SPACE, BODY AND MOVEMENT

notes on the research of spatiality in architecture 1

Prof. Douglas Vieira de Aguiar
UFRGS / Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Department of Architecture
Abstract
My purpose with this text is to recuperate the theme of the spatial condition to
the field of architectural theory. The spatial condition has been in general a
secondary protagonist in the theory of architecture where, traditionally, the
aesthetic and technological appreciation of buildings has by far dominated over
their appreciation as spatial structures endowed with symbolic and use values
that come from the way space is experienced. This spatial dimension of
architecture is acknowledged, and has its performance scrutinized, in the work
of different authors, from the end of the nineteenth century on. The work
presented in what follows aims at circumscribing what is specific in this
architectural knowledge and, moreover, to show that the theories given by these
authors present a conceptual convergence, and often coincidence, so
configuring today a clearly identifiable line of research. Yet this review has not
the ambition of exhausting the variety of literature that has dealt with this
subject. In fact, more important than these authors is the way the concepts they
have presented, during this last century, have become articulated in the
formulation of a theory of space. Moreover the ambition here is to raise in the
reader architect, researcher or student the curiosity for the knowledge about
the way spatiality works in architecture.
Delimiting the field
The research of spatiality in architecture is focused on the role of space
conceptual and experiential in architectural culture. The concepts of space
and spatiality, explored in what follows, were first elaborated in the research of
the German art historians of the end of the nineteen century the so called
historians of the Einfhlung a line of research whose principles will be
incorporated some years later in the theoretical foundations of the modern
movement. Among these principles is the realization of the spatial condition
from the standpoint of the body in movement; space would be conceptualized
and assessed in view of the architectural promenade, the quality of this
experience and the way the relationship between bodies in movement, walls
and furniture happens, either at the building or at the urban scale. The concept
of spatiality defines a natural quality; one that comes from the form of space
and from its inherent directionality. The value of spatiality is naturally given by
the bodys performance in space that is, the way the accommodation of the
body to space happens. So the concept refers to the (degree of) interaction of
two elements of architecture; space and body or, to put it more specifically, the
form of space and the movement of the body(ies). Spatiality so combines the
concepts of space (geometry) and movement (topology). In terms of its
materiality i.e. space as spatial matter, the research on spatiality is concerned
1

This article was first published in Arqtexto/Propar 8, Porto Alegre, Novembro 2006, pp. 74-94.

with the characteristics and properties of the void; the space left empty between
objects, the shape of this void, its mode of arrangement both at the scale of
building interiors and at the scale of urban interiors. Spatiality is more focused
on the ground than in the figure. The void is naturally the spatial domain of the
body, the scenario where the movement of the body(ies) happen, so carrying on
what is known in architecture as activity or function and, in the realm of the
design procedure, as the program. In fact function comes true by means of
spatiality.
What would be then the relevance of the research focused on spatiality?
Spatiality has a dynamic; the form of space and the movement of the body
interact and modify the each other. So spatiality is not neutral; it may either help
or prevent the proper performance of the body. Research on spatiality seems to
be essential in architecture as far as it propitiates the assessment of the way
spaces work in view of the demands of the body or, to put it politically, demands
of people, individually and collectively. Eventually the acknowledgement of
architecture from its spatiality aims at the recuperation of the essential values of
architecture as social art.
In antiquity
Yet the theme of spatiality has just recently been converted into an object of
theoretical reflection in the field of architecture, the fact is that from earliest
times human knowledge has been dealing with and conjecturing about the
nature of space, especially in philosophy, where two concepts of space were
formulated, early in antiquity; one that present space as the recipient, the
container of all things, and another to which the notion of space would be
consequent to a perceived relation between objects. The first corresponds to
the concept of chora which, according to Plato, would be the material recipient
of all things; an abstract condition that could only be apprehended by reason.
Aristotle, in opposite direction, brings the concept of space to the human scale;
space, for him, results from a relationship between the body and the objects.2
The concept of space has a special role in the thought of the later philosophers.
Among these Archytas suggests that space wouldnt be a simple extension of
air, neutral and deprived of qualities. In a different way space would keep
inherently a sort of primeval atmosphere that would be endowed with tension 3.
It is remarkable that yet in this early period of mans history Greek philosophy
comes to acknowledge the concrete existence of the void and moreover of its
configuration, its mode of arrangement that, in any case, would be something
active and effective element; not neutral in any case. More recently the polarity
between the concepts of space given by Plato and Aristotle is in a certain way
solved by Newton in his distinction between absolute space and relative space.
Accordingly absolute space, chora, by its very nature and without any external
relationship, would remain eternally static and the same. Relative space would
be a part of the absolute space defined by our senses on the basis of the
position of our bodies. The distinction suggested by Newton sets up a
separation between the abstract concept of space (mathematical and
geometrical) and the space of experience; a separation that has made anything
but to grow in the current tendency of disciplinary specializations.
The kinesthetic dimension of space
2
3

Jammer, M. Concepts of Space. Dover Publications, New York, 1993. p.17.

Ibid. p. 10.

It is not though before the end of the nineteenth century that the concept of
space was introduced in art theory. And it is in architecture that a more
anthropological concept of space will then emerge; for it is in the context of
architecture that the body, the human body, has become the reference for the
experience and perception of the built spaces. This new approach in the
conceptualization of architectural space was influenced by the research on then
emerging perceptual psychology and also on what became known as the theory
of empathy, the Einfhlung. Both emphasized the role of the body and its
kinesthetic disposition to the processes of perception and cognition. In this
context, space, also in architectural theory, becomes something associated to
the movement of the body. This spatial mode of conceptualizing architecture will
become dominant in the first half of the twentieth century. In the initial period,
the last decade of the nineteenth century, the concept of space (raum) emerges
as a central theme in the research of a group of German art historians and
critics 4. These works show, in their speculative originality, indications of an
emerging modern spatial sensibility 5. Among these authors it will be particularly
relevant in the research of spatiality the works of August Schmarsow, Adolf
Hildebrand and later, Paul Frankl.
Schmarsow describes, in his words, the spatial essence of architecture. His
work is acknowledged as the starting point of a new conception of architecture
as spatial art: He emphasized the viewers movement, physical as well as
imagined, and its role in the projection of individual feelings into the static
spatial form 6. Opposed to the then dominant tendency of visuality coupled with
monumentality, Schmarsow presents an approach where architecture is
perceived and understood from the interior. He looks for what he calls the
spatial kernel and suggests that this element is what will justify a relationship
between the whole and the parts. This essential element would present itself as
evident to common sense, something self-referential and naturally assimilated
by culture. Schmarsow suggests that the kernel would be in the observer; the
observer in movement, and that the experiential essence of architecture can
only be lived if one has the capacity of putting him or herself in this position of
being a center and from this position intuit the spatial logic of each situation. In
his words:
As soon as we have learned to experience ourselves and ourselves
alone as the center of this space, whose coordinates intersect in us, we
have found the precious kernel, the initial capital investment so to speak,
on which architectural creation is based even if for the moment it
seems no more impressive than a lucky penny. Once the ever-active
imagination takes hold of this germ and develops it according to the laws
of directional axis inherent in even the smallest nucleus of every spatial
idea, the grain of mustard seed grows into a tree and an entire world
surrounds us. Our sense of space (raum gefuhl) and spatial imagination
(raumphantasie) press toward spatial creation (raumgestaltung); they

Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou (Eds.): Empathy, Form, and Space. Problems in German
Aesthetics, 1873-1893, The Getty Center Publication Programme, Santa Monica 1994.
5
For an extended analysis of the work of the German art-historians of the Einfuhlung see Richard A. Etlin, Aesthetics
and the spatial sense of self, in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, volume 6, number 1 winter 1998, pp. 1-19.
6
Bettina Khler (1998); Architecture History as the History of Spatial Experience, in: Daidalos, No. 67, pp. 36-43.

seek their satisfaction in art. We call this art architecture: in plain words,
is is the creatress of space (raumgestalterin) 7.
Present in the words of Schmarsow is a fundamental concept in the subsequent
developments of architectural theory; the concept of directionality as something
related to the movement of the body. This opens to him the realization of the
germ of architecture; something that he sees in those first movements in the
process of architectural creation, actions that should happen under the
guidance of the laws of the directional axis. This seems to be the central issue
in Schmarsows work; the identification of the basic, the elementary rules that
would be present even in the smallest fragments of any spatial idea. What rules
would be these? Would they be related or even originated in the common sense
inherent to each and every culture?
Subsequent conceptual developments of spatiality in architecture would be from
then on closely linked to axiality, the directional axis, associated to the
movement of the body. This way of approaching architecture would become, in
the turn for the twentieth century, the foundation of architectural theory. What
would be then the laws of the directional axes? Schmarsow suggests that the
most important direction in a spatial structure is the direction of the free
movement that is forward, and that our vision, by virtue of the eyes positioning
would define a dimension of depth: Only when the axis of depth is fairly
extensive will the shelter the hideout - grow into a living space in which we do
not feel trapped but freely choose to stay and live.8 It is implicit in these words
the relation between axiality and depth; in fact the condition of depth of any
spatial situation as the measurement of its axiality. For Schmarsow depth would
be the most specific dimension of architecture. This naturally implies in the
acknowledgement of the kinesthetic dimension of the body as it dives into the
depths of architectural space. This would be the embryo of what, three decades
later, Le Corbusier would call the architectural promenade. Eventually
Schmarsow anticipates the contemporary notion of spatial system as he
suggests that any spatial situation could be analysed as one realizes its
directionality, as something that would be necessarily constituted in a dialectic
way, by opposing forces; that result in the internal structure of that spatial
situation that, if it was not for that, would be, according to him, a mere cluster of
walls 9.
In the line of the philosophers of the Einfuhlung the work of Adolf Hildebrand
deals with the relation between form and appearance. Hildebrand distinguishes
between the visual and the kinesthetic and suggests that the observer in
movement will divide the total appearance in many visual impressions that are
connected by the movement of the eyes. He suggests that for this observer the
act of seeing becomes a sort of scanning and that the resulting perception
would be no more visual but kinesthetic; it would propitiate the necessary
elements for an abstract vision of the form that is now composed from a
temporal sequence of images 10. Hildebrand anticipates the demonstration of
the spatial condition by means of a sequence of frames; a resource from then
on utilized by architects and scholars, from Le Corbusier to Cullen and so many
7

Schmarsow, A. The essence of architectural creation, em Empathy, Form, and Space, op.cit. p. 286-7.
Frankl, P. Principles of Architectural History, MIT Press, 1982, p. 14.
9
Ibid, p. 292.
10
Hildebrand, A. The problem of form in the fine arts, in Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou (Eds.):
Empathy, Form, and Space, op.cit. p. 229.
8

others. He also anticipates the contemporary notion of spatial configuration as

something that emerges from an arrangement of objects and moreover from the
acknowledgement that the limit of any object would be, in a strict way, also the
limit of the body of air that surrounds it. Hildebrand explores, for the first time in
architectural theory, the theme of the void and more precisely the focus on the
form of the void. He says:
Objects thus have to be used to build up a total space and create what
one could call kinesthetic framework, which though discontinuous
nevertheless suggests a continuous total volume. In this way the
individual object becomes a structural component; its position within the
void is defined by the general spatial development and by its own
capacity to evoke and stimulate our idea of space .11
The realization of this kinesthetic framework seems to coincide with the spatial
kernel, the essence of architecture, as it is described by Schmarsow. The
arrangement of the objects, as it results in a global configuration, ends up
necessarily by defining the spatial logic of the void. This way of conceptualizing
spatial configuration is also grounded in the notion of depth. Hildebrand
acknowledges that our imagination apprehends space by advancing into depth
to the full extent of our visual field .12 Aftermaths of this way of realizing
architecture would appear in the spatial analyses elaborated by Paul Frankl
twenty years later. 13
Frankl acknowledges, in the introduction of his book, the influence of
Schmarsows ideas in the conception of his method. In his report on the
developments of architecture between 1420 and 1900, Frankl presents a
method of analysis where the description of spatiality is a key element. His
categories are spatial form, corporeal form, visible form and purposive intention.
Frankl works basically with plans in the description of the spatial form and
explains the evolution of the styles by means of the polarity between two modes
of composition; one based upon addition, the other on the subdivision of a preconceived whole. The foundation of this spatial description is the geometry
given in the comparison of architectural plans. Further in his category purposive
intention Frankl deals with the cultural characteristics and social processes
related to spatial configuration. He focuses his attention in one precise aspect of
this relation that is how much the spatial concept given in a building - and its
equipment or furniture - is adequate in view of the activities it was designed for.
This formulation of the problem takes the Vitruvian commodity to a superior
intellectual benchmark where meaningful connections may be verified between
architecture, art and other aspects of culture.14 In the concept of purposive
intention, as it is elaborated by Frankl, function or activity becomes spatial as he
specifies in architecture two components in principle autonomous although
closely related; the background (the building or urban setting) and the event
(the movement of the bodies). Frankl says:
When I speak of purpose in architecture, I mean that architecture forms
the fixed arena for actions of specific duration, that it provides the path
for a definite sequence of events. Just as these have their logical
11
12
13
14

Ibid. p.239.
Ibid. p. 243
Frankl, P. Principles of Architectural History, op.cit.; originally published in Germany in 1914.
The work of Robin Evans would utilize years leter this same procedure.

