Affective Spaces_ Architecture and the Living Body-Routledge (2020)

Affective Spaces
This book explores the notion of affective space in relation to architecture.

It helps to clarify the first-person, direct experience of the environment and
how it impacts a person’s emotional states, influencing their perception of
the world around them.
Affective space has become a central notion in several discussions across
philosophy, geography, anthropology, architecture and so on. However,
only a limited selection of its key features finds resonance in architectural
and urban theory, especially the idea of atmospheres, through the work of
German phenomenologist Gernot Böhme. This book brings to light a wider
range of issues bound to lived corporeal experience. These further issues
have only received minor attention in architecture, where the discourse on
affective space mostly remains superficial. The theory of atmospheres, in
particular, is often criticized as being a surface-level, shallow theory as it is
introduced in an unsystematic and fragmented fashion, and is a mere “easy
to use” segment of what is a wider and all but impressionistic analytical
method. This book provides a broader outlook on the topic and creates an
entry point into a hitherto underexplored field.
The book’s theoretical foundation rests on a wide range of non-
architectural sources, primarily from philosophy, anthropology and
the cognitive sciences, and is strengthened through cases drawn from
actual architectural and urban space. These cases make the book more
comprehensible for readers not versed in contemporary philosophical
trends.
Federico De Matteis is Associate Professor of Architectural Design at the

University of L’Aquila. He has written articles and monographs on issues
related to urban design and regeneration. His recent research focuses on the
affective dimension of urban and architectural space.
Ambiances, Atmospheres and Sensory Experiences of Spaces
Series Editors:
Rainer Kazig, CNRS Research Laboratory Ambiances –
Architectures – Urbanités, Grenoble, France
Damien Masson, Université de Cergy-Pontoise, France
Paul Simpson, Plymouth University, UK
Research on ambiances and atmospheres has grown significantly in recent

years in a range of disciplines, including Francophone architecture and
urban studies, German research related to philosophy and aesthetics, and
a growing range of Anglophone research on affective atmospheres within
human geography and sociology.
This series offers a forum for research that engages with questions around
ambiances and atmospheres in exploring their significances in understanding
social life. Each book in the series advances some combination of theoretical
understandings, practical knowledges and methodological approaches.
More specifically, a range of key questions which contributions to the series
seek to address includes:
• In what ways do ambiances and atmospheres play a part in the unfolding
of social life in a variety of settings?
• What kinds of ethical, aesthetic, and political possibilities might be
opened up and cultivated through a focus on atmospheres/ambiances?
• How do actors such as planners, architects, managers, commercial
interests and public authorities actively engage with ambiances and
atmospheres or seek to shape them? How might these ambiances and
atmospheres be reshaped towards critical ends?
• What original forms of representations can be found today to (re)present
the sensory, the atmospheric, the experiential? What sort of writing, modes
of expression, or vocabulary is required? What research methodologies and
practices might we employ in engaging with ambiances and atmospheres?
Affective Spaces
Architecture and the Living Body
Federico De Matteis
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.

com/Ambiances-Atmospheres-and-Sensory-Experiences-of-Spaces/

book-series/AMB

Affective Spaces
Architecture and the Living Body
Federico De Matteis
First published 2021
by Routledge
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© 2021 Federico De Matteis
The rights of Federico De Matteis to be identified as the author of
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and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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Contents
List of figures vii

Acknowledgments ix
1 Introduction: life in space 1
2 What is space all about? 8
3 Objects and stranger things 18
4 The living body 30
5 Sensing the environment 39
6 Motion, emotion 45
7 Gestures and rituals 57
8 The space between subjects 68
9 The feeling space 77
10 Forms of time 87
11 The affective city 97
12 Interiors 109
vi Contents
13 On the archaeology of emotions 118
14 The primacy of feeling 129
Bibliography 131
Affective spaces – image credits 139
Index 141
Figures
2.1 Joseph W.M. Turner, Rockets and blue lights (close at hand)
to warn steamboats of shoal water, 1840. The Clark Art
Institute, Williamstown 11
2.2 Caravaggio, Martyrdom of St. Matthew, 1600. Church of
San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome 16
3.1 Japanese tea bowl, Edo period, 18th century. The Walters
Art Museum, Baltimore 24
3.2 Cup, Wedgwood, England, 18th century. The Cleveland
Museum of Art 24
3.3 Gongshi, or philosopher’s stone 25
3.4 Four cubic buildings: Library of the Phillips Exeter
Academy, Louis Kahn; San Cataldo Cemetery, Modena,
Aldo Rossi; Kaaba, Mecca; Church of St. Paul Apostle in
Foligno, Massimiliano Fuksas 28
4.1 Johan van Calcar, illustration from De humani corporis
fabrica by Vesalius, 1542 31
4.2 Walking in the mountains 34
5.1 Takete and Malula, from Wolfgang Köhler’s
experiment, 1929 41
6.1 Peter Zumthor, Bruder Klaus Kapelle, Mechernich,
Germany, 2007 47
Germany, 2007 48
Germany, 2007 49
6.4 A pine tree and a weeping willow 50
6.5 Michelangelo, Slave (Atlas), 1520–1523. Galleria
dell’Accademia, Florence 52
6.6 Temple of Era II, Paestum, and Olympieion, Athens 53
6.7 Nello Aprile, Mario Fiorentino, Giuseppe Perugini,
Mausoleum at the Fosse Ardeatine, Rome, 1944–1949;
Viguier & Jodry, French Pavilion at the Seville Expo, 1992 54
6.8 Peter Eisenman, Memorial for the Murdered Jews of
Europe, Berlin, 2005 55
viii Figures
7.1 Charles Gleyre, Romans passing under the Yoke,
1858. Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne 59
7.2 A military parade 60
7.3 Giovanni Bellini, The Ecstasy of St. Francis, 1480.
The Frick Collection, New York 60
7.4 Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Ecstasy of St. Therese, 1652.
Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome 61
7.5 Gustave Doré, engraving for canto XXIX of the Divine
Comedy, 1857 62
7.6 Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, St. Patrick’s well,
Orvieto, Italy, 1537 63
7.7 Tibetan Monastery of Labrang, Gansu, China 64
7.8 Jami Masjid (Friday Mosque), Ahmedabad, India 66
7.9 Higashi Hongan-ji Temple, Kyoto, Japan 67
8.1 Carlo Scarpa, Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo, Italy, 1953–1954 73
8.2 Mashrabiya, Cairo, Egypt 73
8.3 Hawa Mahal (Palace of the Winds), Jaipur, India, 1799 74
8.4 Abandoned panopticon prison 74
9.1 Interior of a fast-food restaurant 82
9.2 Interior of a “romantic” restaurant 83
9.3 Film still from Grease, Randal Kleiser, 1978 85
9.4 Film still from Babette’s Feast, Gabriel Axel, 1987 85
10.1 Jantar Mantar, Jaipur, India, 1734 88
10.2 Jessica Jamroz and Frederic Schwartz, Empty Sky
Memorial, Jersey City, 2011 90
10.3 Garden of the Master of the Nets, Suzhou, China 95
11.1 St. Peter’s Rome, section of the square with the rise toward
the basilica. From Carlo Fontana, Il Tempio Vaticano, 1694 101
11.2 Alley in Changmen, Suzhou, China 102
11.3 Street a Changmen, Suzhou, China 104
11.4 Decima residential neighborhood, Luigi Moretti, Rome, 1965 105
11.5 Trullo residential neighborhood, Roberto Nicolini and
Giuseppe Nicolosi, Rome, 1940 106
12.1 Pieter de Hooch, Two Women and a Child by the Wardrobe,
1663. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 115
12.2 Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater, Bear Run,
Pennsylvania, 1936 116
13.1 Carlo Scarpa, Querini Stampalia Foundation, Venice, 1963 123
13.2 Carlo Scarpa, Querini Stampalia Foundation, Venice, 1963 123
13.3 Ryōan-ji Temple, Kyoto, 15th century 124
13.4 Wang Shu / Amateur Architecture Studio, Ningbo
Museum of History, China, 2008 125
13.5 Camila Mileto and Fernando Vegas, Garden of Memory,
Vinaròs, Spain, 2015 126
13.6 Edoardo Tresoldi, reconstruction of the basilica of Santa
Maria di Siponto, Manfredonia, Italy, 2016 127
Acknowledgments
Books may bear a single name on their cover, but they are always somehow a
collective endeavor for thinking rarely occurs alone. I must thus express my
gratitude to the many friends, colleagues and students who, over the years,
have helped give shape to the ideas grounding this work.
At Sapienza University of Rome, these were Stefano Catucci, Alfonso
Giancotti, Luca Reale and Benedetto Todaro, while the colleagues at the
University of L’Aquila have provided me with a serene working environment
in which to pursue this project. In between these two institutions, the friends
at Xi’an Jiatong – Liverpool University in Suzhou, particularly Pierre-Alain
Croset and Juan Carlos Dall’Asta, created the fertile humus where the idea
of this book first emerged.
I am deeply indebted to Tonino Griffero, both for his friendship and for
his work to introduce New Phenomenology to the world of architectural
theory. Between the publication of the original Italian edition and this
English version, he has further supported my interest in architectural
atmospheres, resulting in the 2019 special issue of the Ambiances journal,
which I have guest- edited with him, Mikkel Bille and Andrea Jelić. The op-
portunity to work with them sparked further discussion and research that
will bloom into future projects.
Two generations of doctoral students have been fundamental in creating
the learning environment in which ideas are most likely to come to life. Among
the many, I must thank Valina Geropanta, Paola Ricciardi and especially
Elisa Morselli, who has helped me look into the world of architectural im-
ages with different eyes. Federica Fava has given me enduring support, well
beyond the boundaries of the academic. To the many more students who
have shaped me as a teacher goes my sincere gratitude.
Simona Salvo and Ross T. Smith, colleagues and travel companions, have
both contributed to the making of this book, with helpful suggestions on the
manuscript and by providing guidance when doubt was in the air.
My editor at Routledge, Faye Leerink, has skillfully helped me navigate
through the process of making this book. The three anonymous reviewers
x Acknowledgments
provided precious feedback on the book’s structure and critical points.
Finally, I must thank the three editors of the series Ambiances, Atmospheres
and Sensory Experiences of Spaces, Damien Masson, Paul Simpson and
especially Rainer Kazig, for the beautiful family of books they have started
to build that my own has had the privilege to join.
1 Introduction
Life in space
Architecture is so generally regarded as an art of space, meaning actual,

practical space, and building is so certainly the making of something that
defines and arranges spatial units, that everybody talks about architecture as
“spatial creation” without asking what is created, or how space is involved.
The concepts of arrangement in space and creation of space are constantly
interchanged; and the primary illusion seems to have given way to a primary
actuality. Nothing is more haphazard than the employment of the words:
illusion, reality, creation, construction, arrangement, expression, form, and
space, in the writings of modern architects.
(Langer, 1953, p. 93)
After nearly seven decades, philosopher Susanne Langer’s disappointment

