FORM

In modernism period exist three connected words: forms, space, and design.

There is an ambiguity with the term form:

1. It means SHAPE which is the property of things as known to the sense.

2. It means ESSENCE property of things to know with the mind.

FORM IN ANTIQUITY

PLATONE distinguishes FORM, know with the mind and THING know with the sense. He argues two different kinds of worlds.
World of idee and world of sense. In the first the form or idea is perfect, and it is only known with the mind and not with the view, in
contrast the thing is known only with the view and not with the mind.

ARISTOTELE refused to accept that forms had any absolute connection with the materiality of the objects. Form was what the
thing not yet became, which strictly relates to the process of creation of form in the mind of artist.

NEO PLATONISM AND RENESSANCE

PLATINUS AND FICO identify beauty as independent from matter and form. Form was generally used as synonym of shape.

ALBERTI theory was based upon Pythagorean theory of numbers and mathematics. It is possible to project whole forms in the
mind of the people with no use of materials. This implies the separation of the two terms of thing and idea.

POST RENEISSANCE

Form antiquity the use of form was to mean only shape. The transformation of form into a more dynamic and vital concept started in
Germany in the 1790s and until 20th century remained confined to German speaking countries. The new interest in form developed
from the philosophy of aesthetic perception by Kant and from the theories of nature and natural generation by Goethe.

KANT

He argued that beauty lay not in objects themselves, but in the process by which they were perceived. In these terms, form has a
key role, and it is exclusively link to the view of them. Form was a property of the spectator’s mind.

GOETHE

He criticized the methods of biological classification developed by Curvier and Linneaus, where they categorized plants
according to their parts and components. He argued that this system failed to consider the wholeness of the plants and its quality
as a vital thing. His alternative method proposed the existence of an URFORM, an archetypal original plant from of all other plants
derived. He argued that form is strictly related to the interior spirit of the objects. He wants to create a theory of form in which is
considered the aspects of nature and art like a continuous movement.

PHILOSOPHICAL IDEALISM

In the early 19th century, a tendency to separate the mental category from the property of objects. HEGEL argued that forms a
property to the top of other things and it is accessible only by the mind.

VISHER saying that form is a surrogate of the idea, and it is the role of the artist to emancipate this idea.

19TH CENTURY:
Kantian ideas for whom form was exclusively a property of perception.
Goethe who argued that form was a property of things.
Hegel who argued that form was a property above thing and knowable only to the mind.

FORMALISM

There were two philosophical schools in Germany in this period:

1. The idealists who were concerned with the signification of form.
2. The formalists who were concerned with the perception of form.

The two writers who influenced the use of form where Woelfflin and Hildebrand.

WOELFFLIN

He discussed how forms of architecture could express a mood or emotions. Physical forms express a character only because
we possess a body. Woelfflin believed that form its way out of matter and his propositions arise some interesting observation:
 1. He considered ornaments as an excess of form.
2. He argues that if form belongs to the viewer’s perception, then changes in architecture must be understood primarily in
terms of changes in the mood of vision. It must be understood primarily in terms of changes in the mood of vision.

HILDEBRAND

He distinguished between FORM and APPEARANCE, he argued that thing present themselves in several appearances but none
of them reveals the very essence of the form. He argued that form in architecture is space and SCHMARSOW argued that form in
architecture is to be identified in the experience of space.

FORM WITHIN 20TH CENTURY MODERNISM

Form is considered.
1. Not like a metaphor.
2. It implied that the essence of architecture was beyond the world of sense.
3. It connected to the mental apparatus with the material world.
4. It gave to architects control over the part of the work.

FORM AS A RESISTANCE TO ORNAMENT

BEHNE argued that architecture is not ornament. LOOS argued about the anti-decoration concept of form. He attacked the
simulation of one material to another. Each material has its own form, and it is directly derived from SEMPER. For him, all forms
were the outcome of an idea, simply modified by the materials. Loo’s conception of form remains idealist or the form know about its
signification.

