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nonetheless active, a seated posture often provides relief from
continuous activity, or allows rest after walking and standing.
Comfortable sitting in our culture requires an item of
furniture such as a bench, chair or armchair (> furnishing).
More strongly than other architectural elements and furniture
forms, it is the chair that embodies the figure of this posture.
As an angled form with installed back piece, it is the image or
counterform of the seated posture. When arms or headrests
are added, it mirrors the seated figure of the human individual
in a complete way. To sit in a chair takes precedence in our
culture, but worldwide, it is encountered far less frequently
than sitting on the floor with crossed legs. This pose connects
the sitter directly with the ground. In place of the table, the
entire surface of the floor now serves as an area of action.
To sit together on the continuous plane of the ground fos-
ters a special social proximity and flexibility in the choice of
seat. In our culture as well, there have been attempts to re-
habilitate the spontaneous form of seated spatial experience;
these culminated in the design of living rooms as a ‘seating
landscape’.
There are small architectural spatial units whose char-
acteristic experiential qualities emerge substantially from the
posture of sitting. These include window niches into which
benches have been built, so that one sits directly within the
wall or window and looks directly onto the boundary line
of the screening element into the room within or else out of
the > window. The prayer stool or medieval ‘cabinet’ (of St
Jerome) are other forms through which a seating arrangement
gives rise to a space within a space (> incorporation). With-
out generating a specific architectural form, many spaces are
influenced in essential ways by sitting habits or seating, often
with a table as a corresponding plane of action. Through the
height of the balustrade, the window seat in an interior takes
the seated posture into consideration. Restaurants and cafés
are shaped by the arrangement and sizes of tables and chairs.
In conference rooms, theatres and cinemas, seating arrange-