359other. Generated by a wall in conjunction with the floor is a
> space shadow. In their most sparing form, the proverbial
four walls contain the introverted container of the > cell, but
are also essential to the amenity qualities of the city as the
walls of > squares and streets. Walls influence the character of
a room, and our state of mind when > inside it (> concavity).
With an increasing complexity of the spatial configuration,
walls assume the multifarious tasks of enclosing, articulat-
ing and guiding, for they extend the plan vertically. At the
same time, they mask it, for our bodily disposition refuses us
an overview; we find ourselves consistently facing walls that
capture our movements and gazes. These hinder a rational
comprehension of the plan, blocking vistas, obstructing ac-
cess, misleading us, only subsequently to open up astonish-
ing connections and perspectives, when the structural order
finally becomes intuitively discernible. In extreme instances,
walls become the decisive elements of the labyrinth. Walls
perform a modest service, on the other hand, when they sim-
ply catch the > light within a room, allowing it to become
visible through its distribution on the wall surface in interplay
with shadow.The significance of warmth in architecture is not limited to
the provision of heating according to accepted standards.
This, of course, respects the expectation of occupants, who
consider it an intrinsic task of the building to provide the nec-
essary warmth along with protection and privacy. In opposi-
tion to such a determination, however, it was precisely cold-
ness that came to be valued as an architectural ideal by the
Modernist avant-garde. As Helmut Lethen (1994) has shown,
the cult of coldness was on the one hand a metaphor for the
renunciation of the warmth and shelter of family, religion and
cultural heritage, and a bold and unshielded embrace of the
civilizational upheavals of modernity. On an architectonic
level, on the other, the ideal of coldness demanded an ap-Warmth and cold