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ronment are conditioned by spatial measurements, from the
distance between our eyes and those of someone else, as deter-
mined for example by the width of a dining table, all the way
to the distances in urban space that condition our daily radius
of action.
Our bodily spatial requirements, however, go beyond
such measurable magnitudes. Our space requirements for ev-
eryday activities cannot be prescribed according to the purely
functional planning standards of the relevant handbooks
(Neufert 2000), but must instead incorporate the buffer or
> resonance spaces that are demanded by our > personal
space in relation to individual attitudes, tendencies towards
expansion, and habits of movement. The headroom, for ex-
ample, that is required for a habitable room cannot be cal-
culated on the basis of the physical dimensions of the user;
instead, the ‘upright gait’ requires the leeway that is provided
by additional height. In experiential space, distances are per-
ceived subjectively: familiar objects and people seem closer
than they actually are, while distant objects may be perceived
as proximate. While concepts such as size, expanse or dis-
tance can of course be grasped in terms of external dimen-
sions, they are also qualitative features of lived situations that
cannot be objectively measured or quantified. This applies to
the dimensions of a building as well. We receive an impres-
sion of the > size of a building or of a room not only by
determining its dimensions, but also through the relationship
between the > details and the whole and our position in rela-
tion to it. The sense of > expansiveness and constriction of a
room is dependent not just upon the distances between walls,
but also by the perspectivally perceived interplay of all of the
constructive elements that delimit the space, and by changing
conditions of visibility.
Alongside our physical experience of a space and our
sensory perceptions of form, intelligible proportions repre-
sent a further level of access to architectural space, one that
satisfies the intellect; this is the view of Hans van der Laan,