A R C H I T E C T U R A L A S P E C T S

O F S P A C E

ASPECTS OF PERCEPTION

The changing appearance of the environment and changing subjective responsiveness go hand in hand. Physiologists differentiate between two models of perception that cooperate in reacting to the environment, a stimulus-response model and a “look-up” model. Christoph Schierz of the ETH Zurich (2005) explains as follows, “With stimulus-response, an external stimulus is directed or controlled by a network of ‘interior switches’ and triggers a response. With ‘look-up’ perception, mental concepts of possible environmental designs are already available as ‘visual experience.’” Mental concepts are experiences learned in one’s own cultural or personal environment, or over the course of evolution, and in the development of postnatal experiences. Mental concepts guarantee constancy in perception.

The subjective world of mental concepts comprises not only visual appearance (as pattern recognition), but also an emotional and affective coloration of the perceived. A mental attribution occurs on a mentally higher level. In this way, we create “an image of space” as a mental, spatial concept. Those features and patterns important to the context have to be stored and saved together with all of their associations. Archetypical patterns include lines, crossing points, angles, the end points of lines, contrast, and color. We construct the mental concept of an objective world using learned strategies of synthesis, which reveal our learned correctional processes or “constancy mechanisms.” Hence, we generally do not perceive the altered visual experience of a color when we are wearing sunglasses. Every stimulation has a rational and an emotional feature. We attribute emotional meaning to a combination of colors. We speak of aggression or of calming, of warm or cold colors,under- or overstimulation. Formal, three-dimensional constructs are also evaluated as being harmonious or unharmonious.

ASPECTS OF THE DESIGN PROCESS

Hugo Kükelhaus has said, “The relative point is the one in between.” In addition to the repertoire of color design methods discussed above, it is also necessary to learn and consider a basic repertoire of architectural design methods. In order to effectively evaluate a spatial specification and its design quality, potential problems, design opportunities, and challenges, you have to know the “stuff” of which the spaces or rooms are made. A repertoire always consists of a number of elements and their laws of application. In comparison, a language consists of letters that form words, which can be joined to form sentences according to the rules of grammar. Spatial design is a process, meaning a systematic construction of a design.

Barcelona pavilion, floor plan Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, spatially organized form

“Design” is used generally for positive or negative volumes (interior space or architectural form). To design is to implement a program, a task in a spatially organized form, or in a psychologically and physically perceivable form. A design process must aim to apply the means of design – that is, a repertoire of problem-specific solutions to human life processes. The social relevance, the value of the design, is based on the interrelation between the user and the space. In this interaction, spatial perception and spatial experience trigger “behavior” in human beings.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO DESIGN?

To design is to realize an intellectual concept or idea. The Greek word “eidos” (the seeing, the beholding; appearance, form, beauty; idea, method, nature, essence), is very close to our word “image,” in the sense of a “primal image” or “archetype.”The idea, in the sense of the “internal image” of something, obviously needs an appropriate means of expression. During the planning stage, our ideas require means of spatial presentation that involve drawing, painting, and three-dimensional models.

Note: If spatial design means designing the interrelation between people and space, then a distinction must be drawn between;

The formal aspects of the space (this affects color with regard to its aesthetic value as well as choice of color and material); and
The functional aspect of the space (here, color addresses educational, therapeutic, psychological, religious, and other factors).

Formal features define the space as it is, its architectural structure. Functional features define the space in relation to the task it is meant to fulfill, in other words, its performance and effect. With architectural structural features we are dealing with objective, quantifiable factors. The performance and effect of a space, however, depend mainly on the user’s subjective goals, personal experience, and expectations.This area of design is thus more difficult to plan and present objectively.

THE PERFORMANCE OF SPACE ACCORDING TO FEATURES

Organization of processes
Assigning jobs and distances
Conditions for lighting and exposure, acoustics, climate control, etc.

The effect of a space, the “perceptual space,” the emotional aspects of its appearance, the environment, can be described by terms such as;

Image
Identification potentiality
Originality
Symbolic value
Atmospheres, such as prestigious, comfortable, rustic, domestic, ceremonial, religious.

Barcelona pavilion, inner courtyard, psychologically and physically perceived form

One danger is that the planning phase of the architectural form is rationally the easiest to achieve, while the “emotional value” of the space is often ignored, because here, planners would have to deal with the users’ subjective opinions, social backgrounds, psychological sensations, and physiological structures.

A brief, effective selection from the complex repertoire of the means of architectural design is as follows:

The properties of elements
The relationships of elements
The relationships between elements and the people who perceive them.

PROPERTIES OF ELEMENTS

The basic categories of dimensions that humans perceive are the point, line, surface, and body. A point, a line of points, a hole, a row of holes, or a group of holes can be used to accentuate or join surfaces. A “point for point” layout and arrangement of a space often deals with a “vertical exaggeration” of a space. An altar at the intersection of nave and transept anda baptismal font in a Christian baptistery serve to produce vertical exaggeration, dramatization, and mystification. They become symbols of authority. Learn more...

A line is geometrically the extension of a point in one direction. Some known linear elements are supports, columns, beams, girders, rafters, trusses, brickwork frames (pilaster strips), fireplaces, etc.These are all Structural elements. Trellises, moldings, reveals, skirting boards, door and window frames, stucco work, traceries, or flutes are often associated with stylistic features of particular periods and are mostly used as decorative elements. In contemporary architecture, structural components are often developed decoratively and applied spatially.