FORM AS AN ANTIDOTE TO MASS CULTURE

METHESIUS saw a strong relation between culture and form, his interest in form as a tool to resist mass culture and urbanization.

FORM VERSUS SOCIAL VALUES

MIES VAN DE ROHE rejected the concept of form and pointed is as formalism. The basis of this was the rejection of Kantian
tradition in which utility was excluded from aesthetic. Building was considered as a part of collective.
BEHNE proposed that form in architecture corresponds to form in society.
TOUT sustaining architecture as the creator of new social forms.

FORM VERSUS FUNCTIONALISM

SASSAURE argued that language was a form and not a substance.

ALDO ROSSI wrote that form in architecture predominates over questions of functional organization.
EISENMANN argued there is no correlation between form and meaning of form and function.
WRIGHT supported the idea that forms in architecture are already in existence. He believed that forms are hidden in nature.

FORM VERSUS MEANING

VENTURI argued that too much attention to form has destroyed interest in meaning.

FORM VERSUS REALITY

SITUATIONIST argued anti-form, they think that the creation of architecture must be without form and it must represent the real
life without distortion of it.

FORM VS TECHNICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATION

VIOLLET LE DUC argued that form exist in according to structure.

BAHMAN is hostility to form that was mainly connected with the enthusiasm for technological innovations.
FUNCTION
Util 20th century the quantities were understood as the mechanical forces acting on the building tectonic element, in particular
the structure. In 20th century, new uses of function, in which the building were acting upon people or social material. There were
five different uses of the terms function, like a metaphor taken from three subjects: mathematic, biology and sociology. The word
has also a different translation between German and English.

MATHEMATIC METAPHOR

CARLO LODOLI think that the forms derive from the mechanical forces acting upon the material.

BIOLOGY METHAPOR_ purpose of the parts to each other and to the whole

LAMARK AND CURVIER talk about the new biology, in which the organism was classified according to the function, they
performed within the organism and the hierarchical relation to other organs. In this sense function was closely related to
structure. This idea was applied in architecture by VIOLLET LE DUC.

BIOLOGY METHAPOR_ the organic theory of form

This idea derives from GERMAN ROMANTICS. They consider from like mechanical or organic essence and this idea was made by
SCHAGEL.
The theory of organic form was introduced by GREENOUGH in art. He was interested in function as a way of achieving the
expression of appropriate character.
SULLIVAN think that the meaning of the function was related to the spiritual force, which determinate organic form. While
environment was an external force which determinate mechanical forms.

FUNCTION MEANING USE

Function in ENGLISH AND FRENCH had the meaning of activity designated for a buildings or part of it. This is also the idea
of VIOLLET LE DUC.

GERMAN WORDS

SACHLICHKEIT

Literally means THINGNESS = materiality, it is burn during a realism debate.

OTTO WAGNER talk that the lessons of realism must be consider also in architectural material. We need to simplify a realist
approach of the house, in a new condition of physical comfort and simultaneously represent the idea of HOMELINESS.
RICHARD STREITER introduced this term like a precondition of art but not art itself, as one should develop the character of the
building from the quality of material, environment, and history of the place.
METHESIUS talk about this term with the significant of the remedy to stylistic excess of 19th century architecture, and he would
go to the genuine architecture.

ZWECKMASSIGKEIT

Literally means purpose and was used to signify the consummation of immediate material need but also in the sense of inner
organic purpose or destiny like the idea of Sullivan. During 20th century there was an attempt to give the term aesthetic
significance, where the function began the real subject of art.
FRANKL say that the space has not meaning without function.
MIES say that the function determines the form of the building.
MUTHEUSIS think that attention to purpose was a precondition of beauty but not itself beauty.
BEHNE elaborated several meanings of function. In his view, function is the realization of the life of the building’s inhabitants that
determined the quality of sachlich architecture.