development, so the sequence of spaces, and so too the principal and

secondary passages existing within each space, have their logic .15
Frankls description are thoroughly founded in the notions of pathway and route.
He describes spatial sequences that result from the movement of the body(ies)
in space. These would perform the event.16 The notion of event, realized as
something systemic, is made clear in his distinction between the Renaissance
and Baroque modes of composition:
When space is composed by addition, the network of movement
disintegrates into isolated static points strung along connecting, quiet,
intermediary axes, and on the other hand, when the space is composed
by subdivision, it becomes the arterial system of a continuous flow.17
Frankls introduces the notion of network of movement for describing the totality
of the possible movements in a spatial situation. Moreover he elaborates further
the notion of axiality; bodies moving along axes, a notion that would, some
years later, become one of the foundations of the theoretical thinking of Le
Corbusier. He suggests that the description of human activity either
individually or collectively puts something logic and conceptual in the pure and
inanimate geometrical space. Frankl associates the descriptive necessity of an
idealized movement of bodies with the natural need for an understanding of the
architectural space. In this line he anticipates the concept of intelligibility at a
time, the beginning of the twentieth century, characterized by the emergence of
a variety of new building types. In this respect Frankl says:
Many people can surrender themselves to poetic or sentimental moods
on a well-preserved medieval castle, but only the few who have a vivid
conception of the weapons and the conduct of war in that period will
understand it.18
Frankl in this line points out the crucial necessity for a rewriting of the history of
architecture, and of culture by extension, by means of the history of
architectural programs. Frankl sees in the program of any building, even that
one without any artistic intention, a document of cultural history. At the limit of
the concept he suggests that it would be the practical and material certainty of
purpose that comes to determine the building program and so the spatial form,
but eventually only intention would give to purpose an artistic character.
The architectural promenade
Yet at the end of the nineteenth century the theoretical discussion promoted by
the scholars of the Einfuhlung reverberates in the methods of teaching
architecture out of Germany. Contemporary reports tell that at the French
School of Beaux-Art the assessment of student work at the architectural studio
would happen on the basis of the demonstration, coming from the student, of
the qualities he acknowledges in the spatial sequences given in his project. This
procedure was called la marche.19 Nevertheless it is in the theoretical
foundation of the modern movement that the theme of spatiality assumes a
crucial role. It is well known that the denial of the traditional urban form is
15
16
17
18
19

Ibid. p. 157.
These categories will reemerge sixty years later in the work of Bernard Tschumi.
Ibid. p. 157.
Ibid. p. 159.
Corona Martinez, A. Ensayo sobre el proyecto, Kliczkowski Publisher, asppan cp67, B Aires 1991, p. 200.

followed in this period by the introduction of a new spatiality where the body is
liberated from its imprisonment in the street grid to become free in the park, in
the green. Simultaneously, in interior spaces, buildings, spatial order would get
away from the rigors of geometry, now looking for guidance in a topological
order that should come from what has been named as the architectural
promenade. The research of the possibilities of this new spatiality, that comes
supported by the concepts of movement and activity, gets stronger in the early
stages of the modern movement, when the Bauhaus would have a historical
role to play. French philosopher and social scientist Henri Lefebvre suggests
that more than putting space in a deserved context or providing to it a new
perspective, the Bauhaus have developed a new conception, a global concept
of space: the Bauhaus people understood that things could not be created
independently of each other in space, whether movable (furniture) or fixed
(buildings), without taking into account their interrelationships and their
relationship to the whole.20 The role of such relationship between parts and
whole would just come to grow. It is also there, at the Bauhaus, in the middle of
the total project of a total art, that the concept of space tied to the observer in
movement gets even stronger. The work of Alexander Klein follows in this line.
Klein confronts himself with the necessity of explaining spatial arrangements
or spatial distributions - by means of notations for the movement of the different
actors in their use of space. He elaborates diagrams of lines; diagrams that aim
to describe, by means of lines of movement, the way activities happen. Klein,
hired by a German housing agency in 1928, utilizes these diagrams in order to
demonstrate that his proposal curiously called the functional house for
frictionless living offers, from the standpoint of spatial distribution, a better
solution than another with a typical nineteenth century Victorian layout. Klein
justifies his plan in the metaphor hidden under the name, which suggests,
according to historian Robin Evans, that casual encounters would bring about
friction and therefore they would threaten the proper performance of the
domestic realm.21 The diagrams aim at demonstrating how it is that in the
solution given by Klein casual encounters would be avoided. The route to the
bathroom, to exemplify, would be carefully isolated from the others.
The theoretical work of Le Corbusier goes deeper in this line by specifying the
description of what the German historians had, fifty years earlier, called the
vitalfuhlung which, in an approximate translation, would be the feeling or the
sensation of the spatial essence. For Le Corbusier spatial configuration must be
related to the movement of the body in the full realization of the activity, any
activity; the relation between the gradation of the axes and the gradation of
intentions emerges as the key element in spatial structuring. In his words:
An axis is perhaps the first human manifestation; it is the means of every
human act. The toddling child moves along an axis, the man striving in
the tempest of life traces for himself an axis. The axis is the regulator of
architecture. To establish order is to begin to work. Architecture is based
on axes. 22
And further on:

20
21
22

Henri Lefebvre (1974); The Production of Space, Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991, p. 63.
Evans, R. Figures, Doors and Passages, Architectural Design: 4/78 p.276.
Le Corbusier (1931). Towards a New Architecture, London: J. Rodker, p.187.

Arrangement is the grading of axes, and so it is the grading of aims, the

classification of intentions. 23
Words that reveal how much the swiss architect is keen on the instrumental
value of axiality and moreover on its role as the foundation of spatial ordering.
The architectural promenade, any promenade, would be in its essence made of
axes, axialities, breaks ups in axialities, inflections and spatial fragmentation. In
the gradation of axes it is implicit the concepts of integration and segregation;
the more visible, the less visible, the more accessible, the less accessible.
These would be for Le Corbusier the characteristics of a well-elaborated
architectural promenade, a situation where the gradation of axes will contribute,
with the spatial effect, in the realization of the activity. The structuring of
architecture by means of the architectural promenade seems to retrieve an
ancient mode of structuring space. Le Corbusier although he acknowledges the
limitations of geometry (the illusion of plans), he sees that it is in the work with
the plan that the architect thinks of the spatiality of architecture. He says:
A plan is to some extent a summary like an analytical contents table. In
a form in this way condensed that it seems as clear as crystal and like a
geometrical figure, it contains an enormous quantity of ideas and the
impulse of an intention. 24
In these words he has made operative, in the spatial mode, the concept of
program in architecture; the visualization of the architectural promenade as a
means of setting up the spatial logic required by the program and by the
situation. In this aspect the plan description is central in the Corbusian method.
In an article published in the LEsprit Nouveau Corbusier shows how and why
he regards the plan as the main instrument in the organization of architectural
and urban form.25 For that he looks for support in the work of historian Auguste
Choisy on the spatial organization of the Acropolis of Athens, where he shows
how the apparently free spatial arrangement displayed by that group of
buildings is in fact the product of a careful consideration of lines of sight that
would allow for a distant visualization of the ancestral panorama that extends
from the Pireus to Mount Pantelic.26 The plan in this case, he says, is conceived
for a distant view and adds: the apparent disorder of the plan only deceives
the fool .27 Crucial in this then new mode of composition is the presence of the
space-time dimension, essentially topological and centered on what is offered to
the observer in movement.
The emergence of spatiality to a position of prominence inside the body of
doctrine(s) of the modern movement will be synthesized and published
internationally in the work of Siegfried Giedion. He shows how the
dissemination in architectural culture of the notion of space-time will put the
architectural promenade as a central element in the modernist theory. Giedion
is acknowledged as having produced the first known history of architectural
space. He brings from physics to architecture this then new and revolutionary
space-time standpoint. He attempts to show that, in the same way as for
23

Ibid. p. 187.
Ibid. p.179.
25
Le Corbusier-Saugnier, Trois rappels a MM. Les architectes. 3e. article. Em LEsprit Nouveau N4, Paris, nov 1920,
p. 457.
24

26

Gernan Hidalgo, Los Ecos de la Planta, Organizacion Logica de las Sensaciones Espaciles, em www. http://scielotest.conicyt.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0717-69962004005800020&lng=en&nrm=iso
27
Ibid. 470.

