315In aesthetics, we encounter the notion of the special
impact of the awesome or the immeasurable, which evokes
sensations of sublimity, originally through our experience of
nature, e.g. viewing a mountain range. Large buildings also
seem immeasurable when their dimensions can no longer be
grasped by the senses. Since the idea of the immeasurable is
nonetheless accessible to thought, such structures are a stimu-
lus to mental activity. Because the sublime surpasses sensory
perceptibility, it is strictly speaking unrepresentable, and is
hence all the more a special challenge for art. Precisely when
our sensory experience encounters limits, we are stimulated
and even drawn towards the often disturbing experience of
the insufficiency of our sensory capacities. The everyday un-
derstanding of the sublime, however, tends to swing between
empty pathos and a flattened-out reference to the noble,
dignified or solemn. In fact, the sublime slides quickly from
the highly serious into the utterly ludicrous. We encounter
the sublime in architecture primarily in the religious sphere,
where majestic dignity is intended to generate impressions of
the supernatural, which penetrates our awareness in relation
to our boundedness by the profane realm. Transferred into
the political world, such overpowering effects risk converting
architecture into an instrument of totalitarian terror; on the
other hand, they also play a role in generating the moving or
thought-provoking effects of memorials and historic sites.
Extreme > size is frequently mentioned among the ar-
chitectural resources responsible for generating sensations of
sublimity. Such effects come about primarily through impres-
sions of limitlessness that emerge through the impossibility
of compassing an architectural ensemble. Alongside size, the
use of arrays of identical elements, for example closely posi-
tioned and seemingly limitless rows of columns, also play a
role, as proposed by Étienne-Louis Boullée. Effective here is
not simply the visual effect as such, but even more so the sen-
sation of being led into an unattainable distance through the
sequence of elements. The individual’s confrontation with