ENGLISH- SPEAKING WORD

HITCHCOCK AND JOHNSON use the word function to describe all the aspect of European modernism. For modernist was
important to show their work as dominated by form or aesthetic, and yet not being only crude functionalism as a result.
WALTER GROPIUS talk about that functionalism was not only a rational process, but it also introduced psychological problems.

THE FORM-FUNCTION PARADIGM

The identification of a form-function theory only appeared in the 1960s. Relationship between buildings and their
inhabitants. The concept of function was transformed from a description of the action of mechanical forces on the form of the
building into a description of the action of the social environment on buildings, and the action of buildings on society.
VITRUVIO defined this relationship with the term UTILITAS.
Later BLONDEL called it CONVENIENCE in English it has been translated as fitness. However, these definitions did not take into
account the relationship between buildings and use. To support this, we need two different theories:
THEORY OF SOCIETY and the THEORY OF SOCIAL CAUSES AND EFFECTS. The source of the theory of society was
biology, which gave the study of society the notion of function, hierarchical and environment. The notion that human society exists
through its interaction with the surrounding physical and social environment.
ARISTOTELE saw the relationship between the organism, and it is surrounding as harmonious while LAMARK saw the relationship
as unstable.
A theory of functionalism only emerged in the 1960s, when architects and critics began to react modernism. One of the first
was ALDO ROSSI in his “Architettura della città” in which he critics of NAÏVE FUNCTIONALISM was that the architecture of the city
consists of the generic types in which social memory is preserved.
LEFEBVRE considered functionalism to be characteristic of capitalist societies, where function is emphasised to the point that
every function has an assigned place and any possibility of multifunctionally is eliminated. According to him, functionalism is poorer
because it fixes the uses of the buildings.
BOUDRILLARD argued that functionality was a system of interpretation, an attempt to fix the meaning of objects according to their
use.
HILLER want to understand what was wrong with the current theory of functionalism in order to replace it with a better one, as he
perceived that the failure of modernist architecture lay in the failure of function.
HISTORY
HISTORICAL ARCHITECTURE IN 19TH CENTURY

History was a 19th century science.

VIOLLET LE DUC argued that history offer the mean to discredit old prejudices and recover forgotten principles. History also
became a problem for two reasons:
1. Firstly: the previous knowledge of architecture would have obstructed the scope of originality.
2. Secondly: architect was obligate to create historical architecture.
Architecture that would have become history for the future. MORRIS argued that is important to have an historical architecture that
symbolized present essence without old architecture similitude.

HISTORY AND MODERNISM

The anti-historical attitude of 20th century was the inevitable outcome.

NIETZSCHE believed that was necessary to overcome history in order to live fully the present. He argued an exhortation to live
without history and this is the message given by the FUTURIST ARCHITECTURE MANIFESTO, 1914.
GROPIUS taught history as the great achievement of the past may to easily discouraged the students to create their own
project. It was generally assumed that modernism was anti-historical, but this was only partially true.
MORRIS who was a modern architect, he also was historical. This was also supported by PEVSNER and GROPIUS that was
impossible for them to define modernist architecture as historical.

HISTORY AFTER MODERNISM

The real mission of history in architecture must be understood in the Italian context. The Italian phenomenon of the past-war was
quite unique and must carefully analysed:
1. Pre-war Italian modernism has never been categorically anti-history.
2. All pre-war modernists had worked for the Fascist regime, producing outstanding works, after rejecting Fascism
they did not want to eliminate the quality of modernist’s works.

The solution was given by ROGERS who provided the concept of CONTINUITA’ in which works of art carried significance not
only by being of their time, but by speaking across time, and so transcending their immediate historical meaning. The quality of
continuità relied upon the two related phenomena of history and ambiente. In Roger’s view, history was a dialectic between past
and present, and every new architectural work was an historical act.

