Fundamental Concepts of Architecture : The Vocabulary of Spatial Situations

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can be varied in any number of ways; its dramatic possibili-

ties are presented in an excessive form in Giovanni Battista

Piranesi’s Carceri.

Le Corbusier made the gallery principle the main fea-

ture of his houses of the Citrohan type. This type is based

on the articulation of the spatial volume into a two-storey

living room together with various ancillary rooms that are

distributed across two levels and which to some extent open

onto the main space via a gallery. The two-storey portion usu-

ally opens up to the street or garden across its entire height.

The side (load-bearing) walls remain substantially closed. The

result is a contrast between the conspicuously bright double-

height room, with its public character, and the stacked, lower,

private rooms that are illuminated indirectly by the tall space,

but which may also have apertures along the rear. When one

stands above in the gallery, the space opens not only up in

front of one and across the tall windowed front towards the

outside and into the distance, but also below, which is un-

usual for a residence. In this elevated position, one is exposed,

but at the same time enjoys an overview. When one passes

from the lower, rear zone below the gallery into the tall space,

the abrupt upwards expansion may be associated with a more

erect posture, while conversely, the sheltered area below the

gallery offers the possibility of withdrawal from the tall space.

Gardens and parks are architecture, albeit in contrast to ar-

chitecture as normally understood, and from urban textures.

Wrested from nature, demarcated by clearing, levelled by re-

moving the earth, cultivated by draining wetlands or through

irrigation, the garden is the result of acts of domestication. It

not only constitutes an architectural space as a fenced-in or

walled-in hortus conclusus; it must be regarded as architec-

ture by virtue of its deliberate spatial elaboration, which may

take the form of the idealized nature of the landscape garden,

and of its scenic potential. Gardens in cities, then, are not only

Garden