277organ – brushes gently against a lightweight curtain, when
we experience the chafing of a rough plaster surface or the
rustling of an air draft, other modes of perception participate
as well, via the other senses. Alongside noises and odours,
we also perceive climatic stimuli such as humidity, tempera-
ture, and air pressure or airflow. Thus we distinguish between
air that is dry and dusty or moist and muggy. Emerging via
synaesthetic responses are additional links between sensory
modes, so that it becomes possible to taste even the smooth-
ness of marble, as John Ruskin pointed out. But kinaesthetic
responses are of special significance for the > experience of
architecture, since that which is experienced via > movement
and the movement itself influence one another reciprocally.
Through proprioception, we perceive our presence in space
and the position and posture of our bodies; in conjunction
with our sense of equilibrium, we may experience certain ir-
ritations, i.e. the unease induced by inclined walls.
The physical data transmitted by our structural and spa-
tial environment, its optical, acoustic and material qualities,
are not simply processed as a mere manifold of stimuli, but in-
stead worked up into ordered structures through preconscious
mental processes of gestalt formation, through the laws and
principles of form (Gosztonyi 1976, 820). Therefore, we do
not have to project the solid forms and spatial structures into
architecture, but perceive them with immediacy. Although the
eye registers a wall surface seen at an angle, for example, as
distorted, we grasp its true gestalt as a rectangle, without hav-
ing conscious recourse to previous experiences or subjecting
sensory data to a transformation. We do not simply see the
form that appears on the retina; the features of the ‘perceptual
form’ (Arnheim 1977/2009) also include the forces, tension
and weight of forms. That which we experience as space does
not simply correspond to physiological stimuli, nor to mate-
rial or structural reality, but also represents an independent
reality of experience, one that is structured primarily through
gestalts, > force fields and > gesture.