Medial lines in architecture La Tourette,

Le Corbusier

Relationships between elements and the viewer Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Architecture: Hascher and Jehle

For this reason, the human figure has been used throughout history as a familiar proportional element for the assessment of space: Le Corbusier liked to use the Modulor, which he developed as a tool in his large buildings. In this context, two terms should be considered individually: absolute and relative scale.

Absolute scale is directly related to gauged units of measure such as the centimeter, meter, or inch. Familiar, ergonomic norms and standard scales such as those for tables, seats, windowsill heights, or door dimensions (often 76 x 200 cm or 88.5 x 200 cm) belong to the absolute scale category. We can make judgments and comparisons based on these “learned” scales if they are not distorted by perspective.
Relative scale is the opposite. There are distortions in scale and proportion for which no concrete solutions exist and which are difficult to relate to or evaluate in relation to space using mass, scale, length, width, or height.

Independent of linear, level, or physical dimensions, there are other optical types of forms. First, there are the simple forms that we see as continuous.

We record these holistically and in an abbreviated manner:

Straight surfaces, boards, walls, windowpanes, supports, beams
Rounded or curved elements such as domes, barrel vaults, wave forms.

Physical, structural components like cubes, spheres, cylinders, and pyramids are preset or regular and easy to define geometrically. They include simply designed furniture and fixtures. Irregular forms are difficult or impossible to define geometrically. These forms are common in organic architecture or the formal language of anthroposophical architecture and Art Deco. The work of architect Antonio Gaudi and sculptor Henry Moore provide good examples of this.

Structural principles of how the components are joined
Static principles of the flow of forces
Physical structure of the shell, and of heat flow
Historical and stylistic principles of a certain age
Aesthetic criteria of a proportional relationship, for example, the golden section, Le Corbusier’s Modulor, or the Japanese ken (the standard scale of the tatami floor mat).

Interplay of lines, surfaces, and forms La Tourette, Le Corbusier

Interplay of lines, surfaces, and forms Opera House

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ELEMENTS

Relationships between architectural elements are topological, positional relationships in space. As a rule, this concept involves the question of qualitatively describable positional relationships such as arrangement, penetration, and enclosure.

Arrangement is the simple addition of elements in loose relationships, such as next to each other, under or above, neighboring, lying nearby, group formations, piling, lining up, heaping. Loose relationships can continue until they meet an edge or a surface.
Penetration means interlocking, melting, connecting, overlapping, so that volumes pervade each other.
Enclosure means being contained in, being an element of, being surrounded by. These metrical relationships are qualitatively describable, positional relationships, which can be evaluated according to their dimensions, distances, angles, and radiuses. Relationships between elements in a space are determined by their positions within the visual field.This factor alone creates hierarchies within the spatial composition. Yet hierarchies, as Pierre von Meiss explains, are also formed by elements of equal value, by axial symmetries, by the value of dominance, subdominance, and accents of an element, and can be seen in the context of all spatially enclosing elements.

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ELEMENTS AND THE VIEWER

People relate to the meaning of architectural elements in space according to their own spatial experience and, thus, the absolute or relative mass of these elements in relation to other surfaces in space and to the quality of mental concepts.

We perceive planes, lines, and forms in concrete dimensions frontally.We perceive walls, boards, sliding screens, and rows of columns “laterally,” as structural components that guide or separate.They have relative proportions and dimensions, as in the two following positional relationships. We perceive floor surfaces, platforms, steps, sunken floors, stages, and mezzanines as “underlying.” We see ceilings, canopies, arbors, balconies and galleries, ceilings, suspended ceilings, and roofs as “overlying.” However, these relative dimensional relationships in the visual field are not structurally fixed; their meaning depends rather on the viewer’s changing location and changing visual focus. The speed of perception, in other words, the recording of information per unit of time, determines the viewer’s subjective interpretation.

Architectural space is a space of behavior, and its spatial model involves location, path, field, zone, area, and border.

Developmental psychology points out that the ability to perceive space is developed in three stages:

A child’s topological experience in spatial contact to the main parent
Projective recognition of spatial depth, foreground, and background
Euclidean recognition, which is geometrically characterized as right angles, parallels, and radiuses.

Meisenheimer is of the opinion that people seek simple Euclidean basic patterns, symmetrical axes, and central points. Even the relationship to discontinuous and irregular elements, with rounded, curved, or free forms, can be “understood” as aesthetically exciting, and a deviation only in the context of regular systems of order.

Hence, the line of vision becomes the composition principle of the architectural “musical score.”

Spatial perception is similar to color perception in that both are subjective processes. With spatial vision, the two eyes form the visual field of the “spatial object.”When standing still and looking straight ahead, the eyes can register horizontally an angle of 180 to 200°; vertically above, an angle of about 55°, and vertically below, one of about 76°. However, the center of focus is reduced to one central point and increasingly diminishes towards the periphery of a fixed field.The more we focus on a point, the more focused our vision.

Note: Yet it is important to consider that our color sight takes place in a much smaller space of perception, and that in the peripheral areas our sight is always moving between perception of light/dark sensations and color vision. This can be an important aspect when positioning color spatially (for example, in a hospital ward where there is restricted spatial experience).

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