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A characteristic feature of many spatial structures in ar-
chitecture is a hierarchical relationship between accessing and
accessed spaces, which are joined on various scalar levels: the
room within the apartment, the apartment within the build-
ing, the building within the city, and so forth; most simultane-
ously provide access and are designed to be accessed. Corre-
sponding to each level are duration of stay, degree of closure,
and specific forms of activity. The system of movement spaces
too – which includes streets, routes and corridors – forms
such a hierarchy. This ‘cascade of levels’ – which extends
through all scales, from the spaces of the city down to cabi-
nets and drawers within a room – is regarded by Dorothea
and Georg Franck (2008) as the ‘quintessence of architectural
space’. Hence, spatial structure also serves the function of
> accessibility, whose measure, according to Bill Hillier, re-
sides in its ‘depth’. This determines the number of rooms that
must be traversed before the structure – i.e. from the entrance
to one’s own room – has been fully penetrated.
The orientation of the spatial structure in relation to con-
crete activities and social relationships (i.e. the distribution of
individual or common rooms within an > apartment) is deci-
sive for our experience of architecture in use alongside formal
principles of order (i.e. > centring (radial, ring-shaped), the
> sequence, grid or stack, or free grouping).
In contrast to the geometric composition of a spatial
structure, an ‘organic’ architecture that develops from within,
as advocated for example by Hugo Häring, has its point of
departure ‘in the living processes of dwelling’. Its movement
sequences are compassed by the spaces in such a way that
they are able to unfold freely. ‘One gathers the walls around a
residential grouping; one does not order residential grouping
into rectangles.’ (Joedicke/Lauterbach 2001, 80) According
to this idea, the building fulfils its function like a human
organ.