Einstein, the concept of space developed by the modernist avant-garde would

be conceived from a moving point of reference the observer in movement
and no more, as in the past, space as a static and absolute entity. Despite
some choices and exclusions that today are seen as arbitrary, Space, Time and
Architecture is likely to be the text that shows in the clearest way the
commitment of the architecture produced in the first half of the twentieth century
with the theme of movement. This space-time physical character is synthesized
in the concept of plasticity. For Giedion this would become the main category of
analysis; it will describe the degree of interaction between spatial form and the
observer in movement. In other words what matters is the quality of the
architectural promenade. By means of plasticity architecture would find its way
back to the arts, leaving behind functionalist design and engineering. For some
however the work of Giedion deserves also to be assessed in view of its naive
oscillation between the geometric and the spiritualist . 28 This criticism of Henri
Lefebvre is two folded. First, he sees Giedions difficulties in exploring in his
analysis the social use of space and, following an opposite direction, letting
himself be taken by the easier pathway of visuality. Second, Lefebvre sees as
an analytical weakness Giedions strong dependency on his platonic spatial
elaborations whereby he permanently tends to assume a pre-existing space
an Euclidean space in which an entirely new architecture happens.
After the second world war the presence of the observer in movement gets
stronger in architectural theory. Saper Vedere L'architettura of Bruno Zevi
(1948) puts this observer into the critical analysis of the history of architecture.
This implies naturally in the assumption that the history of architecture would
be, prior to anything and essentially, a history of spatial conceptions. The
descriptive method utilized by Zevi follows the path previously indicated by
Frankl as he makes it compulsory the experience of architecture as an
analytical tool. He says:
The interior space, that space that cannot be represented by any means,
that cannot be known and explored unless by virtue of direct experience,
this is the main protagonist of architecture .29
Zevi puts forward that any architecture, if it is to be understood and lived, will
take the time of our walk.30 He shows how essential it is the extension of the
concept of architecture to any enclosure produced by man; he says: the spatial
experience of architecture is extended to the city, to the streets, to the squares,
to the alleys and parks, and wherever the work of man has delimited voids,
wherever spatial enclosure has happened 31. Zevis spatial realization of the
city as architecture seems to be at the root of the doctrine of the Tendenza that
would come to flourish ten years later.32
Zevi hails the essence of the spatial conception by suggesting that although one
naturally finds in architecture the contribution of the other arts, it is in space, in
the spatial conception, in the space that surrounds and includes us, that it is
noticed, in his words,

28

Henri Lefebvre (1974); The Production of Space, Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991, p.62.
Ibid. p. 18.
Ibid. p.23.
31
Ibid. p.25.
32
Tendency of architectural thought that appeared in Italy in the beginning of the sixties, led by architects like Aldo
Rossi, Carlo Aymonino, Saverio Muratori and others.
29
30

the presence of the body that eventually will bring about the approval or
the condemnation of all aesthetic sentences in architecture . . . all the
rest is important i.e. can become important, although it will always be a
consequence of the spatial conception. Every time that, in architectural
history and criticism, this hierarchy of values is forgotten, confusion
emerges and the disorientation in respect of architecture flourish .33
In this aspect, amongst others, Zevis text remains contemporary. In fact since it
was written the disorientation in respect of architecture has made anything but
to grow. This is due, now as then, to a seemingly inherent difficulty found in the
discipline of architecture, that is its difficulty in putting forward, in an objective
and instrumental way, a more precise understanding and description of the
spatial condition. Zevi acknowledges the plan as an abstract description,
detached from any visual experience one could possibly live in a building or
urban setting. Nevertheless, following Le Corbusier, he suggests that the plan
would be the main, if not the only, instrument to be relied upon in the
assessment of the complete structure of an architectural work. It is clear here
that Zevi refers to the spatial structure; that whole that is germane to the notion
of system. Furthermore he adds: the plan is an element that, although not
sufficient, has prominence in the production of the artistic value. One shall
recall at this point a key aspect consistently present in the work of the authors
reviewed in this text that is the intrinsic relationship between spatial form and
the artistic character of architecture. Furthermore, still pursuing his quest on the
nature of architectural plans, Zevi leaves the reader with what seems to be a
seminal question: can architectural plans be improved as spatial descriptions?34
Zevis question carries a central topic in this line of research that is the search
of notations for describing the so called the spatial essence. The description of
movement, an essential part of this problem, is central in Zevis method. He
differentiates the role movement has in painting and sculpture where it is a
quality of the work of art itself from the role it plays in architecture where the
body, by means of its movement and realization of space from successive
points of view, creates himself the fourth dimension, so experiencing in this way
the essence of spatiality. Zevi suggests that this phenomenon happens only in
architecture and, because of that, it comes to be its most specific characteristic.
In Zevis method it is naturally hidden a disdain for the architecture of the
spectacle and, on the other hand, his appraisal for that architecture whose
space, according to him, subjugate us spiritually. Henri Lefebvre, in his
assessment of the role of Giedion and Zevi in the formation of contemporary
architectural theory, suggests that although these authors have undoubtedly a
place in the construction of a theory of space, they fail to disclose the political
and socio-economic implications that are kept hidden under the myth of spatial
autonomy.35
Lefebvres criticism certainly does not apply to what comes next in the pathway
followed by the modern movement in architecture. At the end of the fifties the
condition of spatiality starts to be associated with what has been called human
interaction in the work of a group of young architects, the Team Ten. In the
words of Shadrach Woods, one of the spokesmen of the group, the approach of
architecture could not be just visual; it should turn towards the creation of
33
34
35

Bruno Zevi, Saber Ver a Arquitetura (Saper Vedere LArchittettura), Martins Fontes, So Paulo, 1996, p.18
Ibid. p. 30.
This is also in Lefebvres Production of Space, op.cit.

10

mechanisms of interaction that would favor the upkeep of the communities;

spatial structures where, he suggests, function could be naturally articulated.36
Woods leaves aside the view of architecture as a result of formal composition;
plasticity would be no more a concern, from then on. Woods presents the view
of a new architecture that, naturally, will demand a new conceptual system. In
this, apparently, new structure in architectural thinking the ideas of time and
movement are retained yet detached from the plastic arrangement, the
composition. In a different way space and time become part of a new concept
that will be known as the stem. Although the concept has a physical
correspondence it goes beyond the formal character to comprehend the notions
of activity and interaction. The stem defines a mode of spatial distribution based
upon a topological order that, at least in theory, would propitiate that people
meet naturally and that non-programmed activities could happen. The concept
would imply in a spatial system of support. Woods, in putting in practice this
idea, rejects the mentality of zoning and offers the stem as an alternatives way
of dealing with function, a manner that would transcend the notion of space and
to focus on human mobility in this space, a notion that is germane to the
concept of spatiality as it is given at the outset of this text.
The stem will be further developed - in the theory that underlies in the work of
the Team Ten - in the concept of web. Woods applies for the first time this
concept in a project for a district in Bilbao, Spain. He refers to the project as a
system. In fact, in a first glance, the scheme resembles anything but a
circulation diagram. Aware of the inadequacy of his (misleading) representation
Woods clarifies that the web would be an environmental system and not
something just for circulation; it would provide a way of setting up an order that
comes from a higher scale, an underlying order that would make it possible
individual expression at the lower scales. More than a technical instrument the
web would be a truly poetic discovery of architecture.37 Insofar as the
dimension of time is deprived of plasticity it will assume a social connotation. In
this context the web emerges as a structuring element that, without imposing a
repressive control, would mediate the chaos given by the competition for the
advantages of a good location. Woods refuses the possibility that architecture
could emerge either from zoning or from a composition of solids and voids. In a
different way he realizes that the problems of our time are entirely new, created
by a society that would be also new, of intense mobility, and that in this context
the Euclidean geometry would be absolutely insufficient as an instrument of
design. The work of Woods and his colleagues extends the architectural
promenade to the realm of the collective and in this process extends the
concepts and categories so far utilized in the research of spatiality.
Also outstanding in this period are the ideas and practice of Greek architect
Dimitri Pikionis. And, once again, in this case, following the steps of Choisy, the
Acropolis of Athens is the scenario for a singular contribution for the studies
concerned with spatiality inside the modern movement. Pikionis has produced
in this memorable place an architectural work that is regarded by many as
belonging to the select group of the most important architectural works of the
twentieth century. This work, that is known as simply as Paths, consists of a
network of pathways that leads, in slope, to the Acropolis and further on to the
Philopappos Hill. The spatial configuration is based upon the development of a
36
37

