285mood, and conditioning the audibility of shouted interjec-
tions.
Relevant alongside the multiplicity of intervening ele-
ments and factors when architecture is described as a situ-
ation is their performative character, which incorporates the
processual and eventful qualities of the respective situation.
As a rule, situations are not experienced in purely static terms,
but instead through movement and active participation. De-
scriptions of situations do justice to this factor only when it
grasps architectural elements in relation to use, to our mul-
tifaceted intercourse with them, when the relationships and
positions we adopt in relation to them are taken into account,
along with the gestures they evoke. Decisive in the case of a
row of supports is less its form, and rather the way in which
they contain us, allow us to pass through, or guide us, while
for a > staircase the experiential possibilities of ascending and
descending are essential. When architecture is registered as a
holistic and integrated situation against a diffuse background
of sensory stimuli, we may perceive it as an architectural
> image. Because we ourselves are components of this situa-
tion, however, we experience it simultaneously as a > scene
within which we appear before ourselves, so to speak.In architecture, size is addressed both to the understanding as
well as to feeling. The understanding grasps size as quantity
and > measure. Of course, it cannot grasp spatial dimensions
directly; these become palpable only by being measured against
a familiar unit, which must be perceptible as a fixed reference
point. In the realm of feeling, comparisons are not based on
the quantitative; instead, the size of a building is perceived in
relationship to one’s own body, to objects in the vicinity, and
in the framework of a total situation (> scale). The appropri-
ate size of a room is dependent upon the requirements for
proximity and distance between individuals, and is appraised
variously according to its articulation into places of activity.Size