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A large building may seem large despite – or even pre-
cisely by virtue of – the narrowness of the setting, yet it re-
quires adequate clearance in order to be grasped as a whole.
A Doric temple seems larger on a bare elevation than it does
in a city, as part of the ensemble of large buildings. Since the
distance required to view buildings is often blocked in urban
contexts, a large building often requires a specially designed
plaza in front as an open space, which accords respect to
its overall size. Since it is often impossible to grasp a large
building as a whole up close without raising or pivoting our
heads and gaze, we are often consigned to a scanning mode of
perception. Extremely large three-dimensional objects, then,
are constituted perceptually through movement. In general,
when we scan individual form elements, a fine articulation
allows a building or part of a building, for example, the flut-
ing of a Doric column, to appear not only delicate, but also
larger, while forms having larger articulation, conversely,
appear smaller, yet at the same time coarser. When the eye
feels its way gradually from smaller to larger units and finally
towards the whole, a sense of size is built up bit by bit through
inner relationships. ‘One might say that we see the building
not simply as having size but as acquiring it (...).’ (Arnheim
(1977/2009, 131) Through this structure of divisions, even
buildings with minimal dimensions may gain a certain stature as
> monuments.
Monumental effects of size, however, that are intended
to overwhelm, cannot be arrived at simply by continually in-
creasing the volume of a building. According to the law of
allometry, the surface does not grow in a commensurate fash-
ion. This has peculiar consequences for the relationship be-
tween the walls and the space, as we learn through a compari-
son between buildings with large and small volumes: given
the identical wall thickness, the walls of a large room seem
weaker than those of a small one. At the same time, they seem
to constrict the space, because they are able to contain its dis-
proportionately large volume only with effort – even though,