Alexander Tzonis e Liane Lefaivre, Beyond Monuments, Beyond Zip-a-ton Le Carre Bleu n 3-e, 1999, p. 4-44.
Ibid. p. 10.

11

theoretical structure, proposed by Pikionis, that relates buildings, landscape and

memory. He departs from the work of his then student, Constantino Doxiadis,
that, as an architect, would later become widely known. In his doctorate work
Doxiadis attempts to identify the hidden system that would structure the location
of the buildings and also define the different forms of space in Ancient Greek
architectural sites, so according to him putting the buildings in harmony, both in
relation to the each other and also in relation to the landscape. Pikionis,
departing from Doxiadis thesis, offers a way of systematizing architectural
space by means of the use of polar coordinates that represent lines of visibility
having origin in the eyes of the observer.38 In this way it is structured the web
of paths that leads to the Acropolis. Pikionis is acknowledged for producing an
architecture devoted to the invisible. His Paths are regarded as attractive for
crowds, as something that enriches the lives of common people, a prototype to
be imitated, an architecture funded in the movement.39 Lewis Mumford, that has
visited the place in the fifties, has included this work amongst the few
contemporary examples in his The City in History.
In search of representations
In the beginning of the sixties Gordon Cullen, at the outset of his Townscape,
has put forward an essentially spatial definition of architecture that is seen by
him as the art of relationship. In his words:
. . . suppose that the buildings have been put together in a group so that
one can get inside the group, then the space created between the
buildings is seen to have a life of its own over and above the buildings
which create it . . . .40
Cullen develops a key concept inside the research of spatiality that is the
concept of serial vision, which unfolds in the existing view and the emerging
view. The description so elaborated offers the simultaneous visualization of the
plan, showing the sequence of positions taken by an observer in movement,
and pictures showing what is visualized from these same positions. The
principle is basically that same utilized by Le Corbusier in the well-known
description of the Vetti house. Perspective and plan compose an articulated
spatial description. In both cases the relation between plan description and
body in movement is the demonstration of the spatial effect.
The work of Herman Hertzberger (1972), in the line indicated by Le Corbusier,
retakes the theme of the spatial gradations or gradations of axes, to use the
words of the Swiss architect that are naturally described in the movement of
the bodies in the architectural space. Hertzberger shows, by means of
diagrams, a condition of space he comes to call territorial differentiation;
something that is set up, in his words, by gradations of accessibility. He
suggests that the spatial structure, if it is to be in tune with the movement of the
bodies, it should take into account the gradations of accessibility that will
structure spatially what is known in architecture as program. In the theory of
spatiality suggested by Hertzberger the rational of spatial distribution is in the
consciousness, in the architect or designer, of the distinct territorial demands
38
39
40

Alexander Tzonis, Pikionis and Tranvisibility em Thresholds 19, MIT Press, 1999, pp. 15-21.
Ibid. p. .
Cullen, G. (1961). Townscape. London : Architectural Press, p. 9
This life of its own would be retaken, forty years later, in the concept of spatial animism in the opportune work of
Karen Franck and Bianca Lepori. Franck, Karen A. and Lepori, R.B. (2000). Architecture inside out. Chichester :
Wiley.

12

and modes of accessibility required. The acknowledgement of these spatial

differences would propitiate a proper articulation of materials, light, color, etc.;
all cooperating in the construction of a spatial order that has the gradations of
accessibility as a background and essential structuring element. Hertzberger
extends the scope of the concepts of public and private by relating these same
concepts to the condition of the accessibility. In his words:
The concepts of public and private may be seen and understood in
relative terms as a series of spatial qualities which, differing gradually,
refer to accessibility, responsibility, the relation between private property
and supervision of specific spatial units.41
Hertzberger assigns a numerical order on the different gradations of the spatial
sequence, that is decomposed in the smallest amount of spaces endowed with
convexity. In his words:
By marking the gradations of accessibility of the different areas and
parts of a building on a ground plan a sort of map showing territorial
differentiation will be obtained. This map will show clearly which aspects
of accessibility exist in the architecture as such . . . so that these forces
may be intensified (or attenuated) in the further elaboration of the plan
42
.
The numerical demonstration of the territorial differentiation, as shown by
Hertzberger in his example of the Hotel Solvay in Brussels, is straight and
clarifying.
Hertzberger regards architectural space as the arena where actors, people,
accommodate themselves and, in different ways and proportions, share control.
This approach implies naturally in the definition of the type of division of
responsibilities by the care and the maintenance that different spaces should
have, in a way that the forces at play would be intensified or attenuated in the
spatial arrangement according to an aimed accommodation. Hertzbergers
theoretical elaboration is articulated, in a creative way, to his practice as
architect. An example is the work he has developed with elder people in the
seventies and eighties, situations where the concept of gradations of
accessibility has been utilized in the creation of either more integrated or more
segregate spaces, always relating spatial accessibility to the nature of activity.
Guided by his research on traditional urban settings situations praised by him
for the spatial behavior they would produce - Hertzberger recovers, in his
projects, the spatiality of these places. It becomes evident that having lived in
the Dutch architectural atmosphere of the sixties, he inherits much of the spatial
sensibility, and also the operative mode, left by the protagonists of the Team
Ten. This becomes clear in the way Hertzberger approaches the theme of the
structure - in warp and weft - as an essential element in the liberation of
creativity in architecture.
The work of Hillier and Hanson (1984) ratifies the propositions of precedent
work in this line of research and take one step further the description of
spatiality.43 In their Social Logic of Space the authors propose a description of
buildings and urban situations based upon the lines of movement given by the
41
42
43

Hertzberger, H. Lessons for Students of Architecture, Uitgeverij 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, p. 13

Ibid., p.2
Hillier, B. and Hanson, J. (1984). The Social Logic of Space. Cambridge: University Press.