ROSSI’s theory was that functionalism was an inadequate theory of urban form because buildings lost longer than their function.
Rossi proposed that cities were made from PERMANENCES, and this were disclosed through physical sign of the past, as well as
through the persistence of a city’s basic layout. If part of what Rossi means by history was the process of urban development
manifested in the PERMANENCE of surviving artefact, while the other part was contained in the notion of COLLECTIVE
MEMORY. Rossi argument was to suggest that mediating between two conceptions of history of the city as permanence and
collective memory there existed work of architecture, which is not only link to them, but also provided continuità. In the English-
speaking scenario the major figure was ROBERT VENTURI. While function was Ross’s object of attach, VENTURI’s was form,
specifically its simplification in modern architecture. He believed that historical precedents enriched meaning.

LIBENSSKIND argued that is important work with history and not eliminate it.
MEMORY
The creation of buildings for commemoration is one of the oldest purposes of architecture. The modern interest is linked to the
role played by the memory in the perception of all works of architecture. The notion that memory might be a necessary part of
the experience of buildings has appeared in three different forms since 18th century:

1. It is not clear in what sense memory constitutes part of aesthetic of architecture.

2. It is no clear the relation between history and memory.
3. Each of the three historical phases used memory with different meaning.

In this period philosophers like FREUD with the word ROME, used architecture or cities to describe the mental process of
memory.

FIRST PHASES: 18TH CENTURY

Memory established the liberty of the subject. The philosophical origin of this concept of memory can be linked to JOHN
LOCKE.
Locke’s account of perception was popularized by JOHN ADDISON who proposed that pleasure derives not just from by view and
by the other senses, but from the contemplation of what is imaginary. The power of works of art derives from association of the
idea they evoke. This idea we can see in BRITISH LANDSCAPEE GARDENING.
The purpose, for the first part of 18th century, was to evoke memory with the garden buildings, ruins, and statues.
While in the second part of 18th century, there was a shift from an emblematic to an expressive mode of association, in which the
natural scenery would become itself the cause of aesthetic pleasure.
In the late part of 18th century British aesthetic spoke about the relation between three distinct levels of mental activity:
1. Direct perception of the object
2. Memory
3. Imagination

LORD KAMES argued that the more our conceptions are extended upon any subject, the stronger is the emotion or beauty we
receive from it. As a theory of aesthetic perception, the association of the idea had some drawbacks:

1. It is link to the individual taste and largely restricted to those who received a liberal education.
2. The idea of aesthetic was located entirely within the mental process of subject. SOGGETIVITY

SECOND PHASES: 19TH CENTURY

JOHN RUSKIN argued that architecture alone offered the memory of human work, both manual and mental, on exact nature of the
work and conditions of labour under which the buildings were executed. There are some differences between Ruskin’s concept of
memory and the previous one:
1. He connected memory no to an indefinite number of images but to only one concept: work.
2. The memory is not individual but social and collective.
3. Memory relates not only to the past, but it is an obligation that the present has towards the future.

He stressed that architecture was closely related to the notion of history and his ideas were particularly influencing for the
conservation movement in British.

ALOIS RIEGL distinguish between HISTORICAL VALUE and AGE VALUE, in which the first was intended as the evidence of the
work presented of a particular historical moment, while the second was intended as the general passage of time.

NIETZSCHE’S attack was upon the erasure of history and memory. He argued that we can abolished history to live fully the
present.

PROUST argued that without forgetting there can be no memory, and the interest of memory lies in its dialectic with forgetting. For
Proust memory had an unstable and elusive relationship between the objects and architecture. The value of the memory came from
the recognition of the unlikeness between the real world and the world of memory.

THIRD PHASES: 20TH CENTURY

The 20th century culture appeared terrified of forgetting. A distinction between history and memory was developed in this
period by BENJAMIN WALTER. Forgetting was considered one of the greatest dangers of modern society, and this is perhaps why
the western civilization in this period has shown an extraordinary capacity to create material objects able to resist the decay of the
memory.