with architects’ use of the term space still resounds with us. For architects,
urban designers, landscape architects and all those who are engaged in
the transformation of the environment, space represents a central issue;
nevertheless, it is difficult to get a clear picture of what is meant by it as
an accurate and transmissible definition not limited to the domain of the
poetic and the ineffable. As clearly reflected in Langer’s words, one does
not understand if space is the cause or the effect of architecture – or if the
notions of cause and effect make any sense at all in this context.
It may seem superfluous to speak about space today considering the
extent to which this topic has grounded architectural debate over most
of the 20th century. One could argue that architects have already said all
there is to say on space: yet almost paradoxically, there is no satisfactory
theoretical model capable of explaining in an articulate and convincing way
what space is all about.
There has been no shortage of attempts to approach architecture through
this critical category. At the end of the 1930s, Sigfried Giedion records in
his book Space, Time and Architecture (1941) the relevance these terms had
acquired within the scientific debate at the turn of the previous century.
In 1948 Bruno Zevi exports these concepts to Italy with his successful and
controversial book Architecture as Space (1957). After a period of lesser
interest, in the 1980s a new wave of studies again raised the question of
2 Introduction
space, albeit with a greater critical distance. Cornelis van de Ven’s Space
in Architecture
(1980), dedicated to avant-garde movements and their
interpretation of this concept, and Jürgen Joedicke’s Raum und Form in
der Architektur (1985), which is in line with the earlier German aesthetic
tradition, both investigate the matter through more rigorous methodological
approaches.
Today, despite the best intentions of many authors, the concept of space
continues to be an accretion of fundamental misunderstandings. It is
sometimes meant that space may be a thing, or the interior of a thing built
around it, or a void. In common understanding, space has more affinity with
certain ways of making architecture than with others. Some imply that it can
be found solely within the domain of architecture and that it is an objective
factor. Finally, several authors claim that it can be directly produced. All
these hypotheses, only occasionally voiced with some clarity, add up to the
confusion lamented by Susanne Langer. This book, therefore, intends to
make some order in this dense forest of discussion around architectural (and
not only) space.
A further factor contributing to the problematic theoretical discourse
on space is architectural culture’s perennial delay vis-à-vis other fields.
The great fascination with space in architecture between the two wars was
the belated response to a far-ranging debate that encompassed the natural
sciences, philosophy, psychiatry and art at the turn of the century. Once
architects started to engage with the concept it had already been overtaken
by other priorities. With few exceptions, architectural theory in the 20th
century displays the limited reactivity of this field to cultural transforma-
tions, since beyond its specificity of design and construction, architecture
is largely fed by a secondary rather than primary production of knowledge.
This is not an evidence to be condemned, but it must be acknowledged that
very few of the major cultural revolutions in human history have originated
in architecture.
In this sense, architectural discourse seems to have overlooked the fact that
it was surpassed in its “primacy” on space by many other fields of knowledge,
that in the last two decades we have witnessed a deep evolution described by
some as a spatial turn. Space is today at the center of interest in many branches
of natural sciences, such as neurosciences, physics and ecology, along with
many fields of the human sciences including anthropology, geography, soci-
ology, archaeology and the history of art. All these, in turn, were subtended
by philosophical thought, in particular by the phenomenological tradition
of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Spatial explorations
The model of space proposed in this book is centrally grounded on
phenomenology. Since its origins in the early 20th century, this philosophical
tradition has considered space as one of its central thematic poles, as a
Introduction 3
foundational entity of the human experience of the world. Edmund Husserl
inaugurated a new way of observing the subject’s experience based on the
concept of Leib – the living body as a counterpoint to the organic dimensions
of the Körper – and on the interaction with spatial phenomena. His inves-
tigations paved the way for the work of Martin Heidegger, who indissolu-
bly bound space to the affective sphere of the individual who, along with
phenomena, sensed the emotions and moods these were affording. Equally
picking up from Husserl’s cues, Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his 1945 Phenom-
enology of Perception provided a systematic exploration of the relationship
between the spatial structure of the lived world and the subject’s corporeity.
This canon of classical authors, integrated by further fundamental stud-
ies focused on spatial experience such as those by Jan Patočka, Jean-Paul
Sartre or Otto Friedrich Bollnow, eventually established a foundation for a
vast array of scientific investigations in a diversity of fields, with repercus-
sions reaching to our day.
Yet outside this central lineage, another phenomenological school emerged
in the late 1960s with the declared intention of providing a new foundation
for this philosophical approach. German philosopher Hermann Schmitz,
who published his ten-volume magnum opus between 1964 and 1980 under
the title System der Philosophie, states that his “new” phenomenology simply
intends to make our spontaneous experience of the world available to a co-
herent reflection (2019, p. 43). In order to achieve this apparently elementary
goal, however, he sets out to systematically challenge the breadth of human
thought from the very origins of Western philosophy onwards, including
the entire previous phenomenological tradition. The radical philosophical
system emerging from Schmitz’s work, articulated in his massive and ongo-
ing production (1966, 1967, 1969, 2011, 2014), fundamentally revolves around
the subject’s spatial experience and emotional life, defined by an enriched
corporeality sustaining all vital processes.
Despite being complex, sometimes obscure, and only scantly translated
into languages other than German, Schmitz’s phenomenology is increas-
ingly entering the wider debate in and outside philosophy, for its unique
description of corporeal dynamics and the introduction of the notion of at-
mosphere as spatially extended emotion. Two further philosophers, German
Gernot Böhme and Italian Tonino Griffero, have widely expanded Schmitz’s
thought, with crucial contributions on the topics of atmospheres, space, em-
bodiment and moods, reserving special attention to the built environment.
The theoretical foundations for this book are mainly to be found in the work
of these three authors, who often openly acknowledge the manifold inter-
sections between their phenomenology and the investigations performed in
adjacent fields of research.
Clearly enough however, space is not a phenomenologists’ game only.
Stephan Günzel (2017, p. 7) observes that the spatial turn agitating the hu-
manities since the early 1990s is not merely the academic formulation of a
new theoretical paradigm, but in fact mirrors far-reaching changes that have
4 Introduction
occurred in our lifeworld. If in speaking of other spaces Michel Foucault
had pinpointed, as early as 1967 (1986), the 19th century’s obsession with
history and time, in the final years of the 20th the quest would be for a
“spatialization of the temporal” (Döring & Thielmann, 2008, p. 9). This
transition was first marked by geographer Edward W. Soja, who with the
notion of thirdspace (1996) attempted to describe a new paradigm for the
interpretation of the spatiality of human life.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is in the field of geography that the spatial
turn has witnessed the earliest and most radical developments. Various
strains of research have provided intersections between the threefold po-
larity subject-affect-space. Nigel Thrift’s non-representational
theory (2008)
strives to produce a “geography of what happens”, considering human
agency in its constant becoming, the omnipresence of movement and the
subjects’ precognitive domain. Setting out from an altogether different po-
sition related to Schmitzian phenomenology, Jürgen Hasse produces accu-
rate micrologic phenomenographies of urban situations, where subjects are
affected by spatially poured moods (2012, 2014, 2015).
Further spatial interpretations of human experience emerge in several
fields related to the ecological environment, from landscape studies to
ethnography and anthropology, all variously sustained by James Gibson’s
theory of ecological perception (1979). Tim Ingold (2000, p. 25) discusses a
notion of “sentient ecology”, a form of knowledge and praxis people have
of their environment. This set of skills becomes entrained by means of a
process of development and spatial experience that is diversified by a histor-
ically specific environment. The enquiry on differentiated forms of percep-
tion and the individuals’ cultural constructs is a further attempt to sidestep
the representational paradigm in favor of theories of presentation, similarly
to what had occurred in the philosophy of the arts in the previous decades
(Langer, 1948, pp. 63–83; Wollheim, 1980, pp. 26–29). What merges these
apparently unrelated fields is the centrality of the spatial hinge between the
subjects and the world they perceive.
Equally attempting to overcome the hermeneutic paradigm is the work of
literary theorist Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. His claim is that while we usually
seek in texts meanings sustaining the construction of sense, we are in fact
frequently set before effects of presence that are indeed spatial. A poem,
for example, can remain obscure and conceal its meaning but nevertheless
evoke a potent atmosphere that corporeally engages the reader. Beyond the
hermeneutic field, and especially in those cultures Gumbrecht describes as
articulated by presence over meaning, the human self-reference is primarily
the body (2004, p. 80). Exactly as is the case with architecture, literary texts
afford “moods and atmospheres [that] are experienced on a continuum, like
musical scales. They present themselves to us as nuances that challenge our
powers of discernment and description, as well as the potential of language
to capture them” (Gumbrecht, 2012, p. 4).
A further field where space has played a pivotal role in recent years is
that of gender studies, which in turn has produced declinations toward the
Introduction 5
theory of architecture (Colomina, 1992; Rendell, Penner, & Borden, 2000).
Urban studies and geography have both seen the emergence of a significant
strain of feminist theory, exploring how gender relations vary across space
and place (Massey, 1994, p. 178). The social aspects hinged to these relations
enter the biopolitical sphere of urban life, influencing how we as subjects
experience the built environment and, in turn, the way we are observed,
controlled or confined as we make use of it. As we will see later in the book,
the individual interacting with the environment is not a neutral and univer-
sal automaton, rather a specific subject dynamically defined by a range of
nuanced characters, among which gender plays a primary role.
These diverse approaches share some fundamental features in their
concern for space. First, they all eschew a physicalist model wherein space
is only conceived as a container of things, but rather a plastic entity that can
only be defined in relation to who experiences it. Second, the subject of this
experience is neither disembodied nor neutral: it is a specific agent encoun-
tering the environment from a particular point of view, built upon both cor-
poreal skills and conceptions of the world. Finally, space is not something
that only manifests itself through representations: it is already there, in a
givenness making it (and us) present.
Phenomenology in architectural theory

In architectural theory, the last two decades have witnessed a growing body
of important studies that have again shifted the axis toward a discussion
on space. From the mid-1990s, authors such as Juhani Pallasmaa, Alberto
Pérez-Gómez and Harry Francis Mallgrave have variously addressed the
question of space, mainly through a vindication of the centrality of sensorial
experience on the basis of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. More recently,
along with other authors, they have embraced the notion of atmospheres, as
introduced in the field of architecture through the work of Gernot Böhme.
However, their interest seems to revolve more around the perceptual dy-
namics of the experiencing subject rather than on a more comprehensive
consideration of the nature of space. In various instances their ideas seem
biased by an ideological prejudice regarding the superiority of some types of
architecture over others, again implying that space is only the prerogative of
specific design practices or “styles”.
Only two recent architectural books, based on two very different
phenomenological traditions, have provided rigorous investigations of the
dynamics of the subject’s spatial experience: the first, Dalibor Vesely’s Archi-
tecture in the Age of Divided Representation, published in 2004; the second,
Böhme’s 2006 Architektur und Atmosphäre. The strength of these two works
resides in their ability of describing the dynamics of space as the grounding
structure of the experience of the environment rather than a phenomenon
solely emerging through architecture: the task is thus not that of formulat-
ing a value assessment on buildings or urban space but that of proposing a
different way of observing them.
6 Introduction
The phenomenological foundations of these two books make it clear that
space is not a specific quality of the environment, rather the encounter be-
tween its contingent manifestation and a subject experiencing it by means of
his corporeity. From the beginning of phenomenology, the subject’s spatial
presence has been considered a central condition for the understanding of
the world: it also lies at the base of this book, and the life in space we refer
to is not that of green sentient intergalactic squids, but to our existence as it
unfolds every day.
About this book

My attempt will be to describe architecture not as a system of technically
and culturally articulated physical objects, but in terms of the effects that
these produce on the subject within a wider horizon. By taking up the sub-
ject’s point of view, I will describe what the encounter with architecture is
like: a stepping away from the discipline’s primary task – designing and
building the causes of these effects – that allows us to focus more clearly the
nature of these effects and how the (designed or un- designed) environments
generates them.
The central character of this book’s story is thus the subject. I intend the
subject as an articulation of nuances: not universal nor singular; grounded
on a deep evolutionary root sustaining deep cultural differences; entrusted
with some inborn skills and others acquired over time, through entrainment
and the accumulation of experience; and, most of all, understood in his full
lived corporeality. We are not talking of a disembodied mind ambulating
through the environment nor a coarse agglomeration of sensorial stimuli
elaborated in a merely computational way: this subject is emotionally af-
fected by what he comes upon in his world, by encounters, surprises, rich
emotional responses that do not allow him to remain indifferent to the space
he inhabits. This is ultimately the greatest limit of space theory in archi-
tecture: that of considering this entity as separated from the subject, whose
very presence indeed is what leads to the emergence of experience.
The intrinsic difficulty of a method based on the centrality of the subject
lies in the ineffable qualities of first-person lived experience, which by defi-
nition is not transmissible and cannot be put into words, if not at the cost
of reducing it. However, a century of phenomenological tradition, from
Husserl’s
epoché to the concept of embodied mind, have validated the possi-
bility of a practice based on the direct observation of experience, no longer
discarded as an unreliable flux of sensations, but as the primary evidence
of the reality the subject encounters in the world. The non-measurability of
this response, thus, must be substituted by a descriptive practice based on
self-observation, recording our corporeal responses to what environment
and architecture afford us. As Varela, Thompson and Rosch have argued
in one of the most influential books of the end of the last century (Varela,
Thompson, & Rosch, 1991), the validity and repeatability of first-person
Introduction 7
experience, albeit not complying with the criteria of the classic scientific
method, is corroborated by a wide gamut of corporeal observation prac-
tices, perfected through a few millennia of history and today at the center of
the epistemological debate.
To synthesize, this book intends to describe space as we experience it,
both in our daily lives and in some exceptional conditions. It does not only
speak of architecture, city and landscape, since space as we intend it extends
beyond the human domain or the galaxy of designed objects. It places the
subject at the center, continuously repeating one same question borrowed
from Eugène Minkowski: how do I feel, here, now? (Minkowski, 1970) To
do so, it relies on notions deriving from several fields of knowledge, from
phenomenology to aesthetics in its understanding of aesthesis – theory of
sensible knowledge – from neurosciences to anthropology and geography,
from philosophy of mind to environmental psychology, obviously including
scholarship on landscape, the city and architecture. Many issues are ad-
dressed, and some just briefly, to privilege a general overview of a remark-
ably wide field of studies. This “panoramic” character makes it accessible
to a wide audience, including all those – architects and planners, designers
and artists – who are in some way engaged in the transformation of the
environment.
For this same reason, the book’s structure is simple, being divided in
short chapters: the first part discusses some general questions regarding
the nature of space, while the second describes the subject’s corporeality,
perceptual dynamics, movement and affective response. The final part is
dedicated to describing the experiential characters of some specific fami-
lies of spaces. Space is a complex and richly ramified matter, and this short
book does not aim to sound its full depth: at the same time, it will allow the
entrance of a ray of light into that disorderly attic that is today’s theory of
space in architecture.
2 What is space all about?
Architecture is the art of building space: a statement that seems obvious,

yet not very clear. We know that for architects, and all those who design
the transformation of the environment, space is a central concept. But this
fact is often taken for granted to the extent that today architects do not give
space much thought. Space always seems to be at the center of architec-
tural discourse: nevertheless, if we look close enough nobody ever exactly
states what space is all about, as if it were evident that space works somehow,
that we know how it works and which techniques can be implemented to
create and transform it. Perhaps it is not so, and many questions about space
remain unresolved.
This permanent understatement on the nature of space can lead to many
misunderstandings starting from the largest: the one who designs and
builds architecture can directly determine space. We can build houses and
streets, organize green areas and public plazas, accurately choose materi-
als and colors: yet all these operations concur to the definition of space is
all but obvious – at least for the understanding of space that we intend to
address here.
Things in space
If we tried to gather a few definitions for this term, we would end up with
some rather controversial issues. Sometimes space is described as a large
empty box containing many objects; it is also the rational system of meas-
urements describing the dimensional relations between these objects.
Furthermore, in speaking of these objects we include without much distinc-
tion buildings and streets but also people, animals, plants and so on. They
are all considered things: all that space can contain is somehow reduced to a
single ontological family – that of objects.
But is space really only made of things? Or is it necessary to include
something else that ranges beyond objects, including yet exceeding them?
Let us imagine a stadium: first when it is empty, before the game; then the
same stadium on a match day when it holds a vast crowd excited by the
football demon along with the sensorial panoply that comes with this kind
What is space all about? 9
of event. In strictly architectural terms, we can claim that in these two
circumstances the building is the same, that its physical configuration has
not changed: yet we know that what we experience in these two moments is
substantially different.
In a case such as this, can we legitimately claim that the space is the same?
If I find myself in the stadium in these two distinct moments, would the
architecture have the same effect on me? If I describe this space from the
“side” of the objects, which means from the point of view of the architect who
designs it, then the building is certainly the same. The designer’s task usually
consists in defining the physical scaffolding on which the match day will un-
fold. To build the stadium means to make the stadium-object: but much of
what is going to happen afterward will remain out of the architect’s control.
If, however, I describe the stadium’s space from the “side” of the subject,
of those who are there during the match, the answer must be another: the
space is just not the same. This does not imply that the building’s design
will have no impact on its users: by defining the system of circulation, I
will determine how visitors enter and leave, orchestrating their movement;
by building a roof, I will protect them from rain and sunshine. But to what
extent is the experience of the match day determined by the way we move
inside this architectural environment? And how is my experience of the sta-
dium defined by the designer’s decisions? In which way does the stadium-
object influence the experience of the subject-visitor?
Objective vs. subjective

