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temples as the first islands of civilization within inaccessible
terrain.
Under certain circumstances, the task of the base, namely
to provide stability and an optical foundation, may be ex-
tended by its use as a basement storey. With reduced aper-
tures, the rooms contained in the base are partially inserted
into the ground. The unfortunately widespread bad habit,
however, of digging out the base in order to provide living
space with improved illumination deprives a building of sta-
ble grounding. The mental state of the inhabitant of a massive
basement storey that serves a building as a base, on the other
hand, is shaped by a sense of the apartment’s anchoring into
the ground.> ascent, base, cellar, intermediate space
> furnishing
> intermediate space, space-containing wallWe encounter the beautiful in architecture not only through
beautiful forms, but also in relation to total situations. The
aesthetic qualities of architectural forms are embedded in our
performative interactions with them. Conceived as aesthet-
ics (from the Greek word αἴσθησις, aisthesis, meaning ‘per-
ception’), i.e. understood as a general doctrine of perception,
an aesthetic of architecture examines the way in which we
perceive and experience (> sensory perception, > experience)
architecture. But in contradistinction to predicates from the
realm of sensuous perception, i.e. clarity, variety, sensory stim-
ulation, and from the intellectual appraisal of qualities such
as regularity or authenticity, beauty is a matter of pleasure for
its own sake. We encounter the beautiful in architecture when
we regard it from a specifically aesthetic perspective, with a
concentration on phenomenal concreteness, without leaping
past this level immediately towards functional reality (BöhmeBasement
Bathroom
Bay window
Beauty