Fundamental Concepts of Architecture : The Vocabulary of Spatial Situations

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cles that foster a directionless, meandering type of > roaming.

Depending upon the distances between units, the hall may be

restricted in breadth or perhaps become spatially confusing.

Visitors may have the impression of wandering among the

trunks of a forest of columns as though in a shadowy grove.

If sunlight enters, the open columned hall conveys such an

impression by means of the strong contrasts of light and dark

created by the shadows cast and by the materialization of

> light on the shafts of the columns.

Beginning with the hall of the English country house and

continuing with the reception hall, staircase hall, the hotel

lobby or theatre foyer, halls have served not just as zones of

> access to large houses, but also as places of (public) appear-

ance, to receive prestigious individuals or perform ceremo-

nies. Closed assembly halls such as sports, concert, market or

exhibition halls are public spaces that are oriented towards

urban space via lobbies and entrance halls. The affinity and

transition between the portico as an open columned porch

and the open hall of the municipal loggia demonstrates how

such halls can be interwoven into outdoor municipal space.

Because spatiality is perceived with the entire body, the sense

of touch and feel plays an essential role. The sensual impres-

sions acquired through probing > surfaces with our hands is

our first contact with our environment. The sense of touch

and feel may even be regarded as a primordial condition for

perceiving forms visually, for in fact, we actually see only that

which we have already grasped, or were able to translate into

an analogous experience of physical touch. The haptic sense,

then, is perpetually present within visual perception. In con-

trast to the abstraction of vision, tactile experience involves

the concrete. For only that which can be touched is taken

up as immediate reality from within the mediated experience

of vision, thereby making possible the corporeal location of

the subject as a body that is simultaneously touchable and

Haptic qualities