In architectural theory, the description and construction of space is deeply
rooted in a dualistic contraposition between subject and object, an inher-
itance of a cultural structure that is so embedded in our ontological foun-
dations that it has acquired the character of a paratext of our experience
(Genette, 1991). But can we truly divide the world into subjects and objects,
enclosing us behind a wall of divisive classifications? At the base of this
thinking lies a deep misunderstanding: the assumption that the subject’s
experience is “subjective”, whereas physical reality is, on the other hand,
“objective”.
Let us observe these two terms somewhat closer: objective refers to
objects, to the physical manifestations of the environment. If we use this
term, we think of something that is the same for everyone, a matter-of-fact
crystallized in time, not prone to transformation. Objects do change: by the
slow process of weathering or by moving from one place to another. But
their presence never ceases, unless they are carried away or break. The term
subjective, on the other hand, is normally associated with a fluctuating re-
ality, different for each person, deriving from the individual experience of
the subject encountering the objective physical reality. Objects are thus pre-
sented as stable and permanent, whereas subjects are transitory, variable,
and ultimately unreliable.
This may account for one of the great “truths” of Western culture, an
assumption that grounds the technical paradigm lying at the base of
Modernity. When we speak of technical facts, we always seek objective
data: if, for example, we want to design a load-bearing structure, we pose
a series of questions, such as: what forces will be weighing on this structure?
How much tension can steel resist? What must the section of the beam be?
These questions are answered by exact numbers and abstract representa-
tions of qualities: the dimension of a structural element, the empirically as-
sessed mechanical properties of materials and so on. The structure’s design
will thus be grounded on this objective dataset, a guarantee of the result’s
reliability. All exact are elements expressed through a shared mathematical
language: they can be described with great accuracy, in a verifiable and re-
peatable way. In designing a load-bearing structure – but often also an entire
architecture – we apply the same logic of scientific experiments, which by
definition must be objective: potentially, the same results must be obtained
by another scientist (or, in our case, a designer) working independently on
the other side of the planet, even after many years.
Subjective experience is normally considered the exact epistemological
opposite of this model. My visit to the empty stadium is so different from
those who attended the match that any comparison is ruled out. It is not
possible to measure, classify, reproduce or make any exact description of
this experience, which will remain subjective.
But is the subjects’ experience truly always different, ineffable, not
measurable, unreliable? In a certain sense, the variability of subjective expe-
rience has historically served the purpose of discounting its authority. This
diminution has paved the way for the dominance of the quantifiable aspects
of reality, intrinsically bound to the presence of physical objects in space:
how wide is this? How tall? How much weight can it carry? How fast can it
move? How expensive is it? How many soldiers are attacking our fortress?
In architectural design, the predilection for the quantifiable parts of
reality is stark. If I am unable to exactly predict the effect the space I design
will have on those who will use it, since this reaction is considered to be arbi-
trary, then I will have to ground my decision on measurable, objective facts,
such as the dimensions of a structure or of a door, the costs or the number of
parking spaces. Even the terms normally used to describe human beings in
architectural designs are significantly unbalanced in this direction, in terms
of function (users) or physical encumbrance (occupants).
A further proof of this objectification of human subjects can be found
in two important tools of modern design: anthropometry and ergonomics.
In these forms of analytical representations, human beings are reduced to
things: physical bodies whose dimensions and capacities for mechanical
movement are accurately enumerated. One might ask in which particu-
lar circumstance a person takes up the position portrayed in this scheme:
perhaps only a soldier being inspected by his superior. Yet differently from
the crystallized representations of the anthropometric tables, the human
body is perennially moving, even when we sleep. Such movement is not a
mere mechanical exercise, rather expression of a vitality that constantly
changes the subject’s presence in space (Schmitz, 2011, p. 15).
If we consider the subject as something more complex and articulate than
a mere physical body mechanically moving through space, we can argue
that his experience is not – perhaps paradoxically – altogether subjective.
The term subjective should be brought back to its primary meaning of “per-
taining to the subject”: differently from what we are accustomed to think-
ing, subjective experience is not entirely arbitrary, nor completely diverging
from person to person. One of my goals is that of describing how the expe-
rience of space is not completely subjective, at least not in the conventional
meaning of the word.
Affective impressions
Spaces produce in subjects inhabiting them responses which, if not entirely
equivalent, are at least to some degree comparable. William Turner’s paint-
ing Rockets and blue lights (Figure 2.1) can serve as a good testing ground for
this assumption. The scene depicted is typical of the English painter’s art:
a beach confronted by a raging sea and a stormy sky, where a sharp crease
of blue breaks through the clouds mixed with the smoke of signal rockets.
On the left side, some human figures are barely discernible, as they appear
Figure 2.1 Joseph W.M. Turner, Rockets and blue lights (close at hand) to warn
steamboats of shoal water, 1840. The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown.
to be casting their gaze toward the ships’ masts in the distance, while the
white shadow of what could be a steeple hovers above them. This image
conceals more than it shows: no single outline is clearly visible, as things
seem to materialize directly from the moving air. Nevertheless, despite this
vagueness, the scene produces a strong impression on whoever observes it.
How can we describe the space represented in this painting? We could
precisely enumerate the visible physical elements: beach, sea, sky, ships,
town. But even if we were to focus on the minutest details, the list would
soon run out. On the other hand, we can describe how we could feel if we
were to actually be in front of the sea during the storm: Turner’s painting
depicts a situation the like of which we have all experienced, sometime or
another. Which could be our sensations in that specific moment?
Some reactions are easily predictable: we feel cold, the strong wind, a
certain sense of threat – if not altogether fear – derived from the sublime
rage of the elements. We can imagine a certain tension: not metaphorically,
a real sensation that we corporeally apprehend, in the contraction of our
muscles, the goosebumps on our skins and the rapid nervous movement of
our eyes as we brace to resist the wind. These are subjective elements, in the
sense that they pertain to the subject’s experience: if not universal, these
sensations would nevertheless be felt by a large number of different subjects.
Who is the subject of spatial experience?

Any spatial situation is grounded on the interaction between the
environment’s physical qualities and the presence of a specific subject. Let
us imagine a classroom, with a teacher speaking from the blackboard and a
number of students following the lecture: by inhabiting the same room, all
subjects share a spatial situation, comprising similarities and differences.
The students are articulated by various topological conditions – someone is
sitting in the first row, others far at the back, while the teacher is standing
and facing them. A second set of differences is given by the subjects’ bodily
characteristics – some are tall, others shorter, some sit upright, others are
slumped in their chairs. Although the group of students is homogeneous
in terms of age, origin, and scope of their presence, not all bring the same
individuality into this situation (Lewin, 1936, p. 24): some listen attentively
while others play with their phones under the desk, a few more might be
engaged in daydreaming looking out of the windows of the classroom. Some
students will be happy and others sad for reasons that are unrelated to the
spatial situation: concisely, in the group of subjects there are some homo-
geneous conditions and others that are variable. These individual disposi-
tions interact with the environment’s qualities as they manifest themselves
in a specific moment, leading to the emergence of space as the intersection
between two contingencies.
The experience of space is thus an individual fact, and its description
cannot forgo specifying the individuality of the subject who is performing
it, since it can never be considered as a neutral, universal factor. If in the
same classroom we were to introduce a different group of people – for exam-
ple some elderly people or someone who does not understand the language
being spoken – their experience would be quite different: they would feel
estranged, perhaps out of context or amused, and these individual disposi-
tions would in turn impact on their perception of space. The question who
is the subject is central since the environment affords different experiences
to different subjects.
Despite this individuality, what happens in an environment is not an
inextricable mesh of different sensations matching in number the pres-
ent subjects. Experience is not monadic or atomized, since it derives from
the presence of subjects in an environment anchoring them as a common
physical scaffolding. Many events emerging in space have an impact on the
subjects in the same way: what happens in the classroom if the teacher sud-
denly stops talking? Something changes in the students, and their attention
converges on the silence that has interrupted the lecture. Their gazes are
lifted from the notebooks, from the smartphones hidden beneath the desks,
and they focus on the silent teacher. The physical space in unchanged, but
what the students are experiencing is no longer the same. If the lights were to
go out, plunging the classroom into darkness, all subjects feel a transforma-
tion not only of the space they are perceiving but also of how they perceive
it and of their affective tone. This response is transversal and would emerge
in all subjects, independently of any other personal characterization. The
reaction to darkness is very homogeneous, since it is grounded in dynamics
preceding the cultural apparatus, age, gender, skills and language: it is a
pre-reflective
response.
The weight of these responses in our day- do- day action is stronger than
we are usually willing to admit: today we know that much of our existence
unfolds beneath the threshold of awareness. It is sometimes difficult to rec-
ognize that we are acting in a spontaneous way, making decisions that are
not filtered by some “rational” control hub in the mind (Bower & Gallagher,
2013). We are not speaking of automatic reflexes, those stimulated by a doc-
tor by striking a tiny hammer on one’s knee: it is a more complex and articu-
lated process, neither entirely different nor entirely the same for each subject.
When facing stimuli coming from the environment, some pre-reflective re-
sponses can change depending on who I am: if I am afraid of dogs, my reac-
tion in front of a large barking hound would be of a certain type – freezing
in fear, or panicking and running away – whereas if I am a professional dog
trainer I would behave in an entirely different way. Pre-reflective responses
are thus articulated by the subjects’ specificities.
Situations
To understand this mechanism in a deeper way, let us consider another
situation: a large open-air concert with a huge number of spectators, a
mass event that we are all familiar with. We can sense the joyful and intense
atmosphere we usually find in these circumstances: a crowd of people col-
lectively animated by the music, the lights, the “resonance” of many bodies
animated by the same movement. Nobody there remains indifferent: most
people respond positively, partying along with everyone else, while some
may be bothered by the loud music or the crowd. In one way or another
everyone is involved, at least due to the pervasive intensity of the sensorial
stimulation.
This situation, however, can change at any moment: during the concert
that was taking place on the evening of October 1, 2017, in Las Vegas, in
just ten minutes, between 22:05 and 22:15, an armed man shooting from
a hotel room window overlooking the strip killed 58 people, wounding
851 more. In a few moments, the party atmosphere was erased by the
panic of thousands of people running for cover, trying to escape a danger
they couldn’t see. Although few of us have ever directly witnessed this
kind of situation, and our knowledge of it is mostly mediated, we can
still imagine the sensation of being grabbed and transported by an acting
force that is not physical, but nevertheless potently present in the space
we are experiencing at that moment. It is a force difficult to oppose: only
those trained to do so – police, armed forces – are capable of resisting the
panic, keeping their emotional response under control (Schmitz, 2011,
p. 45). This does not mean that those who resist do not sense the fear
“in the air”: they can modulate their reaction, something an untrained
person cannot do.
The tragic situation of the Las Vegas concert is similar – albeit with more
dramatic tones – to what we earlier described in the stadium. When the
shooting begins, the physical space does not change: what is different is the
experience of space of the now panicking crowd, and the way their affec-
tive response is subverted is independent from the constancy of the envi-
ronment’s material configuration. A transformation has undeniably taken
place, but not of material nature, bound to physical objects – not consider-
ing the bullets that can be heard but not seen. Despite the immaterial qual-
ity of this transformation, we must record the presence of a powerful force
that carries away the spectators in panic.
In the dramatic moments of the shooting only a few spectators were capa-
ble of reacting, by taking fully rational decisions and thereby saving lives.
When we act above the threshold of awareness we make informed choices
by measuring costs and benefits, weighing advantages and disadvantages
to select what appears to be the best thing to do. But in a moment such as
this – and during most of our day-today experience – we act without de-
liberation: this continuous sequence of spontaneous actions influences our
experience beyond what we may think. And, not incidentally, some of the
concert’s spectators may owe their lives to the fact that they have reacted
spontaneously – without thinking – and thus keeping out of the trajectories
of the bullets.
Representing space in motion
We can start outlining a model of space more complex than what is usu-
ally discussed in architecture: space is a dynamic entity, changing as events
unfold and as subjects act and move. In design practice, we often have the
presumption that to fully understand a space it is sufficient to properly rep-
resent it following the exact codes of architectural graphics and descriptive
geometry. But many of the events that we have described and influence the
subjects’ sense of space elude conventional representation techniques.
If space changes along with the events unfolding over time we cannot
ignore its intrinsic transitoriness. How can the temporal dimension be
shown in a plan or a section? There is no simple answer since it calls into
question the measurability and objectivity of space. The architect’s use of
drawing relies on its capacity of measuring with precision physical objects:
all that is immaterial, however, escapes from technical graphics which have
not been conceived to capture it.
If the statute of architectural visualization privileges the observation of
physical objects then the representation of reality as proposed in art seems
often more capable of sounding in depth the nature of space. Artistic rep-
resentation is free from both the clause of precision and the strict connec-
tion with the objectual dimension, thereby expanding the gamut of available
tools (De Matteis, 2017). David Hockney, an acute observer of situations, in
his 1967 painting A bigger splash shows an apparently simple scene, at least
in terms of its ability to record with precision the physical configuration of
an environment. In the background, we see a house in California Modern
style, an elementary volume with wide glazing and a row of palm trees. On
the glass, a subtle reflection gives away the presence of more such houses
and palms, while in front of it lies a folding chair. In the foreground, a light
blue rectangle occupies half of the painting’s surface, and we understand
that is shows the water of a swimming pool. Above the water hovers a yellow
diagonal trapeze, which, although it defies the laws of perspective, can be
recognized as the springboard. The true protagonist of the entire work,
however, is the water’s movement represented by a cloud of white paint.
As in Turner’s stormy scene, the artist provides only a few clues about
what is going on, yet with a few brushstrokes, Hockney is capable of rep-
resenting a distinctly recognizable situation. The figures populating the
image evoke things that we have seen before, either in reality or in other
representations, such as the house with the ample glazing sitting beneath
the palm trees and the blue sky. All elements come together to stage a sunny
day spent outdoors, a situation we would certainly find pleasant. On top
of this, the synthetic representation of the splash, in its simplicity, not only
provides the sense of the water’s presence, but also of its movement, of the
fact that somebody just dived into the pool. We can try to decode the paint-
ing, seeking traces and clues of an unfolding narrative by inscribing this
“photogram” in a wider narrative of events. But before this, we feel what is
happening at this very moment: we feel the diver’s motion, the presence of
water, the heated human body entering the cool water. And this feeling is
not metaphorical: this image sets something in motion in our own bodies.
Even with the scant information we have this painting produces on those
who observe it an effect that a technical drawing of this California house in
incapable of achieving.
In which sense can an image set a body in motion? The image is still; it
does not move, but at most it can simulate movement. However, if we ob-
serve attentively not only the image, but also what we feel while looking at
it, we may notice that the distinction between ourselves and what we are
observing may fade, almost to the point of disappearing. In Caravaggio’s
Martyrdom of St. Matthew (Figure 2.2) the simulated movement of bod-
ies is very evident: while in Hockney’s painting, human presence is elusive,
here, it becomes visible, and all characters are intent on some kind of move-
ment. Caravaggio emphasizes motion through painterly techniques, such
as the stark light flowing into the scene from the left, which underscores the
muscular contraction of the henchman’s body and the fleeing gesture of the
character on the right.
Figure 2.2 Caravaggio, Martyrdom of St. Matthew, 1600. Church of San Luigi dei
Francesi, Rome.
Besides the dramatic scene of the Saint’s death, movement appears in the
torsion in the body of each figure, which is the exact opposite of the rigidity
of the anthropometric table. If we schematize the motion of bodies with vec-
tors, we notice that each moves in at least three different directions: arms,
legs, torsos and gazes create a complex tangle revolving around the hench-
man’s central figure. If we observe attentively enough we may notice that the
movement is not confined to the painting only, but somehow exceeds it, and
sparks our own corporeal sensation. This mirroring of motion is not a met-
aphorical analogy since we know that the way we perceive forms and objects
in our environment – including those in two- dimensional images – is neither
neutral nor detached, producing an echo of this motion that reverberates in
the observer.
These vicarious movements felt by the body are not limited to human
figures as we find the same dynamic pattern in architectural forms. Clearly
enough, these objects do not move – buildings hardly ever move: it is the
subjects’ response to a formal configuration leading them to experience
a sense of movement, as seen, for example, in the foyer of Zaha Hadid’s
MAXXI museum in Rome. When encountering these objects, we recognize
in the built forms a movement that is mirrored in our own body, as was the
case with Caravaggio’s torsion and dynamism. All this unfolds beneath our
threshold of awareness, as this “underwater” current impacts on our actions
in a powerful way. At close observation, we can recognize traces of this dy-
namic not only in the great masterpieces of architecture or art but also in
the places we know best, those we inhabit every day and to which our body
responds independently from their artistic value or their author’s pedigree.
Our life unfolds in space: this articulate entity deeply influences us since
we are fully spatial beings (Minkowski, 1970, p. 84). We encounter the
environment through space and make sense of it by means of our spatial
structure. Our actions transform space dynamically in a constant process
of codetermination. It is the very nature of our experience of the world: the
difference between an ordinary person and a designer of spatial transfor-
mation lies in the awareness of this reality, in understanding how a space
we imagine will influence its inhabitants’ life. Design work consists in using
the technical tools of construction to set the stage for this experience by
forecasting its nature in an intentional way.
3 Objects and stranger things
Our first questions on the nature of space hint at a complex dimension not
reducible to the measurable aspects of the environment only. The presumed
“objectivity” of physical space is not incontrovertible as is the “subjectivity”
of the subject. Many events we usually consider individual, private and
limited to the individual are in fact transversally shared by a multiplicity
of subjects.
In the classical acceptation of space, to a large extent still dominant in
modern Western culture, the ontology of objects plays a central role. It is
difficult to imagine the description of an environment not starting from the
enumeration of the objects it contains: yet the centrality of physical things in
the definition of space cannot be considered a universal fact, since in other
cultural geographies their role has been remarkably less relevant.
Objects and half-things

