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sion shifts the accessible exterior space into the interior of the
building in a continuous way, so that it becomes possible, for
example, to exit the building from its centre without cross-
ing additional thresholds, to step outside without transition.
Through inside-outside inversion in turn, individual interior
rooms are shifted out of the building entirely; they are still
connected to its interior, but are at the same time entirely
surrounded by external space. Through repetition, inversion
makes possible the finely divided interfolding of > inside and
outside, so that at many places, the interior is in close con-
tact with the outside, and the building with its inside rooms,
conversely, is multiply entwined with the space outside
(> folding). Inversions in both directions (inside to outside
and vice versa) result in opportunities at many points for an
unmediated passage between inside and outside. Locations
and activities can be integrated and organized into a detailed
composition of these two components.
The results of inversion in a more general sense are exter-
nal spaces that are experienced as being closed and introvert-
ed, i.e. they are experienced as interiors, as are spaces with an
external character that are located inside. Multiple inversions
emerge when, for example, a building annex is externalized
onto a > public square or > courtyard via inversion, the latter
being itself inverted in turn inward into a city block. The re-
lationship is not always explicit, for that which is experienced
as an inside space from one perspective appears from another
as an outside space (> incorporation). Essentially, inversions
on various scales occur in every dense urban development;
to some extent, the > space-body continuum of urban space-
formation is based on them: ‘The inside space of the outside
space is the outside space of the inside space’ (Loderer 1987).
On a smaller scale, bay windows or other sculpturally
formed windows that project forward from a facade also
qualify as inversions. These illustrate how a constructive-
spatial inversion can be associated with a peculiar inversion
of psychological states. In a corner or bay window, for exam-