GASTAN BACHELARD talk about a purely theoretical concept, and he admitted the difficulty of application to physical construction.

ALDO ROSSI suggested the way to develop new forms of urban architecture was to study the already existing ones, and the
presence of PERMANENCES that characterized the city COLLECTIVE MEMORRY. Rossi had derived his ideas from two French
pre-war writers:

1. MARCEL POETE gave him the idea of PERMANENCES that the very essence of the city is link to the persistence
across time of indelible features.
 2. MAURICE HALBWACHS gave him the idea that the inhabitants of a city share a COLLECTIVE MEMORY.

He argued that it might be that are not the artefacts themselves to be agents of memory, but the mental images they reproduce.

Other popular case of re-introduction of memory was the essay “COLLEGE CITY” of COLIN ROWE and FRED KOETTER. They
argued that the city should be THEATRE OF PROPHECY and THEATRE OF THE MEMORY, and people should have the liberty
to choose between two.

ANTHONY VIDLER argued that “urbanism might be defined as the instrumental theory and practise of constructing the city as
memorial of itself”.

The ORTHOODOXY of the past modernism memory as part of the subject of architecture are three folds:

1. There was a lack of interest in the investigation of memory in other fields (psychology, philosophy, literature).
2. There was a general and unjustified assumption that social memory could be explained by reference to individual
memory.
3. There was the conviction that buildings provided a satisfactory analogue for the world of memory was not convincing.

In the recent studies’ social memories, the attention has been shifted from things to activities as the repetition of the collective
memory is reproduced among the member of a society and may become attached to particular places.

PAUL CONNERTON argued that memory is not only link to the object, but memory is inside the collective rituals.
NATURE
It is important to distinguish between architecture identify in nature and architecture like nature.

NATURE AS THE SOURCE OF BEAUTY IN ARCHITECTURE

PLATONE argued that all things in nature are governed by geometry. The most famous application of his theory was done by
LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI and his concept of CONCINNITAS, which it means the harmony of the arrangement of the parts
in relation to the whole or to the other parts.
ARISTOTELE’S idea regarding art and nature, in which art generally completed what nature does not bring. And Alberti thinks that
art could complete nature.
PERRAULT’S argument contributed to the new idea that beauty does not lie in objects, but it is a construction of the viewing
subject.

THE ORIGIN OF ARCHITECTURE

VITRUVIO’S myth of the first buildings which linked architecture to the first man kind’s natural state. Idea of architecture as a
rational system.
LAUGIER’S “ESSAY SUR L’ARCHITECTURE”, in his text, the sense he gives to nature was that it is not the source of proportion
and their beauty (as Alberti said) or it is something that can be experienced, but instead it is a principle of construction and
decoration based on reason.

THE VALORIZATION OF ARCHITECTURE: THE IMITATION OF NATURE

Among classical authors there was the idea that the essential property of art was to imitate nature. Architecture in this sense
was not consider a representational art. There were two main arguments claiming architecture as a mimetic art:
1. Architecture imitated its own natural model (as primitive hut: Lougier)
2. Architecture could represent the principles inherent in nature, providing a more profound form of mimesis.

The person responsible for the development of architecture as MIMETIC was QUATREMERE DE QUINCY. He answered two
questions:

1. Architecture represents the nature of physical objects or the ideas that people held to that world?
2. Architecture’s imitation of nature was literally or metaphorical?

The results are both in every two cases. Quatremer’s principles derive from reason that his theories were based upon the myth of
the primitive hut.

NATURE INVOKED TO JUSTIFY ARTISTIC LICENCE

ARISTOTELE’S view with nature as imperfect and completed by art. The idea that HUMAN INTELLECT could equal or even
surpass nature in recreating beauty. This idea was more visible in XVI century in ITALIAN GARDENNS, while during XVII
century for the FRENCH GARDENS.