When we speak of objects we mean material things endowed with a certain
set of qualities. They are made of tangible physical matter, have a shape,
cohesion, stability over time, a precise location in space, are either at rest
or in motion. They also manifest apparent qualities such as color, material
and texture. A bottle can be considered an object, since it has all the above
qualities, but the water it contains is not a “thing” to the same extent of its
container. Can we legitimately claim that water is an object? Not entirely,
since some of its material qualities – form, position – are delegated to a
container and are thus derived and subject to change over time.
Beyond full things, such as the bottle, there are others lacking some
grounding qualities, or that possess them only on a temporary basis – e.g.,
water when it inherits the bottle’s shape, or when it freezes into ice becoming
something altogether different. Our daily experience is rich in things that
are not entirely complete: air, wind, light, sounds, smells and so on. They lack
a proper material characterization and must always be defined depending
on something else that is material: the wind shaking a tree’s branches, the
light I perceive on an object’s surface, the cold air I sense on my skin or that
I no longer sense when there is none resulting in my feeling of suffocation.
Objects and stranger things 19
Air can only be sensed indirectly: for example, when riding a bicycle, through
the movement of breathing, when it enters and leaves my body or by means
of technical devices that measure the air’s physical qualities, returning an
analytical representation. However, despite its evanescent and “incom-
plete” nature, air constantly acts on my experience and is in fact much more
important than many objects that occupy the environment with their full
physicality. The latent, transparent presence of air, which denies its member-
ship to the club of things, does not subtract from its vital role in my daily life.
The historical “advantage” of objects over other “incomplete” entities
lies in the fact that they are easy to measure, organize and classify: their
centrality in modern Western culture derives from this prerogative. A phys-
ical object is always present and it can be easily described and compared:
which of these two stones is heavier? Which tree is taller? Any physical body
(including the human body) can be analyzed and described in an exact and
methodologically disciplined way. The same is not true for air, wind, water
and light: how can we compare two winds when they are not both present
at once? Or compare a room where there is no air with another that is well
ventilated? The comparison is possible only in relation to an intermediate
term, the subject appraising one situation and confronts it with his previous
experience. Yet being an individual experience, it will not be directly meas-
urable, and its exact transmission needs to make use of technical devices
that do not render the actual phenomena but only abstract representations
of reality.
The daunting task of making sense and organizing the real world has very
ancient roots going back at least to classical Greek thought: an attempt to
bridle nature – originally perceived as chaotic and devoid of order – in a con-
trollable condition. Aristotle’s philosophical project unfolds as the synthesis
of a long challenge to organize and systematize objects and phenomena ap-
pearing in the natural world. Western scientific thought eventually emerged
from this system of observation in a threefold chord between observation,
exact representation and philosophical reflection. This was emblematically
synthesized in Euclid’s “invention” of geometry between the 4th and 3rd
centuries BC shortly after Plato had developed his theory of ideal solids.
Divine geometries
The five solids described in the dialogue Timaeus are an example of how
geometry is applied as a tool to control the manifestations of reality. The
survival of these form has been so strong that, after more than 18 centuries,
they resurface in Luca Pacioli’s treatise De divina proportione, illustrated
by Leonardo da Vinci. The five solids – tetrahedron, hexahedron, icosahe-
dron, octahedron and dodecahedron – are connected to each of the four
primary elements and to ether, creating an ideal analogical model associat-
ing the sublunar world and the hyperuranion (Plato, 1997, pp. 1257–1258).
Well into the Renaissance they represent the basic syntax for the description
of real-world forms, structuring a system of symbolic references bound to
the theory of elements. Plato’s cosmological model, capable of linking the
exactness of the solids with the less controllable forms of the natural world,
will have an extraordinary impact on European culture and was considered
valid for over two millennia.
The development of geometry as a tool to measure visible reality
exponentially reinforces the ability to accurately describe the forms of
material objects by paving the way for extraordinary possibilities of con-
trolling the world. It is thanks to geometry that in Western culture objects
rise to their dominant ontological status over spatial presences. From math-
ematics to cosmology and the arts, geometry will become the dominant in-
strument of control: through proportional systems and stereometry, it gave
birth to an association which – with various alternations from Vitruvius to
the 20th century – has been a grounding force in architecture, leveraging on
the double bond with tectonics and the symbolic dimension of numerology.
Geometry’s original nature as a system to control and describe the world
still today remains largely valid, despite the obsolescence of the Euclidean
model. The quest for ever more sophisticated instruments reinforcing our
analytical capacities aims at describing complex phenomena that structure
our universe. Contemporary geometry is entirely detached from our sensible
faculties, mostly focusing on dynamics that are not directly tangible, well
above our perceptual threshold, from black holes to subatomic particles.
Differently from the Euclidean model and directly hinged to physical objects
(Baier, 2000, p. 20), these new forms of geometry produce abstractions that
cannot be directly shown through images: nevertheless, their epistemologi-
cal role of representations of physical reality has not substantially changed.
It is quite telling to observe that geometry, one of the most sophisticated
conceptual tools invented by European culture, bears in its genome the
task of measuring the world of objects, possibly organizing it in families of
precisely codified forms. The relevance of these geometrical aspects in our
worldview is so strong that it has acquired deep meanings: we could think of
the vast number of symbolic associations of circles/spheres, squares/cubes,
triangles/pyramids, etc. This symbolic dimension is mirrored in the associ-
ation of some of these forms with moral qualities, as can be deduced from
the metaphoric use on geometry in language – a square person, an all-round

personality. It is thus also not a simple coincidence that these shapes are
favored in children’s rooms and in toys based on platonic geometries.
The way we are “trained” to interact with these shapes is also based on
enduring classical geometrical models: the first objects we enter in contact
with, in a tradition that has been normalized by Friedrich Fröbel in the
first half of the 19th century, are usually spheres, hexahedrons, or cylinders,
without any real evidence of their greater effectiveness in the development
of the babies’ spatial or perceptual skills. Exact geometric forms pervade
the world of children also through animated characters, whose morphology
often derives from the composition of pure forms, especially if the target
audience is of a young age. It could seem almost obvious that the “good
guys” are almost without exception round, like Snow White’s seven dwarfs,
Totoro or Doraemon, and the “bad guys” angular, pointed and jagged.
But elementary geometric forms are not limited to the world of chil-
dren. In the oscillations of Western culture, formal simplification cyclically
emerged as a trend in all fields of production: in historical periods such as
the Renaissance, Neoclassicism or the early 20th century, the reduction of
complexity of geometric repertoires was both the reaction to previous mo-
ments characterized by formal accumulation, and the response to a latent
need for geometric precision. In this sense, what happened in Europe be-
tween the wars is telling: in various contexts, artists and architects pursued
a radical reduction of formal structures, as in the case of the Dutch avant-
garde. In the early 1920s, Theo van Doesburg and Cornelis van Esteren ex-
perimented with plastic compositions based on pure volumes that could be
almost immediately translated into architectural objects.
Many of the various cultural projects that go under the label of “modern”
architecture share the tendency toward formal reduction, overlapping the
intensions of distant episodes and authors, whose attention turns toward an
almost obsessive objectual dimension of space. The exaltation of elemen-
tary geometries is also sustained by the implementation of new modes of
industrialized production where morphological simplicity becomes crucial
for the system’s efficiency. The ancient pragmatic root that brought to the
birth of geometry as the matrix of a constructive form is reaffirmed by the
marriage between objects and industrial rationality.
Architecture as a system of objects

A century after this heroic period of modern architecture, and despite the
widespread availability of digital systems that can control geometries ex-
ponentially more complex than the classic platonic- euclidean forms, the
deep objectual ontology of architecture seems to have remained largely un-
changed. This can be clearly deduced from the drive to aestheticization of
architectural objects and volumes, based on an attribution of value accord-
ing to formal and plastic qualities, a fact that becomes evident by browsing
any popular architecture website or the many print or screen commercial
ads that use architecture to create settings for the promotion of industrial-
ized objects sharing the buildings’ ambition for formal perfection.
Architectural visualizations – in this case through photography – tend
to underscore the morphological and geometrical qualities of objects, of-
ten framing them from specific viewpoints that are hardly relevant in the
buildings’ actual use. The photograph’s fixity furthermore contrasts with
the dynamism of perception – even of visual perception alone – that, on the
contrary, is constantly shifting (Noë, 2004, p. 8). Architectural representa-
tion tends to highlight the geometric character of buildings, emphasizing
formal qualities that in direct experience are far more blurred.
Further evidence of the objectual character of architecture is implicit in
the term composition once commonly used to indicate an initial stage of
design based on geometric work. The concept goes back to the beaux-arts
tradition of French schools in the 19th century with the advent of archi-
tects as distinct professionals educated through a specific educational track.
The meaning of composition as “putting together” once again points at ob-
jects and physical shapes, and hints at a part of design that is based on
volumetric aggregations, eventually rising to recapitulate design work as
a whole. While in music composition can substitute the more general term
work, underscoring its allographic character (Goodman, 1968, p. 113). in
contemporary architectural design it refers to a self-standing activity aimed
at defining the geometric qualities of a building independently from a more
articulated spatial organization.
Reflecting on the way many architects from the first half of the 20th
century have conceived design, centrally through the aggregation of plas-
tic forms, we can understand the extent to which contemporary projects
are conceived as the sum of volumes deriving from classic geometry, made
more complex thanks to the development of advanced technical tools that
are capable of controlling morphologies from the conception through con-
struction. Much of contemporary production appears to be more interested
in architectural objects rather than in the environment in which they rise:
a space that is not a neutral container of things, an entity emerging in its
fullest once it is inhabited by subjects interacting with both objects and non-
objects present there.
This propensity for object-oriented practice is unrelated from the final
result and quality of architectural work. A building created setting out from
its plastic modeling can lead to either good or bad results depending on the
designer’s skills as trained by a long process molding the architect’s cogni-
tive structure (Mallgrave, 2011, p. 207). Spatial intelligence, however, does
not necessarily overlap with one’s conceptual geometric skills: it revolves
around the work with physical objects, conforming to a mental structure
denoted by a certain sensibility for space.
Perceptual entrainment
Thinking by objects is not an inborn ability, rather the result of a clearly
framed cultural process. Each individual represents a complex subject, in-
tertwining biological and evolutionary levels – the biolayering grounding
human physiology (Thrift, 2008, p. 174) – and others deriving from skills
acquired over time and depending on who we are, where we come from,
our age and previous experience, as well as the forms of training we have
received. This “education”, preceding intentional thought, does not neces-
sarily derive from what we learn in school: it is anchored to deeper dynam-
ics, such as perceptual training, beginning with birth and representing a
constitutive part of the development by which the child acquires a vital set
of skills.
A parent showing an object to a child points at it with a gesture of arm
and hand, and exclaims, look how beautiful! The object in question becomes
more relevant in the child’s perceptual field and it acquires a positive va-
lence. Depending on the parent’s interests and priorities, the child learns
to observe some aspect of his environment more than others: although the
physiological mechanism of perception remains largely constant across in-
dividuals, in the perceived field, some presences become more important
than others, configuring an environment that is in fact shaped by the sub-
ject’s specific skills (Ingold, 2000, p. 51).
This form of subjectivity is not hinged to a single individual, since per-
ceptual training occurs with different modalities according to ethnic and
cultural groups. Perception is not a deliberate act, being an intrinsic ability
of individuals enacted in a pre-reflective way. We may think of the stere-
otypical character of the Apache scout capable of moving with dexterity
through a forest, recognizing traces that are invisible to others: this ability
results from a process of training, since he has been taught to read these
clues from a very early age, as a skill to survive within his environment. This
is an extreme case, bound to the need to adapt to a hostile context, but in
lesser forms applies to the development of every individual.
Sensotypes
Over time, different forms of perceptual training have evolved into very
diverse aesthetic ecologies. One of the most remarkable examples is that
of Oriental art, in particular from Japan and China. For those who come
from the West, despite the wide global diffusion of both cultures, tradi-
tional Chinese and Japanese objects and buildings often appear as ineffa-
ble, given their being rooted in a perceptual “style” – or sensotype (Wober,
1966) – quite different from our own.
This deep difference emerges even in the most common-use objects, such
as a cup: we could compare a Japanese tea bowl from the Edo period (18th
century), and a British Wedgwood cup, produced approximately in the same
years (Figures 3.1 and 3.2). Despite sharing the same function these two ob-
jects are completely different. The first clearly shows that it is handcrafted,
to the extent that we can almost recognize the movement of the maker’s
hands: as Herni Focillon could phrase it,
forms are not their own pattern, their own mere naked representation.
Their life develops in a space that is not the abstract frame of geometry;
under the tools and the hands of men it assumes substance in a given
material.
(1992, p. 62)
Figure 3.1 Japanese tea bowl, Edo period, 18th century. The Walters Art Museum,
Baltimore.
Figure 3.2 Cup, Wedgwood, England, 18th century. The Cleveland Museum of Art.
Irregularities are fully displayed, showcasing the object’s materiality; at

