291It has been asserted that architectural space is a fiction
(Feldtkeller 1989). Since space is not immediately accessible
to sensory perception as such, it is in fact quite difficult to de-
scribe, perceive or inspect architectural space. In reality, it is
through structural elements that architectural space comes
into existence. We see walls, floors and ceilings; in terms of
intentionality, however, we experience them as space. In fact,
the fascination of architecture consists in ‘its ability to render
the inherently ungraspable phenomenon of space at least
somewhat graspable for human imagination.’ (Meyer 1998,
349)
It only becomes possible, however, to define architectural
space once we have specified that which comprises the archi-
tectural as such (> architecture). For a century or so, space
has been regarded as the central concept for architecture
and space design, as representing their content (Schmarsow
1894). Still, space is not the medium of architecture as such- the significance of the term is far too general to specify the
architectural. Hence the justified warning against a fictive
notion of architectural space. The conceptions of space that
are – among numberless definitions – of significance specifi-
cally for > architecture relate first to the objectivity of real,
built spaces, secondly to the experience of space as a complex
situation, and finally to the two in conjunction, to the in-
tellectual > concept of a space that is contained in a design.
According to Hans van der Laan (1983), architectural space is
grasped in ‘physical’, ‘sensory’ and ‘intellectual’ terms.
The medium of architecture is not simply space as such,
but the differentiated enclosure and articulation of spatial ar-
eas for the sake of movement or for stationary utilization,
and in general for facilitating the unfolding of human lives.
Architecture undertakes this enclosure and articulation not
in a purely semiotic way, but through the structural estab-
lishment of spaces that are delimited as units from space in
general. Nor do rooms physically consist of space as such,
but are instead produced through structural elements that
Space