13

spatial arrangement and consequent to the position of walls and furniture, in the
case of buildings, or by the spatial arrangement of buildings and open spaces,
in the case of urban settings. The authors call this description the axial map. In
the axial map the gradation of axis, visualized by Le Corbusier, gets a systemic
description. Each line of movement segment of line - has an identity that is
consequent to its position in the system that, in this case, will be the smallest
set of (straight) lines that describes a given architectural or urban situation. This
set of lines would be a sort of DNA of that situation. The axial map would
capture, recalling Schmarsows Kernel, the spatial essence. As a system of
interconnected lines, the axial map propitiates a weighted description of the
different parts of the system from the standpoint of its gradations of
accessibility. In this case the gradations, that for Hertzberger have a local
character, will have a global character that is, each line has its degree of
accessibility described. Here the systemic description, as visualized by Woods
in the sixties, would become a reality.
In the axial map the architectural promenade is extended to all spaces in a
building; lines that represent the totality of the bodies in movement as well as
the potential paths. As a synthetic description the axial map will include the
smallest set of the longest lines that cover the system; either a building or an
urban area. Movement happens, naturally, related to the gradations of
accessibility given by the situation. The set of lines of movement, after being
submitted to a computer algorithm, will be ordered topologically following the
gradations of accessibility; from the more accessible or integrated (or
integrating) to the less accessible or, if this is the case, the most segregated.
From that it emerges naturally what one could name as the main special
sequence; that Schmarsow called the kernel, Woods called it stem and Hillier,
the integration core; the set of lines endowed with the highest degrees of
accessibility in a system; be it a building, a district or a town.
The work of Hillier and Hanson has developed, with ramifications in different
countries, what is known as space syntax. This method of analysis claims to
provide an assessment of spatial distribution from the standpoint of the
information given in the diagram of lines, the axial map. Once the lines are
processed and ordered, from the more integrated to the more segregated, it
becomes possible to assess how the program - the activity, life eventually - fits
or not in the topological order observed in the situation under scrutiny. The axial
map provides a synthetic description of peoples spatial behavior. However bidimensional it has a diagrammatic value insofar as it makes spatial, in a
synthetic way, the activity or, if you want, function. In the words of Geoffrey
Broadbent, the work of Hillier represents an advance in the conceptualization of
function in architecture as far as it is funded in the acknowledgement that
buildings and cities configure space in different ways and that these different
ways may facilitate or inhibit the performance of the human activities. This
seems to be a major contribution of Hillier to the field.44
Spatiality in the historical report
In the work of Robin Evans (1978) the analysis of the plan assumes a crucial
role as an instrument of analysis of the history of architecture. Evans, a rigorous
44

Geoffrey Broadbent (1977); A plain mans guide to the theory of signs in Kate Nesbitt Ed., Therorizing a new agenda
for architecture, Princeton Architectural Press, NY, 1996, pp. 124-140.

14

historian, see in the plan a document with anthropological value and, in the line
suggested by Zevi, an account of peoples spatial behavior. In his words:
If anything is described by an architectural plan it is the nature of human
relationships, since the elements whose trace it records walls, doors,
windows and stairs are employed first to divide and then selectively to
re-unite inhabited space.45
His thesis demonstrates by means of a rich set descriptions - that includes
architectural plans, fragments of literary texts and scenes taken from paintings
of the time - the spatial transformations that have happened in the Architecture
of the Italian Renaissance when it was exported to England in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Evans shows how different are the Italian and the
English buildings of the period from the standpoint of their spatial distribution;
buildings apparently similar in their volumes, style and ornament. His
demonstration is rich and simultaneously synthetic. Evans shows what could be
named as the birth of the corridor. The central space of the Antonini Palace,
one of Evans examples, just expands longitudinally in the incipient corridor of
the Amesbury House. Zoning happens quite naturally; servants in the corridor,
gentlemen at the enfilade. Evans shows an articulation of literature, painting
and architecture collaborating in a context where the spatial forms of the
historical report the comparison of plans produce theory. Central in the work
of Evans, and accountable for its prominence in the research of spatiality, is the
way he articulates space and body throughout his descriptions of architecture.
Evans elaborates a rather generic spatial description funded in two categories;
barriers and passages, so generic as categories that apply to all architecture.
Bodies are present everywhere in Evans reports insofar as separation and
approximation between figures come to be expressed in the interplay between
barriers and passages. In this way movement, articulated in the spatial behavior
of the different actors, acts as a permanent background in Evans analyses.
The role of spatiality is also outstanding in the work of social scientist and
historian Michel Foucault. In his Discipline and Punish (1975) Foucault
describes in detail the role of spatial relationships in the development of prisons,
initially, and in a second moment, in what he calls disciplined society. Foucault
shows that the comparison between schools and prisons is not casual; prisons,
schools, lodgings and hospitals would share a sort of spatiality in which it is
intended the permanent control of each individuals space and time. He shows
how it is that in these methods focused on the social control it would be the
genesis of the modern humanism. The work of Foucault has its central issue, in
what spatiality is concerned, in something he calls the art of distributions,
something that is, in his understanding, a matter of discipline: In the first
instance, discipline proceeds from the distribution of individuals in space. To
achieve this end, it employs several techniques. 46 The method utilized by
Foucault gives continuity to the descriptive techniques utilized by the arthistorians in the beginning of the twentieth century, especially Paul Frankl,
whose work, especially in what concerns his purposive intention, is entirely tied
to the way the accommodation of the bodies in space happens. Once again,
this time in Foucaults art of distributions, accessibility and visibility, combined,
provide the key elements of spatial structuring. Foucault describes the art of
45
46

Evans, R. Figures, Doors and Passages, in Architectural Design 4/1978, pp.267 278.
Foucault, M. (1975) Discipline and Punishment, Penguin Books, Middlesex, England, p.141.

15

distributions in terms of enclosure, partitioning, flexibility (functional sites) and

interchangeability (rank); and, in a complementary way, utilizes plan
descriptions in order to demonstrate how much spatial distribution is decisive for
either the success or the failure in the control of activities.
Contemporary Spatiality
The logic of spatial continuity that is inherent to the architectural promenade
seems to be something of the past. Such a logic does not play a part in the
spatial phenomenon that goes on at the moment in the so called pervasive
urbanization; a spatial phenomenon that is typical of so many urban peripheries
in the world, especially in less developed countries. The term was coined by
Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who has been a spokesman of this new
spatiality of the contemporary metropolis that, as he suggests, would be
essentially based upon the fragment and discontinuity. 47
In a different although complementary line Lefebvre (1970) introduces the
concept of centrality as a foundation in the description of contemporary
spatiality. The concept, as it is elaborated by Lefebvre, does not keep any
relation with the geometric condition of being a center or at a center. Different
from that the condition of centrality would be something inherent to the urban
spatial form and would be distributed in it in a rather heterogeneous way. Either
with major or minor importance any point in space would be inherently a center.
In the words of Lefebvre the related notion of difference comes to specify the
concept of centrality; he says:
. . . nothing can exist without interchange, without approximation, without
proximity, without relations . . . the city produces a situation, the urban
situation, in which the different things affect the each other and cannot
exist distinctively if not for their differences. 48
Back in the argument is the notion of system; the systemic explanation of
spatiality. The condition of centrality would provide the conceptual and spatial
sewing that would relate the different elements of the urban form. Difference
defines the relationship; the sort of relationship. In his elaboration of the concept
Lefebvre relates difference to separation and segregation:
if one says difference, he says relationships and so proximity; perceived
and conceived relationships and an insertion in a double spatio-temporal
order: the close and the distant. Separation and segregation disrupt this
relationship. They constitute by themselves a totalitary order whose
strategic objective is to break the concrete totality of the urban.
Segregation confuses and destroys complexity .49
For Lefebvre difference informs and is informed; from it the urban form itself
would be produced. And, by being a result of social complexification, the urban
would carry a practical rationality that would be by definition distinct from the
industrial rationalism inherent to the new urbanization institutionally produced.
In the way paved by Lefebvre the concept of difference is also central in the
urban theory outlined by Greg Lynn. Lynn sees that the architects, if they want
to work with urban forces in their informalized state, their work must happen in a
47

Koolhaas, R. (1995). Whatever happened to urbanism? in S,L,X ,XL, OMA (with Bruce Mau), The Monicelli Press,
New York
48
Lefebvre, H. (1969). La Revolucion Urbana. Madrid: Peninsula, p. 123.
49
Ibid. p. 138.

