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In relation to its basic function of > screening of an
> interior in relation to the outside, architecture is continu-
ally concerned with endowing the boundaries of various ter-
ritories – whether the room, the residence, the building, or
walled-in town – with visible and physical expression. If it is
true that the essence of an entity begins with its boundaries, is
determined by them, as Martin Heidegger (1953/1993) said,
then territory is the basic form of spatial determination, and
the architectural expression of demarcating boundaries is a
predestined act of determining its essence.
But architecture does more than to draw and clarify spa-
tial boundaries through enclosures consisting of walls, fences,
hedges and trenches; through buildings, it also occupies
ground that was formerly free, whether a building site, urban
zone, or landscape. In the process, the premises as a whole
are altered in the > context of the area. In question is more
than the presence of a house; routes have been interrupted,
views blocked, the surroundings submerged in shadow. Ac-
cess routes, odours and noises have an impact on the entire vi-
cinity. Existing as a counterpart to the territory is a no man’s
land, the fallow terrain, the terrain vague, to which no one
has made territorial claims. As an ‘indeterminate terrain’, it
offers openness in relation to use and, leeway for appropria-
tion according to individual purpose.
The private parcel of land, the field, the quarter, the com-
munal district, and the homeland: each consists of a piece of
land that, even prior to any act of building, has been laid
claim to and affectively occupied as personal or social space.
Even in the absence of any visible demarcation of boundaries,
it constitutes an interior where one is with oneself, and the
other is ostensibly foreign. The delimited territory is not only
experienced as a sphere of influence, but also as the bounda-
ries of the self, one that is marked, according to Karlfried
von Dürckheim, by the house or apartment door, for example.
‘We experience the gate as a personal boundary. We open it
in the fullest sense only to those who belong to us; if another