NATURE AS A POLITICAL IDEA: NATURE AS FREEDOM

Nature is considered free to the to the despotic regimes. WILLIAM KENT at STOWE who first made this concept clear. Here,
the link between political liberty and the freedom offered by nature was made explicit. The application of these ideas of nature
formed later the basis for the ENGLISH PICTURESQUE DESIGN.

NATURE AS A CONSTRUCTION OF THE VIEWER’S PERCEPTION

PERRAULT argued that the cause of beauty laid in the viewer’s mind and not in the physical objects.

BURKE denied that the propositions of beautiful architecture derived from nature. This denial allowed him to focus on the aesthetic
sensation, which are reproduced by artistic production as much as by natural objects.

J. D. LE ROY in his projects tested the creation of architectural effects to induce sensation.

JOHN SOANE argued that architecture was an art of invention.

ART AS A SECOND NATURE

GOETHE changed the relationship between nature and art. He argued that the quality of the works of art were the outcome of
a living spirit. In this respect, art was like nature both in its formation and its perception. He believed that to reach perfection of
work the artist had to perceived following some rules by which nature proceed.
SEMPER argued that for him the origin of architecture did not lie in nature, nevertheless, he believed there was an analogy
between the way nature and architecture form developed. He believed that INDUSTRIAL ARTS were the key to understood
architectural rules. Semper believed that architecture’s meaning derived entirely from it being the work of man, and in no way
depend upon nature.

RUSKIN saw nature as a GOD’S WORK and believed that nature was the only source of beauty. On the other hand, he also
believed that works of art means to imitate nature would have turned in inferior result, for this reason he believed that the quality od
true art come from to the imposition od MAN’S INVENTON over the row material provided by nature, closely comparable to
Goethe’s “will create form”. Architecture, for Ruskin, was a SECOND NATURE, because it is the outcome of the human faculty for
mental and manual work, on the nature.

NATURE AS THE ANTIDOTE TO CULTURE

EMERSON saw nature as the quality of things revealed by the power of man’s mind. But in nature he also saw the revelation of the
supernatural or spiritual. Americans need to bring their inspiration from everyday life and from nature.

THE REJECTION OF NATURE

In Europe in the second half of 19th century, the interest to nature declined. BOUDLAIRE argued that the quality of art lies in
its artificially.

MARX and ENGELS postulated two kinds of nature:

1. Nature derives from man's choice of materials.

2. Nature produced by men as a result of his activities.

OTTO WAGNER argued that the distinctive quality of architecture was that it alone is able to make forms that have no model in
nature.

WORRINGER argued that art neither represented nature or was a second nature or takes values from nature, rather it stands
beside it an equal term. Art was an independent phenomenon of its own. Worringer gives more importance to abstractions.

ITALIAN FUTURISTS, 1914, for their nature is not to inspiration for architecture, but mechanical world began the model of
architecture forms. Technology as substitution of nature.

Not all architects rejected nature as a model for architecture, for example WRIGHT and LE CORBUSIER.

ENVIRONMENTALISM: NATURE AS A CRITIQUE TO CAPITALISM

RICHAR ROGERS can built buildings in respect of the natural cycles. The environment movement itself is characterized by its
pluralism. In this period nature is the new value to know and critics architecture.
STRUCTURE
There are three main uses of the word structure in architecture:

1. Building in its totality.

2. System of support of building.
3. A scheme through which a draw project, buildings, or cities, become intelligible.

Structure is a metaphor coming from two different fields: the first one is natural history during 19th century and the second is
linguistic during 20th century.

