56
an individual building requires closed walls. The closed char-
acter of the > wall is also a precondition if the openings are to
come into their own as the overcoming of division, i.e. by the-
matizing entrance and exit in the figures of door and window.
The counterpart to closure is the openness of an architecture
of > flowing space, which modulates the spatial continuum
between > inside and outside by means of panels, slabs and
posts, and which has no openings, but only gaps, intervals
and interspaces.
But even when the spatial container has been dis-
solved a certain degree of boundedness is attainable. As a
consequence of the laws of gestalt perception, rows of sup-
ports or > columns, for example, appear closed, as do the
> arcades of a building front or the brise-soleil of a facade, es-
pecially when viewed obliquely. The > layering of perforated
wall planes or the staggered arrangement of partitioning ele-
ments in alternation with apertures generates overlap effects,
allowing a fragile closure to emerge. An interplay between
closure and openness, blockage and access, generates an ar-
ticulated transition between inside and outside.
Literature: Arnheim 1977/2009; Sitte 1889/1983> readability, sign
> warmth and cold
> memory, time
> arcade, column, courtyard, sequenceThe intensity by which structures and the atmospheres of
situations are marked by colour is no less decisive than the
influence of built forms. Not unlike sound and odour, colour
has an especially subliminal effect. To be sure, it is also effec-
tive associatively, primarily through expressive qualities that
are actually attributable to colour itself, and which address
us directly.Code
Cold
Collective memory
Colonnade
Colour