16

setting that must be realized and thought as something dynamic. For Lynn
contemporary architecture moves; a thesis that is easily confirmed in the way
and also in the speed informal urbanization happens in so many countries. In
tune with this tendency Lynn suggests that the architects must develop
techniques that can relate gradient fields of influence with flexible yet discrete
forms of organization.50 Movement is once again a central ingredient: if
architects are going to participate in the mobile, often immaterial, shaping forces
of the contemporary city, they must embrace both an ethics and a practice of
motion .51 These are words that denounce the distance between an official
architecture and another that might be named as architecture off-road; an
architecture that was born away from the drawing-boards/computers of the
architects and grows away from the prescriptions of the masterplans. This
informal architecture of movement happens spontaneously here and there in
the contemporary metropolis; a self-produced architecture that is dependent
and stimulated by spatial opportunities, architectures that happen as fissures in
the system, spatial slits, situations that for different reasons have escaped
institutional control and almost by accident have provided the opportunity for the
action of people in space. These situations emerge, to use Lynns words, both
from the ethics and from the practice of movement. 52
In this context, more prodigal in ruptures and collisions than in continuities and
agreements, the research of spatiality has increasingly acknowledged the
kinesthetic importance of the body, individual and collective. In this line Tschumi
(1995) describes as the architectural paradox the presence in architecture of
two elements, according to him, mutually excluding; space and its use.53 There
would be in architecture a permanent disjunction between space and something
he calls the event. The event for Tschumi is a sort of conceptual tool capable of
turning the program into a spatial performance that is described in the
movement of the bodies. Tschumi describes this disjunction by means of a
polarity between the pyramid and the labyrinth. In the pyramid are structure,
permanence, reason and geometry. The labyrinth, in the opposite direction, is
chaos, transformation, intuition and topology. The description of space given in
the architectural plan carries in itself this paradox; it is simultaneously pyramid
and labyrinth.
In the disjunction between body and space Tschumi finds what he calls the
violence of architecture. He suggests that if on the one hand bodies violate
space, on the other space also violates bodies. There would be, in this line, the
violence that people produce in space simply for their presence, for its intrusion
in the controlled order of architecture; the body would disturb the order of
architecture. In the words of Tschumi each door implies the movement of
someone crossing its frame. Each corridor implies the progression of movement
that blocks it. Each architectural space implies (and desires) the intruding
presence that will inhabit it .54 In an opposite direction space will also violate
bodies. The work of Tschumi seems to carry an alarm-call that denounces the
situations and times architecture has helped to drive someones life backwards.
Tschumi also denounces the usual exclusion of the body and its experience
50

Lynn, G. (1997). An Advanced Form of Movement. In Peter Davidson and Donald Bates (Eds) Architecture after
geometry. Chicester: Academy, pp. 55.
51
Ibid. p. 54
52
ibid. p.55.
53
Tschumi, B. (1994). Architecture and disjunction, Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press.
54
Ibid. p. 123

17

from all the discourse on the logic of form.55 He also notices the disintegration of
the Vitruvian trilogy. Adequate spatial accommodation, of which the body is the
only and absolute judge, would be the only reliable parameter left.
The approach developed by Tschumi extends the role of the body far beyond
the one it plays in the controlled order of the architectural promenade. In his
words: Bodies not only move in space but generate space produced by and
through their movements.56 The prominence of movement in contemporary
architectural theory and practice indicates, for Tschumi, the necessity for the
development of notations that will improve, and enrich, the limited, and
somewhat abstract, range of traditional descriptive tools used in architecture;
plans, sections and faades. He suggests that the research in architecture
should extend the modes of representation by means of symbols capable of
describing the movement of the bodies and, in consequence, the event;
architecture would cease to perform as a background to human life to become
action itself. In the words of Tschumi, actions qualify space as much as spaces
qualify actions; space and action are inseparable and no proper interpretation of
architecture, drawing or notation can refuse to consider this fact .57 This way of
conceptualizing architecture, shared by Tschumi and the authors reviewed in
this text, will have strong impact in architectural teaching and training in the last
decade of the twentieth century.
The spatiality of the periphery
In Brazil, country where this text has been produced, the condition of spatiality
has, as anywhere, its peculiarities. The spatial configuration of the largest
Brazilian cities has retained much of the gridiron-like European traditional city,
simply by Portuguese and Spanish inheritance. Yet most of them have, during
the last century, gone through a radical process of assimilation of the spatial
practices of the modern movement, both in the urban peripheries with large
housing estates and also with the garden-city-like bourgeois suburbs. From the
second half of the twentieth century on, these institutional urban patterns the
traditional and the modern have started a complex coexistence with the
informal urbanization in all its diversity of forms and contents.
Today in the largest Brazilian cities the informal urbanization commonly called
favela increases every moment; to start with the central areas, where poorer
population predominates and small informal retail, the so called cameldromo,
expands. In the periphery the favela grows naturally as the predominant
urbanization. In this process of favelization many large housing estates have
become informally urbanized. Surprisingly, the result the unexpected spatiality
emerged from the dissolution of modernist space when it is mixed in, or with,
informal spatial patterns is not the anticipated catastrophe. Different from that
many of these places, once immersed in their way towards favelization that is
worth saying is something different from dereliction - will surprisingly show an
improvement in its spatiality. The collective body seems to be more at home; in
terms of social activity, in terms of safety and also in terms of the improvement
of local micro-economy.58 Surprising but not illogic if one looks the process of
favelization from its spatiality. The process of favelization tends to happen
55
56
57
58

Ibid. p.117.
Ibid. p. 111.
Ibid. p. 122.
Aguiar, D. e Aguiar, J. dasgarAgens (2005), film-documentary 45 min, Porto Alegre.