STRUCTURE AS THAT DISTINCT ELEMENT OF THE WHOLE CONCERNED WITH TS MEANS OF SUPPORT

VIOLLET LE DUC invented the idea that structure was the basis for architecture and that was his claim for the superiority of Gothic
architecture. He was the first to make distinction between structure and form.
LEOPOLD EIDLITZ saw structure as how the underlying idea was represented.
The term structure was drawn from biology.
BLONDEL divided architecture in decoration, distribution, and construction.
STRUCTURE BECOME OBJECT OF CONTROVERSIES IN REGARDS OF HOW VISIBLE OR NOT IT SHOULD BE IN THE
FINAL WORK.
In ENGLISH structure was used to indicate the abstraction as the relationship between the parts, while other person used structure
as a physical object.
SEMPER treated the creation of enclosed spaces.
LOOS showed a similar indifferent to the structure. He considered structure as a secondary/ subordinate part of the buildings.
This kind of subordination of structure is something seen also in the recent DECONSTRUCTIVISM.

STRUCTURE IN FIELDS OTHER THAN ARCHITECTURE

In NATURAL HISTORY was the classification of species done by LINNEAUS.

FOCOULT argued that this method failed to consider the property of life in the plants.
LAMARK and CURVIER describe the quality-of-life plants. The plants are now classified according to their function.
This concept of structure allowed to conceive buildings as hierarchical arranged relationships of functional parts. Moreover, it
allowed to see buildings as living things where forms where not predetermined.
In SOCIOLOGY structure was important for the naturalist’s notion of structure with SPENCER who argued that structure was the
functional units of society.

STRUCTURE AS THE MEANS BY WHICH THING BECOME INTELLEGIBLE

During 20th century is thanks the linguistic method that we can speak about structure in different way.
SASSURE argued that what made language intelligible was not meanings attached to particular words, but the system within
they were used. This implied on uncoupling of structure and function. Structure in these terms closed to be a property of the
objects.
ROLAND BARTHES suggested that the goal of structuralist activity is to reconstruct an object as to manifestation of the rules of its
functioning.
HERTZBERGER discuss about the analogy between architecture and linguistics and he critics architect’s form. He argued the
relationship between forms and the possible individual interpretations must be understood as language and speech.
TSHUMI criticized structuralism as it dematerialized architecture in a realm of concepts.
SPACE
Since the 18th century architects talked about volumes and voids, while space was only occasionally as a synonym. Space in
modernism was intended as a physical property but also as a property of mind. The development of space like a category took
place in German. The German word signifies both a material enclosure and a philosophical concept.

THE PRECONDITION OF MODERNIST ARCHITECTURAL SPACE

The term space was firstly developed in philosophical aesthetic and then came into the architectural field. There were two distinct
traditions of thought:
1. The first tradition crated a theory of architecture out of philosophy (Semper)
2. The second tradition concerned with a psychological approach to aesthetics (Kant).

Enclosed space

SEMPER proposed that the first impulse of architecture was the enclosing of space, the material components only came
secondary to it.

ADOLF LOOS saw space as a matter of enclosure.

CAMILLO SITTE argued that urban design was an art of space and his principles for the modelling of cities were based on
enclosed space. He transported the concept to the exterior spaces.

Perceived space

Aesthetic perception according to KANT, for him space was a property of the mind, as a part of the apparatus by which the
mind makes the world intelligible. In this view, space could exist only from human standpoint. Space in term of aesthetic
judgements were developed by SCHOPENHAUER.

NETZSCHE argued that, if art and life were one, then the distinction between subject and object had no sense to exist. Art, as
well as life, could be approached from the point of view of pure subjectivity. He argued that culture in general derived from two
instincts:

1. APOLLONIAN: realization of the images presented to the mind.

2. DIONYSON: implying the whole body, driven by the excess of energy. This instinct was felt in the field of space.

Space was a force field generated by the dynamism of bodily movement.

Hildebrand

He suggested three ideas about space:

1. Space as subject matter of art.

2. Space as a continuum.
3. Space animated from within.

He stressed that the relationship between people and space finds its direct expression in architecture which evokes a definite
spatial feeling instead of just the possibility of movement. In these terms, is clear to see how bodily movement around object
constituted an important part of his idea of space. Movement of people generated space.