some point of its life, the bowl was damaged, and even the signs of repair are
displayed, witnessing its history. The Wedgwood cup is the exact opposite:
here the production’s technical perfection consists in erasing any trace of
non-homogeneity. The geometry is exact, the material smooth, thereby serv-
ing as a background for the fine neoclassical decoration inspired by ancient
Roman gems. It would be difficult to imagine two more disparate objects,
yet in its own context each is considered a masterpiece and is preserved in
a museum.
Another family of objects that allows us to focus on the Oriental aesthetic
ecology of objects are Chinese ornamental rocks, or philosopher’s stones:
the gongshi (Figure 3.3). These natural rocks were particularly prized by
literati in classical China: they were gathered in various sizes at lakes
throughout the country. Smaller ones were mounted on wooden sup-
ports and displayed inside homes, while larger ones were used in gardens
sometimes designed by the collectors themselves. The stones, carved by
water and wind, were appreciated and selected for their intricate and often
“dramatic”
forms.
As with the Japanese tea bowl, it is difficult for those coming from a
different aesthetic ecology to understand and appreciate these objects, con-
sidered among the most precious of Oriental art. The stones are not selected
for the quality of their volumes or “mass” but for the particular shape of
their voids and hollows. For our perceptual style, intrinsically trained with
physical objects, masses and volumes, these empty spaces become secondary
and do not emerge to our visual perception. Differently from what hap-
pens in Western art, the Asian sensotype is dominated by voids rather than
by masses, a fact that is manifest in various perceptual dynamics (Chua,
Figure 3.3 Gongshi, or philosopher’s stone.

Boland, & Nisbett, 2005). This can partially explain the sense of emptiness
that strikes us when we visit the interiors of a traditional Japanese home.
Different perceptual techniques allow us to put in perspective the notion
that the space we inhabit is primarily composed of physical objects: the
qualities we apprehend in the environment and concur in the creation of a
spatial image are variously articulated depending on the subject’s specificity
(Čeněk & Čeněk, 2015).
Chinese ornamental stones also allow us to focus on another perceptual
process: if we observe them attentively, we may notice that our gaze spon-
taneously seeks familiar images, as when looking at clouds passing by. The
perceptual act includes a pre-reflective scanning of patterns, images we are
capable of recognizing (Gibson, 1978): a process over which we exert no con-
trol and that in its pathological forms leads to pareidolia. This spontaneous
mechanism, grounded in an evolutionary structure, is increased by a second,
culturally determined tendency leading us to perform an interpretative obser-
vation: the relationship between viewer and object thus unfolds on two distinct
levels. Although the projection of a familiar image is intimately connected to
our perceptual skills, the weight of interpretation is culture-specific, leading
in some cases to an increased attention to the emergence of figures.
Sensible forms
The taste for Chinese ornamental stones is based on different cues: not on
the quest for images “hidden” within the rock but on a process of emotional
mirroring. Through sight and manipulation, the observer establishes a cor-
poreal contact with the object, identifying the echo (or dissonance) of his
own affective states. It is an immediate process, in the sense that it is not
mediated by an interpretational filter: there is no need for a linguistic code,
and the corporeal communication between stone and observer unfolds on a

pre-reflective level.
A Japanese myth, narrated in Yôjirô Takita’s film Okuribito, recounts
that in ancient times, before the invention of writing, people sometimes used
stones to communicate sending them over long distances: by taking them
in his hand the stone’s recipient would sense the emotion the sender wanted
to convey: a smooth stone for serenity, a rough one for worry, etc. In this
sense objects, even the smallest ones, are capable of generating an immedi-
ate emotional response in subjects: these expressive qualities may be entirely
disconnected from the visual and geometric properties and are grounded in
the sensation emerging from corporeal resonance.
These considerations converge on the centrality of the subject in the
experience of space. Differing from what we usually consider, physical
objects do not define space in an incontrovertible way, nor do they represent
its sole constituent elements. Their role should be relativized, subordinating
it to an active subject that encounters space in a particular situation. This
dependency on the subject’s action is embodied in the notion of perspective,
in the sense of the different points of view an observer can assume. If we
consider a cube, as with all objects made up of opaque volumes and sur-
faces, it is impossible to perceive all of its six faces at once. The observ-
ing subject “completes” the cube and can rightfully state that it is a cube:
not three faces of a cube, rather a cube intended as a complete object. This
process is fundamental to ensure the stability of perception, which would
otherwise be constellated by “holes” produced, in the case of sight, by the
overlapping of opaque surfaces (Noë, 2004, p. 76).
Perspectival properties
Although this spontaneous perceptual dynamic rarely emerges beyond the
threshold of awareness, we must observe that the exact nature of an object
in the environment cannot be defined without the presence of a subject in-
teracting with it. The cube remains a cube, but its interaction with the sub-
ject and its emerging and unfolding in his perceptual field are articulated
in time, following the observer’s movement. In other words, the presumed
“objectivity” of the object is downgraded by the subject’s action: depending
on the type of movement and trajectory he follows in approaching the object
his perception may change in drastic ways.
This diversity of experience of objects on the basis of movement is
fundamental in the creation of architectural environments. We may con-
sider four different buildings based on a cubic shape, in relation to which
subjects move in different ways: the central entrance to Aldo Rossi’s Modena
Cemetery, the incidental approach to Louis Kahn’s Exeter Library, the cir-
cular movement around the Kaaba in Mecca, and the church of St. Paul
in Foligno by Massimiliano Fuksas (Figure 3.4). In these four cases, de-
spite the geometric similitude between the buildings, the different types of
movement performed by visitors sets their characters far apart.
The comparison between these four cubical buildings allows us to
introduce another issue: we are observing objects similar in shape and pro-
portion; their size differs, but not excessively. The analogies however stop
here: the material constitution is different and the openings have various ar-
rangements. But above all, these buildings are encountered in situations that
can hardly be compared. Some pertain to sacred precincts, others are lay;
some are isolated, yet others belong to a wider architectural environment.
Their relation to the surrounding landscape is also diverse as are the paths
along which one approaches them. In synthesis, the space emerging from
each of these cases varies despite the analogy in geometries, which are but
one of the manifold factors influencing the experienced situation.
To what extent do these geometric qualities have an impact on the
situations the subject encounters? There is no unequivocal answer, since
situations are by their very nature complex and largely impenetrable con-
figurations of reality. Real space is always articulated: we do not inhabit a
desert populated only by ideal platonic volumes, but a living environment
Figure 3.4 Four cubic buildings: Library of the Phillips Exeter Academy, Louis
Kahn; San Cataldo Cemetery, Modena, Aldo Rossi; Kaaba, Mecca;
Church of St. Paul Apostle in Foligno, Massimiliano Fuksas.
actively occupied by a wide variety of presences that are not limited to ma-
terial objects. The subject’s encounter with these acting forces is what brings
space to life.
The perspectival properties of objects, i.e. the way the subject encounters
them in the environment, are linked to a perception that is always partial
and enacted from a specific point in space:
It is, therefore, quite true that any perception of a thing, a shape or a size
as real, any perceptual constancy refers back to the positing of a world
and of a system of experience in which my body is inescapably linked
with phenomena.
(Merleau-Ponty, 1962, pp. 353–354)
If we describe a tree-lined boulevard in terms of objects, i.e. of the material

things defining the environment, we can argue that the sequence of trees is
made up of elements that are all equal. This fact could be incontrovertibly
assessed by measuring the size of the tree and observing that their height
varies within a narrow range. If, however, we take the side of the subject the
same boulevard presents itself differently: given the observer’s changing po-
sition, with the varying perspectives some trees come toward the foreground
while those in the background only occupy a small portion of the visual
field. Although in the quantitative sense the trees continue to be all the
same, once a hierarchy of perceived dimensions is considered, those closer
to the beholding subject will “emerge” above the others.
If we were to ask the question are these trees all the same?, we would have
to answer yes, because they are; but in the space inhabited by the subject
their presence is actually very different. The last tree in the distance is about
to vanish from my visual field, whereas in the tree closest to me I can dis-
tinctly discern form, color and texture: thus, stating that the trees are all the
same is only partially true. The trees are at once all the same and different,
and the way in which they emerge to my perception allows me to recog-
nize their identity, since their perspectival spatiality is a framework wherein
the perceiving subject spontaneously operates thanks to his “sensorimotor
knowledge” (Noë, 2004, p. 79).
In emerging from an undifferentiated background the tree closest to my
position becomes somehow more relevant. Extending this notion to other
contexts, we can identify many circumstances where the seriality of identi-
cal or similar objects – trees, buildings, people – becomes organized accord-
ing to a hierarchy of relative positions. In our everyday environments, this
graduality may play an important role leading to affective responses that
make some objects less objective.
The point here is not to deny the importance of material objects in the de-
scription and design of space but to acknowledge that things in themselves
only emerge through the subject’s presence as he encounters and engages
with them. The experience of space comes to life from the relationship be-
tween these two entities: objects are thus less fixed – less objective – than
what we may usually consider as are their conditions of position, dimension,
materiality and so on become effective only in relation to the actions that
the subject performs in space. In architectural design practice, we must be
aware of the “changing” nature of objects and of the repercussions their
presence can have on the subject. Space is always “filled” with presences
that, despite not being things, occupy and define it with a power equal – if
not superior – to that of physical objects.
4 The living body
The term we have used so far to indicate the main character of what happens
in space has been subject, thereby intending a specific individual inhabiting
the environment. It is not a universal category, since specific refers to an
articulation sustained by several factors, among which age, gender, ethnic,
cultural and social background, previous experience and acquired skills,
as well as personality and the physical body’s qualities. In latter sense,
an individual can be tall or short, athletic and agile, or lazy and clumsy,
endowed with greater or lesser motility: these are the physical characters of
the human body or, to a larger extent, of any animated being such as a dog,
a cat, a tick (Agamben, 2004, p. 40).
The subject’s specificity relies, among others, on the qualities of his
physical body: but is this the body that inhabits space or does the term im-
ply a wider sense? To better understand this distinction we may observe a
plate from the first great modern anatomic atlas, De humani corporis fab-
rica by Vesalius (Figure 4.1). In the mid-16th century the human body, as in
Leonardo’s earlier studies, represents one of the main fields of research for
scientists, medics, painters, architects etc. In this plate, dedicated to mus-
cular structure, we see a man deprived of his skin with all muscles exposed:
yet he appears to be alive, portrayed as he walks in a landscape with a city
in the background. Some parts of the body – torso, limbs, head – are visible,
while the inner organs remain concealed. In this image, a skinned “corpse”
is shown in motion, hinting at the fact that man moves independently from
the conditions of his physical body. He is propelled by something internal yet
separated from the body itself: it is an animated body, endowed with a soul.
What animates us
The idea of soul is rooted in archaic times, and over the course of history
takes up different names, landing in Christian religion from far-away places.
The soul and its avatars from every corner of the globe – pneuma, spirit,
atman, ch’i – provide a metaphysical explanation for the sensation of the
presence of something that moves and acts inside the body, at times inde-
pendently from the subject’s deliberate intentions. This animated presence
is capable of overtaking the subject who is otherwise considered – perhaps
The living body 31
Figure 4.1 Johan van Calcar, illustration from De humani corporis fabrica by
Vesalius, 1542.
erroneously – always in full control of himself. In Western culture, with its

dual Greek and Judeo-Christian origins, the belief in this volatile entity,
separate from a mortal body only temporarily hosting it, remained deeply
rooted for centuries with countless religious and philosophical implications.
32 The living body
Although today the religious dimension of this animated presence has
been largely reduced, the strong dualist foundations of Western culture have
“translated” the soul into some modern counterparts. The Cartesian tradi-
tion, by shifting the core of human animated life toward the predominance
of causal thought, has made this separation even more robust, tracing clear
boundaries with the res extensa of the physical body. The thinking mind,
from Descartes onward, has started a brilliant career as autonomous entity
as if there were a homunculus locked inside the head, so self-sufficient that
one could imagine his survival beyond the boundaries of biological death
(De Matteis, 2015a). Only more recently a collaboration of multiple fields of
inquiry has recognized the substantial identity between mind and body by
merging what millennia of Western philosophical tradition has arbitrarily
separated (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991).
Beyond the panoply of terms used to described it – soul, mind, existence,
etc. – we must observe the permanence of this idea that there is something
alive in some “inner” space: an entity not coinciding with our body’s physical
boundaries which acts independently from it. “what’s been thought under
the name soul”, writes Jean-Luc Nancy, “is nothing other than the experience
of the body” (2008, p. 134). The philosophy of embodiment, inaugurated at
the beginning of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl and later developed
by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, recognizes that the vital impulse felt by the
subject in his own body must not be considered something separated, but
rather as an intrinsic capacity of living beings allowing the perception of
one’s own presence and vital drive (Schmitz, 2011, p. 4; Sheets-Johnstone,
2011, p. 202). The profound change in contemporary thought sparked by em-
bodiment theories represents today a common substrate for cognitive scien-
tists, philosophers, social scientists, artists and architects, who recognize in
the felt body – Husserl’s Leib – the key to explain the subject’s presence in
the world.
The felt body

