39spaces suggest > oscillation, since our eyes are incapable of
circumferential vision. The dividing character of certain wall
heights is conditioned by eye height as a critical limit. Because
we are never free of the ground plane, we live primarily in
relation to walls; we cannot see the space in plan. What we
require if we are to grasp a complex > spatial structure is spa-
tial > memory. The body too possesses a memory. Through it,
figures of movement are internalized as they are performed,
and are recalled later, i.e. the contours of routes or the con-
figurations of staircases. We measure the slope of a staircase
not with a tape measure, but with our steps. We judge the
heaviness of the door not by its actual weight, but through
the resistance it offers to our physical effort. We ascertain the
design of a door handle by grasping it. The haptic and spa-
tial properties of forms are evaluated and interpreted through
a pre-reflexive synchronization with one’s own corporeality.
Moreover, the way in which space appears to us is influenced
by our > posture and > movement: we experience it differ-
ently when walking than when sitting or standing, and entire-
ly differently when reclining. Kinaesthetic sensations received
through the body condition every perception.
Our perceptions of our spatial surroundings must be re-
garded as a form of corporeal > expansiveness. The corporeal
sphere expands all the way to objects, and into the depths of
the surrounding space. We project our bodies into the archi-
tectural forms that stand before us, into their recesses, projec-
tions and openings. The body is the basis of the operations
of > empathy in relation to built forms, for example when
we experience the form of a bulging column in relation to a
sense of pressure felt in our own bodies. Through empathy,
architecture is so to speak imbued with life, at least when we
perceive it as expressing specific bodily conditions in ways
that correspond to our own bodily sensations.
Literature: Holenstein 1985; Meisenheimer 2004; Merleau-
Ponty 1961/1993, 1962