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ditions to which one is free to refer selectively. In the city,
the surrounding space itself has a specific > structure, with
its orientations, dimensions, striking points, and distinctive
> atmosphere, which contributes to shaping our perceptions
of every individual spatial situation. A targeted reference to the
context that might be characterized as contextualism should
not be restricted to achieving integration into the architectural
substance of the immediate vicinity through the harmoniza-
tion of formal idiom, scale or materiality, or through com-
plementary contrast. On a larger scale, context rather means
the network of interrelationships between the points of refer-
ence and public spaces and buildings taken into consideration
by urban planning, which also reflect the historic context.
Emerging, however, through the interplay of architec-
tural masses with interior and exterior cavities on a small-
er scale is that conceptual weaving together to which Fritz
Schumacher has referred as ‘the art of designing spaces
through the designing of bodies in dual ways.’. (1926, 28)
This > space-body continuum either consists of the inti-
mate interpenetration between architectural bodies and the
surrounding space, or else loosens them up so that it ulti-
mately unravels, and the building appears isolated. Because
this ambivalent figure/ground relationship within the ur-
ban texture cannot be distinguished in principle from that
between the mass and cavity elements within a building, a
town may be regarded from a contextual point of view
like a building, and a building like a town. Accordingly,
Aldo van Eyck perceives neither sharp divisions nor flow-
ing transition between mass and space, inside and outside,
open and closed, but instead a relationship of reciprocity,
in which each is generated by its counterpart. Sometimes,
buildings refer through individual elements such as > facade,
> tower or > axis to various adjacencies, or even establish more
distant relationships. Public buildings are interrelated with
their contexts when their uses open them up to their surround-
ings, making them traversable – primarily at ground level.