Published by Yale University Press in 1977.
page 31
Beginning about 1910 a new theoretical model emerged from the findings of the Berlin school of Gestalt (“form”) psychology. This brilliant group of theorists was able to demonstrate (and in due course to “prove” by experiment) that in fact irrational forces in the act of perceiving reacted on and transformed the object being perceived. [...] For example, a square was shown to be the most memorable and neutral form because of its orientation and regularity. The group appeared to have discovered an inventory of experimentally demonstrable prejudices which governed the human perception of external objects.
page 35
No other sense deals as directly with the three-dimensional world or similarly carries with it the possibility of altering the environment in the process of perceiving it; that is to say, no other sense engages in feeling and doing simultaneously. This action/ reaction characteristic of haptic perception separates it from all other forms of sensing which, in comparison, come to seem rather abstract. You see and hear things figuratively and at a distance, but you touch the actual thing. You can extend haptic perception with an instrument, such as a cane, in which case the “feeling” of an object moves out to the end of the cane; but when you extend sight or sound telescopically or electronically, you continue to see and hear figuratively and at a distance.
page 46
If feelings are social, so is the emotional spatiality of the human body, with all the meanings which find expression along its boundaries, centers, and psychophysical coordinates. Indeed it is impossible to imagine a spatial organization more universal, more valued, and more immediately understandable to everyone than the one provided by the human body. All of us have been conscious of our “spatial” sensibility at one time or another, and we are most likely curious about the sensibility in other people’s worlds. The curiosity about others’ worlds not only allows us to enjoy an external expression of our private feelings, but confirms our own existence in humanity.
page 48
In the ecclesiastic architecture of the Middle Ages there was no such room as a studio or study. A monk might have had a writing table attached to the walls of a large public room (like an open stall in a modern library), or parishioners might meditate privately in small open chapels along the perimeter of a church nave. It was only during the development of secular architecture in the Renaissance that the modern studio emerged to express a new individualism and a freedom of scholarly inquiry apart from the authority of the Church. The estudiolo became a place filled with private artifacts of knowledge (books, paintings, globes, and scientific instruments) which a single person could reserve for his exclusive use. Indeed, the modern movement toward individualism, which we are still witnessing today in the demand for studio rooms and studies (or offices in some cases) for each member of the family, is making the house into a more “public” place.
page 59
All human movement traces complex spatial configurations. Its forms can be seen as a compounding of movements through the spatial axes—a process continually changing in time. Curvilinear and diagonal motions are developed in relation to the two axes, while spiral and helical motions are developed in relation to three axes. It is interesting to note that movement in two axes or on plane, such as walking, running, and most forms of human locomotion, is the most prevalent mode in a typical day’s activities. Movement in one dimension, such as diving into the water (a very tightly defined and restricted movement), and movement relative to three dimensions, such as the baseball player’s wind-up (a very spatially complex and dynamically changing movement), are both exceptions to our normal patterns.
Although we are capable of an infinite range of movements, most of us move within a fairly narrow range of our possible spectrum. One of the critical determinants of this range is the built environment: the spaces and stuff that we construct and inhabit.
page 62
Man can climb into and out of a canyon, but traditionally his way into and out of a vertical shaft must be aided, usually by some form of a mechanical lift. He is therefore rendered somewhat less independent and considerably less mobile. He is now the object of an operation, not the subject of an action, and this has important implications for his sense of himself and his strength and vitality.
page 66
The Building as a Stage for Movement
If one combines the diagonal, the most dynamic single axis, with the spiral, the most spatially complex configurations for body movement, one produces the basic form of Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International. Even the static model of this unbuilt Utopian vision seems to streak and spin through space, implying a movement which begins with the building itself but which shoots out into space and the future. Indeed, the inner cylinder of the structure itself, housing conference and meeting rooms, was to have revolved about its axis once a year. There is an excitement here which goes beyond technology to man’s role as an active agent.
If this vision acts as a call to move, it also implies a stage and arena for the movement and for complex interactions of many bodies in motion. In those Russian posters the energy of the bodies was more than the sum of the parts. Compositionally a new whole was made by the relationship of the bodies to one another and by their further relationship to built or planar form.
Similarly, buildings can encourage a choreography of dynamic relationships among persons moving within their domains. Hans Scharoun accomplishes this in the foyer of his Berlin Philharmonic Concert Hall by slipping cascades of stairs over and under one another in diagonal relationships that begin to challenge one’s sense of order and orientation. A surprisingly similar and equally dynamic phenomenon can be seen in Moore/Turnbull’s Faculty Club in Santa Barbara. In both places people and their paths spin out a somewhat frenetic and highly energized spatial configuration. The potential disorientation forces on us an awareness of our own movements as well as our spatial relationship to one another. The tendency toward disorientation seems acceptable, even healthy, because it is so overt.
page 71
It would be possible to generate a whole choreography of movement through the composition of textural changes alone. In fact this has been explored in recent architecture for blind persons, where important spatial cues are produced by the organization of tactile experiences.
page 107
To at least some extent every real place can be remembered, partly because it is unique, but partly because it has affected our bodies and generated enough associations to hold it in our personal worlds. And, of course, the real experience of it, from which the memory is carried away, lasts much longer than the camera’s 1/125th of a second.