Schmarsow

He argued that space exist because we have a body, and the constructed space is a kind of three-dimensional negative of the
subject’s body.

Lipps

He argued that there were two kinds of seeing:

1. OPTICAL: which was concerned with material.
2. AESTHETIC: which concerned with was left after having removed material.

For Lipps space was a dematerialized object, his interest in space was a way of visualizing the inner life of a matter.

To sum up the variety of conception of space in 1900s:

 1. To the original motive of architecture: SEMPER and the spatial enclosed as the purpose from which architecture
developed.
2. To describe the cause of aesthetic perception in architecture developed by SCHMARSOW and LIPPS, space provided an
answer to the question of what in architecture stimulated aesthetic perception.
3. To satisfy the expectation that works of architecture should reveal movement, this is clear in HILDEBRAND’s essay.

FROM SPACE TO SPATIALITY (1900-1914)

Particularly regarding what Schmarsow could be defined as a SPATIALITY the space perceiving faculty of the human mind.

Alois Riegl

He argued that the development of art had be understood in relation to its own internal development, which could only be
accounted for in terms of aesthetic perception of people at successive stages of history. Mind’s ability to interpret the world has
followed by historical progression, then the evidence of this progression can be found in an evolution of architectural space as built.

Paul Frankl

He distinguished by ADDITIVE SPACE and SPATIAL DIVISION:

1. Additive space: when the spatiality of building was built by a series of distinctive compartments.
2. Spatial division: spatiality intended as a linear flow of space.

Schmarsow specified that the spatial construct was uniquely an effect of the mind.

BUILT SPACE (1920-1970)

The main senses of space used by architects and critics around the 1920s were three:
1. Space enclosed: Semper
2. Space as a continuum_ continuous space inside and outside
3. Space as an extension of the body: Schmarsow’s idea.

Moholy-Nagy
In “the new vision” he argued what was previously been speculative aesthetic concerned with the perception of architecture into a
scheme that could be applied to real work. He defined some points:

1. He rejected the notion of space enclosure.

2. He rejected the equation of space with volume.
3. He argued that space is not concerned with materials.
4. Space was a simple cosmic continuum.
5. Space was a product of motion, and changes as a man moves in it.
6. Space had its own dynamic fields of force independent of man’s occupation.

Mies Van de Rohe

There were two things that he was particularly concerned about:

1. Live in the present without the constraints of history and culture.

2. Eradicated every symbolism.

Architecture could bring the MODERN SPIRIT achieved by the freedom of movement and opportunity.7

NORTON presented space not as a concept, but as an existing and recognizable corpus in modern architecture.

TSCHUMI recognized that the peculiarity of space being a concept (spatiality) and something experienced.

HILLER argued that it is as spatial configurations, rather than as a physical matter, that buildings must be approached.

HENRY LEFEBVRE (1970)

He criticized the general theory of space. One of the goals of his work was to explore the nature of the relationship between the
space produced by thought and the space into thought happened. At the heart of his book, “the production of space”, there is
the category of SOCIAL SPACE. It is what the cultural life of societies takes place in. his critique was that modern societies
reduced this complex space which is at once perceived (social relationship), conceived (by thoughts) and lived (as bodily
experience) to an abstraction. He drew a distinction between ARCHTECTURAL SPACE and SPACE OF ARCHITECTS:

1. The first made from the experience that people have on it, one of how space is produced.
2. The second is the manipulation of space by architects.
He also argued that:

1. The space given to the architect was not neutral. This space has always a pre-existing space.
2. The architectural practice and its way of working, through drawings, was the prime means through with space was turned
into an abstraction.
3. Drawing, as the prime means of architects, privileged the sense of view above the other senses and sustain the tendency
to render everything into images, tendency manifested through capitalism.
4. He argued that architecture was partly responsible for this homogenization of spaces.

ABSTRACT SPACE was the form into which social space has bee rendered by capitalism and its occupants find that they
themselves became abstraction too, as users.