Fundamental Concepts of Architecture : The Vocabulary of Spatial Situations

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allowing them to seem wholly dead. The acoustic capacity of

materials to resonate also supports effects of spatial rever-

beration.

> accessibility and exclusivity, ascent, cell, gallery, interior,

residence, space-containing wall, territory

Musicality is in evidence in architecture less in an ‘ossified’ or

‘frozen’ state (Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, Arthur Schopen-

hauer), and more in the rhythms through which we traverse

space. In a building, every serial arrangement, from rows of

supports to rows of houses, can be grasped as a purely me-

chanical and uniform repetition, as beat or pulse (> row). In

contrast, rhythm emerges when a lively succession is derived

through the variation of a monotonous and strict schema

of repetition. Rhythm appears as a recurring accentuation;

Ludwig Klages (1944) speaks of a polarization of a periodic,

structured correlation. While beat or pulse means a repeti-

tion of the identical, it is the similar that recurs in rhythm.

It therefore allows changes that do not call into question the

continuing coherency of the sequence. The term rhythm is

derived from ῥέω (rheo), the Greek word for flow, so that

with reference to its origins, it can be translated as ‘articulated

continuity’, i.e. that of waves in water. Rhythm as a polarized

continuity is found in the ceaseless alternation between day

and night, ebb and flow, and the serial repetition of an irregu-

lar sequence, on the other hand, in periodic life phenomena

such as walking, breathing, or the beating of a heart.

In architecture, a beat or pulse appears as an element

that is repeated strictly at identical intervals, for example a

row of supports or window openings. Rhythm modulates this

strict sequence by grouping it, generating disequilibrium. At

times, the beat must be added to the continuity of movement,

so that rhythm is experienced in direct contrast to it.

Retreat

Rhythm, spatial