But what exactly is the felt body? While we can describe the physical body
with a certain precision – we may do so by browsing an anatomical atlas –
the living body, that which does not fall into the category of physical ob-
jects, is more difficult to pin down. We can approach it through a number
of examples: if we walk along the street and are suddenly surprised by the
strong noise of a car we feel a corporeal contraction. In the middle of the
night a menacing sound indicates the presence of a mosquito: again, we feel
something “contracting” in our body, as if to hide from the winged aggres-
sor. If, on the other hand, we are happy the sensation we experience is that
of lightness as if we were about to fly away. When we enter a large building,
or an architecture with a strong and compelling spatiality, we may be caught
by surprise and feel our body expanding. We sense similar movements also
when we swim beneath the surface of the water and, emerging to the surface,
The living body 33
feel our lungs suddenly expanding as they fill with air. At the end of a long
and tiring day we feel as if we are carrying a heavy load on our shoulders.
We can also think of the simple movements of breathing and swallowing, or
of that precise feeling we have when we are angry, or the butterflies we sense
in our belly when we are in love.
The list could continue indefinitely, but we can already recognize a com-
mon trait among these examples. They are forms of movement the felt
body senses but are not apprehended by the traditional five external senses
(Schmitz, 2011, p. 4). Pain is a telling example: when I hit my knee I distinctly
feel the pain in the exact spot where the impact occurred, but I cannot see it,
nor hear it, nor smell it. Nevertheless, the pain is undeniably there, I can lo-
cate it precisely, and it is as if the rest of my body contracted into the painful
point. The felt body is the sum of these sensations, including, among oth-
ers, the physical movement of the body experienced through the kinesthetic
sense, breathing, pain, and the contraction and expansion that are entailed
by emotions.
The felt body’s centrality is given by the fact that space emerges only when
the subject inhabits it with his corporeal presence (Böhme, 2017, p. 82). We
could argue that space does not exist without the subject’s presence: this un-
derscores its nature as subjective space rather than as container of physical
objects. When we speak of space, we refer to what happens in an inhabited
environment, where the presence of the subject’s felt body is a key entity.
Space can only be described in first person by the subject who is encoun-
tering it at a particular moment in time, almost as an empirical proof of its
very existence: space is given by the presence of a me in a here and in a now
(Minkowski, 1970, p. 125).
The subject’s felt body allows him to sense space through two central
and interrelated dynamics, constantly playing out in mutual collaboration.
First, the felt body continuously responds to stimuli striking it from the sur-
rounding environment: a process of adaptation with deep roots in the indi-
vidual’s need to survive in a potentially hostile environment and make use
of the resources his habitat has to offer.
We could trace an analogy between motor dynamics and the felt body’s
movement. Imagine hiking in the mountains, walking on a well-trodden
path. We all know this condition: our step can be slower or faster, but in
any case, it is an easy walk given the gentle slope and even terrain. It is not
exactly like strolling on a smooth sidewalk, but our motor system allows
us to proceed easily. At some point, we may come upon a steep rise that
forces us to almost climb, using our arms to preserve the balance or even
pull us up (Figure 4.2). Movement becomes slower and more demanding
yet anyone with minimal trekking experience would succeed. The motor
system responds to the terrain’s different configuration by adapting and
climbing upward: this change happens spontaneously, without deliberate
effort. The same happens in less exacting conditions, such as when we
climb a stair.
34 The living body
Figure 4.2 Walking in the mountains.
The felt body interacts with the surrounding environment in a similar

way. While walking on the street we may come upon something drawing
our attention or scaring us: at that moment, we experience a corporeal re-
action, a movement prompting us to act in a certain way, either moving
closer or stepping away. If along the mountain path we encounter something
menacing, such as a threatening large dog, we would sense our immediate
reaction as a strong contraction, preparation for fight or flight. As the motor
system adapts to different terrain conditions the felt body’s response mani-
fests when something emerges from the environment and comes toward us.
Although we are usually unaware of these dynamics, our action in the envi-
ronment is deeply shaped by our response to what we encounter.
The felt body’s second connection to space is related to perceptual dy-
namics. In any environment we inhabit, be it open or enclosed, unknown
or familiar, perception is always at work. At work implies an understanding
of perception as an active process, an action the subject constantly carries
The living body 35
out through an incessant scanning of the surrounding environment seeking
opportunities and looking out for potential threats (Noë, 2004, p. 194). Tra-
ditionally, perception is intended as a passive stance as if the subject were
the receptable of an inflow of stimuli from the outside world, a mere spec-
tator. Today, perception is considered a dynamic process, not terminating
with the sensorial stimulus, thus differing from subject to subject. There is
no substantial difference in the physiology of perception since we all – except
those who suffer from some sensorial impairment – “see” things in approx-
imately the same way. Yet the stimulus is further elaborated depending on
the subject’s specificity according to who we are and what we do with the
incoming solicitations (Ingold, 2000, p. 15; Noë, 2004, p. 155).
Perception is not a passive reception of stimuli because it has a close
link with two further grounding dynamics in a constant process of co-
determination: the subject’s emotional response to the environment and
movement. Motion and emotion, not by chance, are two terms sharing the
same verbal root, leading us back to the ideas of being “set in movement, in
motion, shaken, affected, breached” (Nancy, 2008, p. 135). Let us imagine
visiting a building we are not familiar with: the way we move through its
rooms is influenced by what we perceive, such as when we see a door at
the far end of a large hall indicating a possible exit. What we perceive is in
turn oriented by how we move, since perception dynamically changes with
the subject’s position in space (Forlè, 2013; Noë, 2004, p. 2). Space is thus
not simply something containing us, rather a plastic and changing entity,
constantly molded by the action of the subject and the felt body’s response.
If we extend the analogy of the mountain hike, we can observe how both
physical movement and the felt body’s stirrings influence the subject’s expe-
rience of space. When walking in an urban space, perspective continuously
changes, dynamically shaping space with the kinetic variation of the sur-
rounding environment’s perception. Yet also other presences, often unre-
lated to physical movement, can modify space: such as finding yourself in
a deserted square in the early morning, and, thinking that you are alone,
suddenly realize that someone is observing you from a window. The encoun-
ter with a gaze is not a neutral event: we sense the felt body contracting, and
this stirring modifies our sense of presence in space (Schmitz, 2011, p. 31).
The subject’s life in space is thus shaped by a continuous adaption to both
the environment’s physical qualities, that condition motion and its pres-
ences and encounters, producing an emotional response expressed by the
felt body’s stirrings. Most of the time this does not rise to our awareness,
playing out at a pre-reflective level, without the subject taking notice. This is
true for physical motion – we can climb stairs without thinking about doing
so – and for felt body movements: as long as we do not encounter some-
thing salient emerging from the surrounding environment, we will be able
to remain disengaged from it, absorbed by other thoughts, and not focusing
on our emotional response. Yet the fact that many of these stirrings and
movements go unnoticed does not mean they do not influence us: as forms
36 The living body
of peripheral perception (Pallasmaa, 2014, p. 34), on the contrary, it is what
allows us to become attuned to the surrounding environment (Ingold, 2000,
p. 242).
Attunement
What does it mean to be attuned? How does a subject resonate with the
environment? There is no simple answer, yet we know that the response to
spaces we encounter varies deeply according to their qualities. Some can
make us feel comfortable and protected, or suggest excitement, frenetic ac-
tivity or dynamism, or they can frighten us regardless of the actual presence
of some threat. We can speak of spaces that have different tones, just like
musical compositions that depending on their tonality express various char-
acters. Sometimes the situations we encounter in space lead us in one or the
other direction, making the felt body resound like a musical instrument in an
orchestra. Extending this musical analogy, we can consider the environment
as a concert of different sounds, to which the subject responds and adapts,
sometimes “aligning” with the given situation, at other times through a sort
of “dissonance” (Griffero, 2014, pp. 131–132, 2017b, pp. 44–45).
The notion of the subject attuning to an environment, establishing a
sort of resonance, has ancient roots. In classical thought, it was expressed
through the idea of harmony or universal concordance, an overarching prin-
ciple linking the geometrical, mathematical and musical domains. It further
extended to architecture, as is well manifested by its reemergence in propor-
tion theories well after the Renaissance (Pérez-Gómez, 2016, p. 115). The
rational principle structuring harmonic theories, however, did not generally
consider the action of felt-body resonance, especially the subject’s capac-
ity of synesthetically apprehending what he encounters in space. However,
studies on the psychology of form have highlighted the connection between
shapes, expressive gestures, colors, sounds, etc. (Arnheim, 1974), as a fur-
ther proof that perception is no passive act, producing an affective response
which lies at the base of corporeal resonance. If we were to try – without
any strictly scientific intention – to “give voice” to the forms we encounter
in the environment by associating them to sounds, we would discover that
there is a rather constant correlation. This is also true for the forms of the
buildings we inhabit.
We can therefore argue that the subject’s resonance with the environment
is a constant and latent process only noticed under special circumstances,
for example, when there is a strong “contrast”. Albeit subterranean, these
dynamics ground our experience of space.
The felt body responds to what it encounters in the environment at a
specific moment, according to a principle of contingency. The interaction
is influenced by the subject’s fluctuating corporeal state. This condition can
vary over time in relation to a disposition that is part of the subject’s individ-
uality. If I am very happy the felt body will resonate differently from when
The living body 37
I am sad or tired (Bower & Gallagher, 2013). Even different personal char-
acters, representing base affective tones of individuals, influence the variety
of responses as well as collective moods that can be identified in specific
historical periods (Schmitz, 2011, p. 116).
How does the felt body’s resonance manifest itself in space? Imagine
coming by chance upon a funeral: we can easily understand what is going
on, both because of the conveners’ black clothing, and due to a certain
atmosphere we “breathe”. This sense is generated by the people’s counte-
nance, the tone of their voices, the gestures and postures of their bodies.
We become immediately entangled in this situation: even if we do not know
who has died, we feel the event’s sadness, because the mourners’ affects are
not contained and are transmitted to ourselves (Brennan, 2004, p. 3). This
does not happen because we decided to be sad: the subject’s emotional re-
sponse is pre-reflective and cannot be suppressed, at most restrained. At the
unknown person’s funeral we feel a corporeal contraction, even just a slight
one: this is the felt body’s response.
In contrast, if we visit a village fair we have no difficulty in recognizing
the festive atmosphere pervading all streets, which is reflected as a pleas-
ant sensation of corporeal expansion that is hinged to the cheeriness of the
event. Beyond these two obvious cases the felt body constantly attunes with
what strikes it from the surrounding environment.
Felt body resonance in not only the response to human activities: the
environment constantly suggests different intonations. We may think about
sunlight in the various times of the day: if we analyze it under the quan-
titative profile only, for example, measuring intensity and color tempera-
ture, we would not record strong differences. Yet, if we consider it from
the point of view of our response, it becomes evident that sunlight at dawn
is radically different from sunset: what varies are the expressive qualities
of the environment, changing between morning and evening, together with
the subject’s corporeal disposition. The way we feel in the morning is not
comparable to the mood at sunset, and this difference is mirrored in our felt
body’s response to the environment.
Architectural space has a great ability of generating these phenomena. In
his 1910 essay Architecture, Adolf Loos writes:
If we were to come across a mound in the woods, six foot long by three
foot wide, with the soil piled up in a pyramid, a somber mood would
come over us and a voice inside us would say, “There is someone buried
here.” That is architecture.
(Loos, 2002, p. 84)
In this case, what influences the subject is a composite set of factors: on one
side the situation, given by finding oneself in the forest, an environment
devoid of human presence, where solitude and perhaps the trees’ spectral
appearance reigns. On the other, the physical objects that we recognize and
38 The living body
to which we associate a certain meaning (De Matteis, 2012, p. 106): some
forms bear a special character, capable of influencing us in a specific way.
Several elements that we sense in the environment, even before being fully
understood, act upon the felt body producing an immediate response we
experience as a contraction.
The felt body sustaining our subjectivity is strongly articulated, dynamic
and constantly at work in the interaction with the surrounding environment.
As the motor system allows us to move adapting to the physical configura-
tion of space, so the felt body interacts with the stimuli reaching it from
the environment, from either material or immaterial presences, helping us
inhabit it in an efficient way.
These considerations on the dynamics of the felt body are valid in the
general sense and are independent of the kind of environment we encounter.
Many of these characters descend from a long evolutionary process that
has phylogenetically “taught” the subject to interact with his habitat in the
best possible way. The same dynamics are at work when we face buildings:
architectural space which can be anticipated through design and realized
through construction is a but portion of physical space wherein architecture
is built. It is, in other words, “an extension of nature into the man-made
realm, providing the ground for perception and the horizon of experienc-
ing and understanding the world” (Pallasmaa, 2012, p. 44). The dynamics
unfolding belong to the same wider family of spatial situations that we en-
counter in the natural environment. At the center of space lies the subject,
not inanimate objects such as buildings: spatial experience only emerges in
presence of the felt body.
5 Sensing the environment
Understanding the subject’s perceptual dynamics in the environment

is crucial in describing the nature of spatial experience. Contemporary
perception theory, enriched by the contribution of cognitive sciences,
provides an in- depth framework of the physiological mechanisms subtending
the subject’s presence in the environment, confirming through experimen-
tal data many notions that had been previously intuited by scientists and
philosophers. Today, this is one of the widest and most transversal fields of
research, demanding the convergence of several forms of knowledge, from
philosophy to neurosciences and affective sciences, all revolving around the
central question of spatial cognition.
The investigation of spatial cognition does not halt at the mechanical
process of perception: it extends to the description of how subjects respond
to and interact with the surrounding environment. The basic assumption is
that perception is not an objective fact, equally operating for all subjects:
this may at most be true for the physiological structure only. Perception
is today understood as a more articulated process, extending beyond the
mechanical threshold, varying according to the subject’s specificities and
the qualities of the environment he inhabits.
The five senses and other commonplace notions

