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together with regularity, originality with familiarity, and com-
plexity with order, counts as a continually recurring condi-
tion of beauty. And yet precisely that which idiosyncratically
evades all preconceived criteria may nonetheless be perceived
as beautiful. It is not primarily a question of deciding for a
specific concept of beauty through which one plays off, for
example, perfection against the unremarkable (> patina), or a
traditional order such as that of the ‘European city’ against the
disordered multiplicity of the ‘in-between city’ (Sieverts 2003).
One need not search for the beauty of architecture sole-
ly in its forms, although this is the familiar perspective. As
used by us in actual situations on a daily basis, architectural
forms do not play the primary role. In order to grasp archi-
tecture adequately in aesthetic terms, we must not just con-
sider buildings or architectural forms, but instead allow the
concrete experience of living in a certain town or in a certain
house to affect us overall. In such contexts, we are exposed
to spatial complexity and atmosphere, we move and interact,
our state of mind as a whole is affected. When we adopt an
aesthetic perspective of a situation, avoid reducing it to its
practical function, and surrender to it with all of our senses,
then our experience of that situation as such becomes an ob-
ject of aesthetic experience. This may also reincorporate pur-
poseful action (Frey 1925/1946). The experience of beauty is
engendered when we savour an architectural situation with
relish and enjoy it scenically (> scene). When we perceive the
beautiful, the aesthetic and formal traits of a city or building
are incorporated into this process. We encounter the beauty
of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, for example, not
primarily by contemplating its proportions, material effects,
vistas or lighting scheme, but through the self-referential ex-
perience of purposeless, relaxed movement, and the dissolu-
tion of boundaries within the spatial forms.Bed > furnishing, ground, inside and outside