273atrical architecture, nor of settings that are prepared sceno-
graphically. Instead, every designed space can potentially con-
vey to us the impression that it was made for us as a scenic
frame that converts our actions into the object of our own
attention. In fact, all life processes can be thematized by ar-
chitecture, to the extent that they can be articulated spatially.
In contradistinction to artificial themed environments, which
transport visitors into a fantasy world and which, as alter-
native worlds, allow day-to-day normality to be forgotten,
architecture has its point of departure in the fundamentals of
perception and movement, and in the elementary processes of
our daily interactions with space.
The act of climbing a > staircase, for example, can be
transformed by a constructive arrangement according to
dramaturgical considerations into a scenic experience, so that
we follow our own movements through space like a perform-
ance. In a way that is analogous to the actions of an actor on
a stage, which generate a second reality through the produc-
tion of a play, the reality of the purely functional act of ‘as-
cending stairs’, which can also be performed indifferently and
non-thematically, becomes thematized through a self-reflexive
experience that stimulates an attentive performance. Unlike
the theatre, the act of climbing the stairs need not narrate
a ‘story’; instead, the architect already discovers the decisive
incident and action in the constructive task itself. In architec-
tural design, pure functionality is transformed into an experi-
ential reality, one that thematizes the function itself. The func-
tion of level changes can be staged by an expressive > gesture;
a purely functional movement can be invested with a certain
rhythm; the effort of ascending (> ascent) can be transformed
into a dramatic sequence; perception and orientation are en-
riched by a characteristic > atmosphere. Between the dark
grotto below and the floating platform above in Balthasar
Neumann’s Bruchsal Staircase, I see myself climb directly
from the extremes of the gloomy depths below into the bright
expense above. The mythological ‘narrative’ of heaven and