The question of perception is burdened by many commonplace assumptions
inherited from early notions in Western culture. In the Parva naturalia,
Aristotle introduces the classification of the five senses – sight, hearing,
smell, touch and taste, the final understood as a specialization of touch.
The Aristotelian senses are linked to the four primary elements and, as
often happens in his epistemological model, are ordered according to a pre-
cise hierarchy from the most to the least relevant, descending from their
ability of covering greater or lesser distances (Connor, 2006, p. 12). Sight is
privileged for being closest to the brain, seat of thought, and is considered
the primary sense, thus inaugurating an ocularcentric tradition that has
deeply underpinned the history of Western culture.
The Aristotelian model remained largely valid for thousands of years,
and still today, children in primary school learn that there are five senses.
This is due to an identification between the senses and the five physical sense
organs: the mechanical aspects of perception are highlighted by overlapping
a perceptual ability and the corresponding anatomical part. This disregards
the fact that our nervous system captures many more stimuli from the envi-
ronment than the sole five sense organs can record (Pallasmaa, 2012, p. 12).
Our sensorial apparatus can receive far more stimuli than those codified
in Aristotle’s model: we can distinguish external or distal senses – those
receiving stimuli from the surrounding environment – and internal senses
recording what happens in the subject’s physical body. The body experiences
its own movement, balance and acceleration (kinesthetic sense), the relative
position of its parts (proprioception) internal movements such as breathing
(enteroception), sensations such as hunger, thirst or fatigue (organic sense),
and a vast amount of information coming from the environment, such as
vibrations, atmospheric pressure and temperature. Contemporary percep-
tion studies identify up to 20 different sensorial abilities, constantly at work,
overlapping and collaborating in a synergic way.
Synesthesia
What does it mean for senses to overlap? We could observe the image of a bowl
of ripe strawberries: if we consider the photograph from a visual perspective
only, what stands out is the red color and, to a lesser degree, the green, along
with the light reflected on the fruit’s shiny skin. However, we can argue that
we also perceive the strawberries’ sweet taste: sensorial stimuli are rarely iso-
lated. I see the strawberries, but I also taste them: this is no mere association,
the notion that when I see the fruit I remember their taste. In fact, the taste is
there in the very moment I see the image. Memory plays a dynamic role in per-
ception as it is not a static archive: by looking at the image I sense the taste and
a slight corporeal stirring that “invites” me to take the strawberry and eat it.
The subject’s sensorial abilities do not act out in an isolated way, since
most of the time the stimuli from the environment strike us all at once, for
example when we see an object moving while hearing its sound. Although
at the physiological level these can be considered two separate stimulations,
acting on different sense organs, where the possibility of describing them
as separate is a subsequent interpretation of what we sense. This happens
since optical stimuli do not only excite the brain’s portion in charge of
visual perception: they also activate other areas. A classic example is that
of the “sound” of forms, studied by Wolfgang Köhler in the 1920s: if we
observe two shapes (Figure 5.1) – one jagged and broken, the other round
and smooth – and try to associate each with nonsense words – takete and
malula – the vast majority of subjects will ascribe takete to the jagged form.
This indicates that there is a link between shapes and sounds, just as there
is between forms and color.
If we watch a mute video showing a traffic accident when at the very moment
of the impact – a purely visual stimulation – very probably we will experience
Sensing the environment 41
Figure 5.1 Takete and Malula, from Wolfgang Köhler’s experiment, 1929.
a sensation that “resembles” the collision’s sound, along with a distinct

corporeal response. We feel a contraction, as if we were inside the car, hearing
a sound we do not hear and feeling a forward thrust that we do not feel. Percep-
tion is not a neutral or isolated fact, constantly calling into play an extended
sensory sphere sparking the collaboration and response of the felt body. This
sensorial complexity, a form of “composite” sensing, is often termed synes-
thesia. Although the term is commonly used as a figure of speech to describe
the pairing of distinct sensorial fields – an acid color, a black noise – in fact,
our common experience is largely based on this undistinguished perception,
which subsequently can be subdivided into different fields.
How can a cry, that is a sound not strictly bound to a material object,
acquire the qualities of a color? Or a color a temperature? If we consider the
senses as separate, non- communicating channels, this cannot be explained
if not by metaphorical language. Yet we know that some expressive qualities
we encounter in the environment can be best described through synesthetic
attributes. The association of temperature and color is among the most ev-
ident: we speak of warm light when the color turns to yellow-orange-red,
of cold light when it ranges in the white-blue-green hues. On one side there
is an associative process, the analogy with the colors of fire and ice. But
before this we must observe our distinct corporeal response to the various
colors of light, just as when we are exposed to different temperatures. If I see
red, I feel warm, while seeing blue will make me feel cold.
Synesthetic perception is the sign of the deep collaboration between
sensorial spheres by helping us adapt to the surrounding environment
through the integration of the different contents we extract: the sole visual
perception of the strawberry, for example, elicits a corporeal response that
anticipates the fruit’s taste, actualizing its nutritional value, and making it
stand out as an opportunity offered to the subject. It also helps the senses
sustain and substitute one another, integrating acquired information in a
form of undivided cognition, since often the individual senses do not pro-
vide us but partial notions about what we encounter. The stimuli coming
from the environment cognitively strike us in rather differentiated ways.
Perception and cognition
Let us consider a door: by looking at it, I can describe it with a certain
accuracy, listing its size, materials color and design style, thus producing
an exact picture of the object I’m observing. If, however, I were to hear the
sound of a door closing, things would be quite different: we can all recognize
the noise of a door shutting, and by hearing it we can state with certainty
that it is that sound (Heidegger, 1993, p. 152). If I tried to describe the sound
with the same accuracy of the door’s visual image, I could recur to very few
words: it is a sudden, strong noise, but the only way I have of conveying to
someone else exactly what I’m talking about is to say that it is the sound of
a door shutting (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008, p. 94). The same can be said,
with varying degrees, for the other sense organs: smell and taste are in this
similar range as sound, whereas touch lies in an intermediate field, since by
touching an object with our hands we can provide an exact description of its
form, weight, texture and hardness.
The various sensorial spheres, constantly interacting and communicating,
lead to different forms of cognitive processing. The fact that sight is the only
sense allowing an analytical, exact and measurable rather than synthetical
description has brought to its historical fortune as the dominant form of
perception. For this same reason sight is the one sense that is said to be ob-
jectifying, meaning that all the environment’s visible presences are reduced
to objects, as such easy to measure and organize. If we were to think of a
classification of doors, we could easily imagine a visual catalog based on
size, color and material; but it would be awkward – albeit interesting – to
devise a classification based on the sound they make when slamming. The
only practical way of producing such a catalog would be to record and
reproduce each door’s sound.
A further relevant aspect of perception is its constant link to action
and movement. The classic (visual, but not only) perceptual model can be
synthesized in the representation of Renaissance perspective: a single point
of view, a dominant “eye” irradiating the forms of the world by means of a
projection. The human eye is at the center of the world, observing it from
an unchanging position, returning a perspective that aims at being an exact
and universal representation of things.
Active perception
The perceptual model we are assuming is of an entirely different nature. The
point of view is not fixed, nor could we actually speak of a single point of
view, rather of a diffused sensorial field that includes both a variable central
focus and a large peripheral area. The spatial image the subject senses is
not universal and physical objects are only a part of what we experience.
Classic perspective can serve, within certain limits, to represent the opti-
cal mechanism of vision: however, it does so only in a very schematic way,
Sensing the environment 43
disregarding the complex actions the subject carries out while perceiving
the world.
If we “enrich” this world made of physical objects with the presence of a
specific and characterized subject we understand the extent to which space
becomes a more nuanced and changing entity. We can imagine a common
urban space, recognizing a rather familiar scene: a pedestrian shopping
street on a pleasant sunny day. There are people strolling, benches where
one can sit and shops one can enter: in other words, this particular built
environment offers different possibilities of use. These possibilities “stand
out” in the perceptual field, depending on the specific characters of the sub-
ject in question: if I’m tired, the bench will somehow “come to the fore-
ground”; if there is a shop I’m interested on the other side of the street, the
crossing point will become more evident; or I could be attracted by a café’s
sign, which signals the possibility of entering and sitting at a table.
The various subjects all see the same “image”: yet this manifestation
changes depending on the interests and skills of each individual. This
hypothesis, formulated in the 1970s by American psychologist James
Gibson, relies on a principle of ecological perception, directly binding
the animal (also the human-animal in the city) with the environment it
inhabits. Each environment, such as the shopping street, offers the “an-
imal” various possibilities of use: Gibson terms them with a neologism,
affordances. In his words,
The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what
it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill. […] I mean by it something
that refers to both the environment and the animal in a way that no ex-
isting term does. It implies the complementarity of the animal and the
environment.
(Gibson, 1979, p. 127)
Gibson’s theory has deeply shaped how perception is understood today.

Traditionally, the subject was considered as a sort of computing entity
located at the center of a physical space acquiring stimuli from the environ-
ment as information to be processed. Once the elaboration was completed
the ensuing action would be selected. The theory of ecological perception
subverts this model: the subject perceives “all” that surrounds him but only
a number of things stand out, in particular, those connected to his interests,
intentions and capacities for action. This form of active perception plays
out pre-reflectively and the other presences within our sensorial field are
acquired in a reduced way.
In this perspective, there is a strong connection between perception and
action: perception itself is considered as a spontaneous action, a continuous
scanning of the environment that seeks opportunities and watches out for
threats. Depending on the subject’s specific skills, opportunities and threats
can differ: in this sense, the environment’s affordances alter our perception.
For a normal person stairs are perceived as the opportunity of going up or
down a building’s floors: they can be used spontaneously, since our motor
system “knows” how to walk up or down, one of those embodied skills that
are referred to as body schema. But for someone practicing parkour and who
has acquired special motor skills through training the stairs provide a dif-
ferent affordance, a possibility of use that is not perceived by an ordinary
subject.
The concept of affordance helps us understand how perception and
movement are two faces of one process of interaction with the environment
(Straus, 1963, p. 195): they are not connected by a cause/effect link, rather
by a cyclic codetermination. They do not relate only to the environment or
the subject, rather to the intersection between these two. Their cyclic char-
acter derives from the perception-action sequence: if the subject perceives
an opportunity for use or movement in his environment, this affordance
will become tangible and guide ensuing motion, thereby altering perception
itself. The way a subject perceives is linked to how he moves and his ability
of understanding the surrounding environment derives from his capacities
of movement.
As we have seen, the felt body’s dynamics are founded on the relationship
between emotion and movement: just as we capture sentiments in space – as
in the case for the funeral – affordances are immaterial presences emerging
from the environment and are sensed by the subject inhabiting space. During
the funeral the feeling of sadness and mourning pervades space and becomes
available to anyone encountering it: it could be described it as a possibility
for emotional engagement. Depending on the subject’s specificities – if he
is a close relative of the deceased, or rather a stranger who happened there
by chance – this feeling will be “used” in different ways: feelings present in
space have the qualities of affordances (Griffero, 2017a). If observed from
the point of view of the subject’s felt body, the collaboration between motion
and emotion becomes even more relevant.
Perception is simply not a mechanical, objective process and is rather
something happening “between” the subject and the environment. Both
concur to the definition of space, that is gradually emerging as an entity
binding us with the world, by constantly shaped by the cycle of perception,
movement and affective response. Perception is not an analytical process
but a synthetic one: what we recognize as individual elements of perception
are the result of an ensuing elaboration acted only on a small fraction of
what we apprehend from the experience of the environment.
6 Motion, emotion
Space is an entity between the environment and the experiencing subject,

populated by immaterial agents influencing the felt body. In turn, the
subject acts within the environment by moving, perceiving and affectively
responding to what is encountered in space. Most of these actions occur
pre-reflectively, without the subject producing a representation of events, of
how his presence in space is articulated. Contemporary cognitive sciences
put forth the thesis that the subject’s responses are mostly spontaneous:
only in a second moment – just a short instant later – they are “interpreted”
becoming part of a form of continuous narrative (Gazzaniga, 2011).
Pre-reflective responses are the first encounter with phenomena emerging
from the environment: a “first impression” of flash-like duration. In some
cases, it becomes enriched by intentional reflection on what is happening:
yet this initial response maintains a certain authority on our informed judg-
ment of situations (Griffero, 2014, p. 29). It is a foundational moment that
has been traditionally deemed neglectable if compared to cognitive faculties
considered to be higher, which are presumed capable of penetrating into the
hidden depths of reality and control all other lower functions (Gallagher,
1986, p. 142). Nevertheless, its short and ephemeral nature does not diminish
its profound influence on the ensuing rational process of elaboration,
decoding and interpretation.
Emotions and the environment

