having a specific function (coffee
shop), for example, as an invitation (consume!), as a symbolic
effect (a brand), or an emotional appeal (cosy).Experience