209The variety of types, sizes and positions of openings is vis-
ible on the outside of the building – not just on the richness of
the > facade design, but also in the plastic treatment through
which the structure is sliced open and perforated. These vari-
ous niches, bay windows, dormers, light cannons, crenels and
other types of gaps serve as indications of the diverse inten-
tions and backgrounds of opening and closing.
Literature: Selle 2004> capacity, closure, courtyard, landscape, opening, screeningThrough architecture, order arrives in the world. It orders
the activities taking place in the home, the spatial relation-
ships within a town, and even shapes the landscape to con-
form to human expectations. Art is fundamental to architec-
ture: ‘Architecturer, c’est mettre en ordre,’ in the words of Le
Corbusier. (1933/1974) Architectural reality is characterized
by a constant struggle against disorder. In homes, it must cope
with the idiosyncrasies of individual lifestyles; in the city, with
the divergent societal interests of countless actors; and in the
countryside, with the untamed proliferation of nature. Only
through a confrontation with disorder does order have value.
Often, it is defined only through processes of appropriation.
Even when a certain type of architecture takes disorder itself
as its theme, and at least initially falls into anarchic attitudes,
it arrives eventually – in order to become comprehensible – at
a superordinate aesthetic level, a different type of order.
> Sensory perception itself already proceeds in an orderly
fashion, organizing disparate stimuli into a > gestalt accord-
ing to principles and laws of form. And principles of order
make themselves felt in all subsequent phases of spatial expe-
rience. For the sake of spatial orientation, we must determine
the way in which rooms are ordered into a > larger structure,
just as > accesses and the distribution of utilizations becomeOpenness
Order