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with space, acquire value only when they are removed from
monotony and triviality. An architectural framing of space
can sensitize us to the value of our acts, and architecture has
available to it the instruments suited to this purpose.
A ring of rooms around a covered walkway surround-
ing a garden courtyard is well adapted to use as a hotel, a
student residence, a cloister, or a centre for craft activities. It
is neither a neutral multipurpose structure nor functionally
predetermined, but is suggestive of a specific dramaturgy for
meeting, circulation and communication, providing charac-
teristic scenic interpretations for all of the above-named uses.
Junya Ishigami’s filigree hall in Kanagawa also offers a broad
spectrum of uses: for study, for exhibition, or for sauntering.
Here, a specific interpretation of this spectrum of uses can be
attained tellingly through the light screen of supports, one
that creates a special scenic and atmospheric frame without
generating diffuse neutrality.
The above-named traits attributed to architecture stand
in a relationship of tension between substance and con-
tingency that is defined as capacity. On the side of sub-
stance stand articulated spaces, dense > atmosphere, aes-
thetic > complexity, characteristic conditions of movement,
in short: Prägnanz. On the side of contingency stand the
performative act, openness, variability in use, displace-
ments of meaning, which is to say: room for manoeuvre.
While architecture provides a repertoire of specific re-
sources and structures, it is only through the performative
process of actual activity that the striving for openness actu-
ally reveals itself as the capacity to encompass a multiplicity
of possibilities for appropriation.
Literature: Hertzberger 1991; Janson/Wolfrum 2006Casualness > architecture, experience, scene