18

preserving the logic of path continuity, on the one hand, and the logic of
ringyness, on the other; the street always presents a way out. This elementary
rule revives the urban block right in the middle of informality.59
This sort of anthropomorphic aspect of informal urbanization corresponds, at
least apparently, to an instruction coming from something as a collective
unconsciousness. The city that is visible for everybody with street and urban
block tends naturally to become a model in the spontaneously generated
urbanization. Be it good, be it bad, one will find an order there, yet this order will
have a geometry that is difficult, if not impossible, of being described. This order
- that in fact is more a structure, a spatial structure - is funded on topology, on
the logic of the pathway, on the gradations of accessibility. This is the logic that
guarantees the rationality of so many informal urban situations in Brazil, a logic
that eventually goes against the case, as it is put forward by Koolhaas, of the so
called pervasive urbanization made up of disconnected spatial fragmentation.
Rather different from that, spatial continuity coupled with the logic of the
gradations of accessibility seem to be at the base of such informal
urbanization.60 Curiously this almost natural attention to be paid to spatial
continuity is little observed, still today, in institutional housing projects; a proper
assessment of the given spatiality is surely not among the priorities of many
architects.61
In a disciplinary context where architecture and urbanism seem to succumb in
the complexity of the real world, it has grown in importance the research on
what goes on with spontaneous urbanization. In a recent and opportune work
called A Esttica da Ginga - a title that could be roughly translated as the
aesthetics of samba, the afro-Brazilian rhythm Paula B. Jacques recuperates
the work of Brazilian artist Helio Oiticica, to architectures contemporary
theoretical scene.62 Oiticica has started with painting to further extrapolate from
the canvas to enter the production of spatial structures whose inspiration and
model was the spatiality of the favela. His work has become widely known after
being exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1970. More than
as an artist, Oiticica is well known for his theoretical production, one that
attempts to describe the new spatiality he sees in the spatial configuration of the
favela.63 In a series of works he has called as Penetraveis, that literally mean
penetrables, Oiticica offers as foundation of his composition the movement of a
participant through the labyrinthine spatial structure. But, differently from the
terrors of the classic labyrinth, in this case the observer is invited to walk on the
sand of the beach, on crushed rock, to look for poems in the bush, to play with
the parrots.64 Oiticica aims to capture the structural order of the elemens he
has observed; features he had apprehended in his daily stroll in the favela. The
work of Oiticica, more than an ode to the architecture of the favela transcends
for the way it amplifies the discussion of the city as a work of art in his concept
of environmental art. He took as his raw material elements and situations that
59

The concept of ringyness comes from Hillier and Hanson, The Social Logic of Space, op.cit.
Aguiar, D. (2005) Tradition Revisited or New Urbanism?, proceedings of the Istanbul UIA World Congress of
Architecture
2005.
61
Aguiar, D. (1998) Colises urbanas: continuidades e descontinuidades; proceedings of the 7 Encontro Nacional da
Anpur,
Porto Alegre 1998, e em http://www.vitruvius.com.br/arquitextos/arq000/esp166.asp.
Aguiar, D. (2003) Guetos Urbanos: Habitao e Centralidade em Porto Alegre, article published in Revista AU (May
2003), e em http://www.vitruvius.com.br/minhacidade/mc044/mc044.asp
62
Jacques, P. (2001) A esttica da ginga, Rio, Ed. Casa da Palavra.
63
Oiticica, H. (1986) Aspirando ao grande labirinto, Rocco, Rio de Janeiro.
64
Ibid. p.99.
60

19

today are regarded simply as pervasive urbanization. The work of Oiticica

leaves with the reader the feeling that one needs to have a trained eye to see
and properly acknowledge the spatiality of contemporary urban peripheries. In
recent times the urban periphery, and naturally its spatiality, has emerged as a
source of inspiration for contemporary culture. Curiously both in the architecture
and in the urbanism acknowledged as institutional those carried out daily by
the dominant classes spatial values have remained often neglected.
As in the past, the view of architecture as spectacle and class representation is
today dominant as are all aspects of society linked to appearance and surface.
In a different way, spatiality is depth. This is what has been shown above, from
Schmarsow to Tschumi; to fully apprehend the essence of spatiality one has to
go through the depths of space. Penetration is both physical and mental.
Physically it happens when space is experienced; through the pathway. This
experience brings about the insight, the mental penetration; the integral
realization of the spatial values as lived, as experienced. Paradoxically
spatiality so incredibly rich from the experiential standpoint is something
impossible of being represented. Research concerned with spatiality ends up by
utilizing much of the traditional set of architectural representations, which is
naturally insufficient to describe the magnitude of actual spatial experience. The
literature in the field, as it is shown above, instigates the researcher of spatiality
to utilize this knowledge in the search of an architecture and an urbanism more
tuned with the body.
In his Shintai and Space celebrated Japanese architect Tadao Ando raises the
issue of the body in architecture. In his words a place is not the absolute space
of Newtonian physics, that is, a universal space, but a space with meaningful
directionality and a heterogeneous density that is born of a relationship to what I
choose to call Shintai .65 For Ando the Shintai would be the body in its dynamic
relation with the world. Crucial, from the standpoint of spatiality, are two
concepts given in his words. The first of them is what he calls meaningful
directionality; something that contains the dimension of axiality and attempts to
make operational the obscure concept of program. Schmarsows laws of
directional axis reappear revitalized one century after in Andos text. The other,
complementary to the first, is what he calls heterogeneous density, something
that provides the essential notion of spatial gradation that is a the center of the
notion of spatiality as it is realized by Ando, and by the different authors
reviewed in this text. In his words: spatiality is the result not of a single,
absolute vision, but of a multiplicity of directions of vision from a multiplicity of
viewpoints made possible by the movement of the Shintai .66 One can easily
notice, in these words, echoes of Pikionis work at the Acropolis. Yet such a
spatial sensibility is not for sure Andos privilege. It is likely that properly formed
architects will have in general, and in a natural way, the account of spatiality.
What remains to be seen is whether such an understanding of spatial issues
and values has reached the mass of average professionals. The answer for that
is quite likely to be no. At least this is what indicates the average contemporary
commercial architecture in general, either in China or in Brazil; the globalized
thing. Current theoretical scene is not something to gather enthusiasm either,
as these words borrowed from S.Gartner show:
65
66

Ando, T. (1988). Shintai and Space. In S.Marble et al (Eds.), Architecture and Body. New York: Rizzoli p.73.
Ibid. p. 74.

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The philosophical alienation of the body from the mind has resulted in
the absence of embodied experience from almost all contemporary
theories of meaning in architecture. The overemphasis on signification
and reference in architectural theory has led to a construal of meaning as
an entirely conceptual phenomenon. Experience, as it relates to
understanding, seems reduced to a matter of the visual registration of
coded messages a function of the eye which might well rely on the
printed page and dispense with the physical presence of architecture
altogether. The body, if it figures into architectural theory at all, is often
reduced to and aggregate of needs and constrains which are to be
accommodated by methods of design grounded in behavioral and
ergonomic analysis. Within this framework of thought, the body and its
experience do not participate in the constitution and realization of
architectural meaning .67
The statement takes one naturally back to the words of Zevi when he touches
the Achilles heel of architectural education: since we dont have a definition of
the consistency and of the character of architectural space, it has been missed
the exigency for representing it and for propagating it. For this reason
architectural education has been totally inadequate.68 And today, probably
more than in Zevis time, it has remained amongst the average architectural
culture, an almost generalized disregard of the spatial condition, something that
tends to be heightened with the predominance of surface and visuality in
contemporary life. This situation leads naturally to a lack of spatial sensibility in
many educators of architecture. In this scene it is not uncommon that courses of
architectural theory, history and design, so fundamental in the construction of
an architectural culture, leave aside the concern with spatiality. This text was
produced with the aim of answering, yet tentatively, the demand for this kind of
knowledge.
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