Fundamental Concepts of Architecture : The Vocabulary of Spatial Situations

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We do not reach towards things solely by means of the gaze;

instead, the entire corporeal sphere extends outward into

space. In the process of perception, consciousness extends as

far as the senses can reach, and our bodily presence expands

with it. Not in the sense that I am here, and a dark area be-

neath the trees – which I can see from here – is over there;

instead, it is as though I extend myself as far as the area be-

neath the trees. But not in such a way that I only imagine

that instead of standing here, I stand on the other bank of the

river, beneath the trees; instead, I am here, but at the same

time reach out with my bodily self all the way to the trees

over there.

To be sure, the gaze extends towards objects in space,

but it is not only ‘the visual ray that encounters the object at

its actual spatial location’, as Helmut Plessner says, reaching

towards it and ‘through this reach, giving the organism the

radius of movement’ (1923, 247). We also grasp the spatial-

ity of architecture, with its cavities, intermediate spaces, and

openings, by imagining penetrating them physically or nest-

ling against them. According to Plessner, we also experience

paths and roads via such virtual anticipatory movement: ‘To

nestle against, to accompany, to probe, to be filled with, these

are the thousand ways of living in attitudes [...] are the means

we understand architecture.’ (249)

While in > confrontation with walls, the extension of

our > personal space experiences resistance, niches, apertures

and spatial extensions yield to us, so that the projection and

recession of the spatial envelope is experienced as receiving

an impression of the space of the self, which pours itself, so

to speak, into the form. Admittedly, this virtual rapproche-

ment is not generally experienced as a flowing interpenetra-

tion without resistance, but instead as a tension that bridges

a distance, or as a striving to overcome a ‘viscous’ medium

(Gosztonyi 1976, 1249). This tension is also dependent upon

the formal antagonisms, resistances and discrepancies of

the geometric spatial shape in relation to one’s own physical

Extension