223Perspectival perception offers us a double access to the spatial
environment: a subjective view and an objective standard. The
perspectivicity of individual perceptions on the one hand, and
the geometric guidelines of perspective representation on the
other correspond to divergent definitions of the term, which
however converge in perspectival perceptions of architecture.
In perspectival vision, spatial situations are perceived as indi-
vidual views, depending on the respective standpoint. This is
taken into account by perspectival construction through pro-
jection from a visual focus. But at the same time, it overcomes
any connection to the subjective gaze via generalization in
terms of an objective norm. While the perspectivicity of hu-
man perception assigns objects their spatial positions within
non-homogeneous space according to the individual’s angle
of vision, mathematical perspective constructs a homogene-
ous space and orders everything within a rational geometric
system; it is the ‘objectification of the subjective’ (Panofsky
1927/1991). The ways in which perspective is experienced ar-
chitecturally oscillates between these two conceptions.
In contradistinction to the mode of vision that prevailed
into the Middle Ages, and which concentrates on the build-
ing as an object or a body, the early modern period saw an
emergence, together with the construction of perspective, of
the idea of > space as a schema, as a scaffolding or stage, even
before bodies appear on it. Since then, we have internalized
the rational, standardized system of perspective, which domi-
nates our culture all the way from painting to photography,
from architecture to city planning, in such a way that it is
inherent to our understanding of and feeling for space. But at
the same time, this mode of spatial experience is perspectival
in a different sense, as mentioned earlier, that of a dependence
upon the individual disposition, momentary constitution, and
bodily conditions of perception.
Converging in architecture is the objectivizing tendency
of perspective with the perspectivicity from a subjective angle
of vision. For the subjective position, a view that is shapedPerspective