109objects. A description of views into and/or from a building,
for example, explains the meaning of a > window, while a
> door is experienced architecturally by being opened, closed,
and traversed.
An ‘experience’, on the other hand, is an individual ex-
periential event that is endowed with special meaning. While
the artificial, virtual worlds – which our ‘event society’ offers
as alternatives to everyday life – are often staged via archi-
tecture, examples being the ‘themed restaurant’ or ‘adventure
swimming pool’, great architecture is always an experience.
Literature: Baier 1996; Dürckheim 2005; Frey 1925/1946;
Kruse 1974; Rasmussen 1959It is not primarily rectangles, circles, cubes, cylinders, or
straight and curved lines that we perceive in architecture, but
doors, windows, staircases, walls and roofs. Coming to im-
mediate expression in these elements are further qualities: the
inviting character of an entryway, the steepness of a staircase,
which suggests the physical effort needed to ascend it, the
closed appearance of a facade, the protective gesture of a roof
etc. We immediately grasp that which architectural forms and
situations express – not as concealed essences, but through
the impressions they make on us. The expression of individual
constructive and spatial forms is enunciated through > form
character. In contrast, what we experience as the expressive
content of a total spatial > situation is its > atmosphere.
As the immediate expressive qualities of constructive
and spatial forms, and in contradistinction to those > mean-
ings that are suggested mediately, form characters appear as
qualities of the architectural elements and forms themselves.
The expressive content does not reveal some concealed sub-
ject matter to which access must be gained through the form;
instead, the building’s character comes to expression when it
becomes directly perceptible through its architectural gestalt.
Architecture should be distinguished from other domains be-Expression