The central quality of this pre-reflective moment is its being hinged to
the subject’s emotional response to the environment. In Western culture,
emotions have been largely considered a form of “minor” knowledge, inca-
pable of exerting rational control over the phenomena of the world. Since
Aristotle, this ability has occupied a privileged position in gnoseology,
concurring to define the uniqueness and prerogatives of the human species.
Today we attribute to emotions a pivotal role, given the growing awareness of
the impact of affective response on the thin veneer of consciousness floating
over a subterranean thought process that is perennially at work. Emotions
are no longer considered something to be simply repressed or contained,
46 Motion, emotion
rather reliable indicators of the subject’s response to what is encountered in
the environment.
Observing these responses allows the subject to understand his own
stance toward the world and to what generates them: it is a form of cogni-
tion, although less transmissible than that generated by intentional thought
and not directly translatable into language. For this same reason, it is impos-
sible to falsify it, given the absence of any representational form. Emotions
provide a faithful image of the world, mirrored in the inhabiting subject’s
corporeality: the awareness of this relationship has led to that deep cultural
transition termed affective turn.
Over the past decades, affective sciences have become increasingly
important, even becoming popularized like other branches of sciences such
as quantum physics or psychoanalysis. One of the most successful interpre-
tive models, known as BET (Basic Emotions Theory), identifies eight basic
emotions: joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, anticipation, trust and surprise.
These describe a codified set of primary responses to what the subject
encounters in his experience, including spatial conditions (Plutchik, 1980,
p. 16). Each emotional response strikes an alarm, to be understood in either
a positive or negative way depending on the contingent circumstances.
The subject’s continuous emotional interaction with the environment
derives from an evolutionary process of adaptation, and these responses
warn about something that is happening: joy if I find an edible fruit some-
where in the forest, an emotion telling me “eat!”; fear prompting me to “flee!”;
anger inciting me to “fight!”; and disgust suggesting “stay way, this might be
poisonous!” (Koffka, 1936, p. 7). These basic responses provide the organism
engaged in exploring the environment with “instructions”. The subject is dy-
namically shaped by the emotional response, in a continuous becoming over
which he has limited control: with due training, the corporeal manifestation
of emotions can be contained, but it is impossible not to experience them. In
other words, we can never be entirely indifferent toward what we encounter
in the environment (Colombetti, 2014, p. 1). The bond between subject and
surrounding world unfolds along the line of the emotional response to what
we perceive. What enters our perceptual field – be it the shape of an object or
an immaterial agent – somehow “demands” use, inviting us to action. Such
invitational characters, observe Gestalt psychologists Kurt Lewin and Kurt
Koffka, express the potential action embedded in them: a handle, for exam-
ple, wants to be turned, chocolate to be eaten. Equally, other objects exert a
repulsive force, prompting us to stay away (Koffka, 1936, p. 353).
The felt body’s primary stirrings, based on the alternation between
contraction and expansion, can be connected to affective responses.
Emotions such as joy and trust usually lead to a corporeal expansion,
whereas anger or fear bring about a contraction. These are not automated
or mechanical reactions, nor are they always constant and reducible to a
single emotion: felt bodily stirrings are more complex, and the corporeal
movement can merge in an articulated disposition, such as when we cry for
happiness or experience an almost joyful, excited form of anger.
Motion, emotion 47
Emotions are characterized by their short duration: they are instantane-
ous responses to events emerging in the subject’s perceptual horizon. Dispo-
sitions that extend over time – such as when someone lives a dark period in
his life – are moods, another manifestation of the affective sphere. They are
a base tone of the felt body that may be influenced by emotions yet lacks the
same immediacy of response (Colombetti, 2014, p. 77). Moods belong to the
personal sphere as corporeal dispositions but may also become shared and
be recorded in wider cultural conditions, as social expressions of particular
historical moments (Schmitz, 2011, p. 116).
Considering the spatiality of the subject’s experience, we may inquire on
the relationship between emotions and the environment, especially the built
environment. Some buildings produce in subjects clearly discernible affec-
tive responses, linked to specific morphological articulations or materials,
producing on their visitors largely transversal impressions. A paradigmatic
case is Peter Zumthor’s Bruder Klaus chapel, built in in 2007 in the country-
side of the German town of Mechernich (Figures 6.1–6.3).
The chapel is a rather simple volume, a monolithic rammed- earth form,
with a single triangular opening on one side. If we associate each stage of
the approach to this building to a basic emotional response, we could ar-
gue that the access through the slit-like door produces anticipation, while
the transit through the dark and narrow corridor induces fear. Once the
Figure 6.1 Peter Zumthor, Bruder Klaus Kapelle, Mechernich, Germany, 2007.
48 Motion, emotion
small central space is reached, however, the natural light pouring from the
top makes the subject experience surprise. The material character of the
interior – the rammed earth has been charred by burning the timber used
as formwork – provides a sense of intimacy, a serene joy influenced by dark
colors barely lit by candlelight. This small architecture is emblematic in the
way it articulates the spatial experience through an elementary emotional
sequence: nevertheless, by skillfully modulating the various encounters
the subject makes along the way, Zumthor is capable of creating a clearly
defined impression. This building “speaks” directly to the emotions without
any linguistic filters before the setting in of interpretation.
Many architectural spaces spark primary emotions: for example, those
that produce a surprise, such as the Pantheon’s vast central space, or those
creating vertigo, a response related to disgust (“stay way, you might fall
down!”). While designers usually privilege positive emotions allowing felt-
body expansion, in our everyday experience we are continuously exposed
to spaces that for various reasons lead to negative and contractive sensa-
tions. These may be rooms that are dark or have a reduced visibility, or
environments engendering sensations of danger or alert, such as when we
try to cross a trafficked road. Emotional responses also derive from some
specific corporeal movements, such as the backward arching of the torso
Motion, emotion 49
that anticipates surprise since it opens our visual field to things which were
previously hidden from our view.
Expressive forms
We can observe the affinities between what architectural space offers to the
subject and basic emotions. These are not only given by the encounters that
take place inside built environments: the formal construction of physical
volumes also produces expressivity. If considered in terms of its morphol-
ogy, Zumthor’s chapel does not elicit a clear emotional response, but other
architectural objects are spontaneously bound to a certain affective quality.
If we observe two different trees, a fir and a weeping willow (Figure 6.4), and
ask, which of these trees is sad?, I cannot help but point at the willow; yet why
is it the willow, which is a tree just like any other, that expresses sadness or
makes us feel sad?
A possible answer is that the willow appears to be sad because it has a
sad posture. If we look at the tree’s prostrate figure, the felt body experi-
ences a resonance with this form, making us feel an emotion connected to
that posture. There is no actual sadness in the willow’s emotions, rather in
its appearance, a corporeal form the subject senses as expressive of sadness
50 Motion, emotion
Figure 6.4 A pine tree and a weeping willow.
(Griffero, 2014, p. 48). It is therefore something the subject does not under-
stand, but rather feels by means of a felt-bodily stirring. This recognition
occurs at a pre-noetic level and these affinities do not come into clear focus.
We recognize corporeal conditions we experience when feeling particular
emotions in both natural and artificial forms.
In the 1886 dissertation in art history presented at the University of Munich,
Heinrich Wölfflin sets the following question: “How is it possible that archi-
tectural forms are able to express an emotion or a mood?” (Wölfflin, 1994,
p. 149). He thereby inquires on how buildings produce on subjects encounter-
ing them a certain mood, an affective response: from the expression of form
to the impression received by the observer. Although he does not come to an
unequivocal conclusion explaining the phenomenon, Wölfflin understands
the bond between the shapes we perceive and the impression they produce.
These are affects acting on the felt body as middle term between subject and
expressive forms: he thus writes “Physical forms possess a character only
because we ourselves possess a body” (Wölfflin, 1994, p. 151).
Feeling “with”
In late 19th century Germany, Wölfflin’s cultural milieu, a new term is
introduced that would eventually become central in contemporary cul-
ture: empathy – Einfühlung. Originally meaning to feel into, it was coined
Motion, emotion 51
by art historian Robert Vischer, who thereby described the phenomenon
through which the observer “projects” his own emotions into the shape he
is beholding. The first attempt at explaining the dynamics of sensible forms
thus consists in imagining a subject that pours out of himself, occupying the
surrounding environment and objects. Today, this understanding of empa-
thy has been subverted, since it is no longer considered to be a projection
but rather a form of mirroring: the concept of resonance between subject
and environment allows us to understand how our own corporeal stirrings
attune to what we perceive in the environment, regardless of the presence of
animate forms. We grasp the expressive character of forms independently
from their vital qualities, allowing us to sense the emotions of a statue, a
painting or a tree.
The subject’s ability of sensing the expressiveness of forms originates in
our perceptual dynamics: when inhabiting space, we are constantly seek-
ing in the surrounding environments signals that may help us adapt to it,
warning us of potential danger while highlighting opportunities. Active per-
ception seeks recognizable patterns, models that can be completed by inter-
locking with our previous experience. This is what happens when we see a
shape, albeit incomplete: our perceptual skills align it with what we know,
deducing useful information and sense (Gibson, 1978). At the purely per-
ceptual level a statue does not differ from an animated being, since this dis-
tinction requires a further level of inquiry grounded on a critical operation.
An interesting example of the sensing of emotions as expressed by forms
can be found in the statue of an Atlas, such as Michelangelo’s famous sculp-
ture in Florence (Figure 6.5). When observing this object we do not only
see the physical stress produced by weight and expressed by the slave’s tor-
sion: we also feel it, through a process cognitive neuroscientists term em-
bodied simulation (Freedberg & Gallese, 2007). Through the dynamic study
of our nervous system, it has been highlighted that when we observe an
object of this kind the areas of the brain activated are the same of when we
actually experience the weight: it is a crucial physiological mechanism for
intersubjective communication, enacted at a preverbal level.
Writing over a century before scientists could look into these neural
dynamics, Wölfflin had intuited the presence of this mechanism and was
trying to trace its effects in architectural forms. If we observe a building, it
becomes clear how this mirroring also takes place in non-anthropomorphic
forms: for example, comparing two Greek temples, the Doric-style Era II in
Paestum and the Corinthian Olympieion in Athens (Figure 6.6), the differ-
ence is evident despite the typological similarities. The distinct proportions
of the two architectural orders express physical compression in the first tem-
ple, upward tension in the second. We can state that the first is heavy while the
second is light: yet this argument does not derive from the image’s descrip-
tion, from the relationship between masses and voids, since we feel the build-
ings’ weight or lightness corporeally. It is further proof or Wölfflin’s theory
concerning the relationship between architectural forms and our perception
52 Motion, emotion
Figure 6.5 Michelangelo, Slave (Atlas), 1520–1523. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence.
of their expressivity as experienced in the subject’s felt body. The feeling of

weight or lightness we corporeally sense precedes the representation that we
can grasp from the near-muscular proportions of these buildings.
Weight and lightness

The dialectics between weight and lightness is one of the leading themes
of architecture, rising to prominence in the 20th century: we find it in the
Mausoleum of the Fosse Ardeatine in Rome, designed by Giuseppe Perug-
ini and Mario Fiorentino, where the gigantic monolith weighs on the mar-
tyrs’ tombs, and in the French pavilion at the 1992 Seville Expo by Viguier
and Jodry, a light and reflective sheet supported by slender columns. In both
cases we can sense the corporeal resonance and mirroring of downward
pressure or upward thrust (Figure 6.7).
How does the expressiveness of architectural forms connect to the sub-
ject’s affective response? Basic emotions produce a certain effect on the felt
body’s stirrings: contraction for sadness, fear and anger, expansion for joy,
surprise, etc. When encountering an object expressing a certain mood, the
subject not only mirrors the mood itself, but also experiences the corporeal
Motion, emotion 53
Figure 6.6 Temple of Era II, Paestum, and Olympieion, Athens.
stirring associated with it. The felt body is thus the hinge of this reflection,
given that emotions manifest themselves through corporeal movements.
Emotion and motion relate to each other through the felt body; movement
and perception, as we have previously observed, are tightly connected by
means of a process of constant codetermination. Perception leads to move-
ment, and movement brings about a dynamic modification of perception;
what we perceive, in turn, produces an affective response that is experienced
by the felt body. Motion, perception and emotion are therefore connected
dynamics, unfolding in the body of the subject inhabiting the environment.
The “image” of this environment, not to be intended as a static representa-
tion, rather in continuous transformation and animated by the circularity
between motion, perception and emotion, is what we sense as space.
54 Motion, emotion
Figure 6.7 Nello Aprile, Mario Fiorentino, Giuseppe Perugini, Mausoleum at the
Fosse Ardeatine, Rome, 1944–1949; Viguier & Jodry, French Pavilion at
the Seville Expo, 1992.
We can therefore describe space as the particular manifestation of the

environment, referred to a specific individual at a precise moment – a con-
tingency defining a situation – as relationship between world and subject un-
folding within its singularity (Bollnow, 2011, p. 199). We could analyze these
terms separately to understand each dynamic’s specificities and physiolog-
ical mechanisms: in the fluidity of experience, however, these never emerge
individually, allowing that deep sense of continuity in time grounding our
sense of presence (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008, p. 12).
The felt body’s stirrings are connected to emotional response, as is the
motion produced by physical displacement: this relationship is crucial in
the construction of architectural environments, as becomes evident in many
ritual buildings. In the funerary temple at Hatshepsut, in the Egyptian Valley
of the Kings, the terraces are organized in a sequence and connected by a
long ramp. This path is meant to host ritual processions, and as an architec-
tural element appears diachronically in countless sacred buildings around
the world. The ramp is not to be understood as a mere functional device
linking various levels: the ascent slows down the visitor’s pace, the motor
system senses the change in slope, the heartbeat increases. Fatigue produces
Motion, emotion 55
a modulation of the felt body, leading to a slight change in the perception
of the surrounding environment and to a corresponding emotional shading.
Suggestions of movement
In built spaces, the physical motion of the ambulating subject is also
associated to another dynamic connected to embodied simulation, the
process allowing us to sense the stress of Michelangelo’s slave. The statue
does not actually move, but the sensation of movement experienced by the
subject is real: architectural forms are capable of creating comparable ef-
fects. In Berlin’s Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, designed by
Peter Eisenman (Figure 6.8), the concrete blocks deviate from the vertical,
subverting our natural perception of weight and gravity and producing a
sensation of instability. The uneven cobblestone pavement with wide joints
continuously rises and sinks, making movement more difficult and modu-
lating the corporeal response by acting on the subject’s stride. In addition,
the narrow spaces between the blocks vanish in the distance, providing the
impression that there is not enough space to pass through them without
touching the sides. Here, the felt body simulates contact: we feel as if the
walls were actually coming toward us, threatening to crush us, adding to
Figure 6.8 Peter Eisenman, Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, 2005.
56 Motion, emotion
our sense of precariousness. Although they do not truly move, architectural
forms suggest a movement that we perceive as gestures (Jäkel, 2013, p. 38).
This simulation of movement has again an evolutionary origin: an
individual exploring the environment acquires a spatial image of how it
manifests itself at that very moment but also anticipates events that are
likely to happen, such as a sudden movement. If an object we encounter sug-
gests an instability or a potential collapse – we might imagine a tree leaning
in the forest – the felt body sounds an alarm, saying “stay away! That tree
might fall and crush you”, with an ensuing response of fear and corporeal
contraction preventing us from stepping closer.
Suggestions of movement play a fundamental part in our everyday
experience of space, each time something in our perceptual field is mov-
ing or only hints at a possible motion. Hermann Schmitz defines them as
“anticipations of movement that exceed movement itself if this takes place,
as apprehended in still or moving forms, or in movements” (2011, p. 33).
These suggestions extend beyond the perceptual field, activating spontane-
ous responses in the subject’s bodily movement, as when we duck to avoid
an object hurled at us. The corporeal contraction we experience orients our
ensuing action.
We can understand how suggestions of movement subtend our motor
dynamics, as in the case of a football goalkeeper who dives to divert an
incoming ball. In this fast action there is no intentional thinking, rather a
spontaneous response derived from the ball’s motion and, before that, from
the movement performed by the player kicking it. The goalkeeper’s action
is therefore not isolated, since it is part of a dynamic merging the two play-
ers and the ball traveling from one to the other: the corporeity of the two
subjects involved becomes shared. This intersection between bodies can
also happen with the built forms of architecture, where I can feel that I am
moving
with a form appearing in my perceptual field.
The system of emotions allows the subject to survive and to interact in his
environment as it is dynamically apprehended through movement: it is for
this reason that emotions and motion are tightly connected. By layering ac-
tual movement with what might potentially emerge from the environment,
the subject projects his own presence in distinct temporal layers, first trace
of the interchangeability between space and time.
7 Gestures and rituals
The dynamic relationship between motion, emotion and perception

occurring in the environment leads the subject to experience a certain
manifestation of space. In some cases, this relationship unfolds according
to recurring “formulae” we may consider as typical expressions. We can
find a fitting analogy in Aby Warburg’s seminal work on art images and
his groundbreaking system for their classification. His proposal extends
beyond the canonical articulation based on style or period, concentrating
on what he defined pathos formulae (Pathosformeln) (Forster & Mazzucco,
2002, p. 16). Human figures are considered according to their postures and
gestures representing affective states, such as pain, sorrow, respect or fear.
Warburg tracks these meaningful images throughout the course of human
history, in cultures that are distant in both space and time, from the ancient
Greeks to the Hopi of New Mexico.
Warburg’s major unfinished work, Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, is dedicated to
this classification. He prepared a series of photographic plates, organizing
collections of images from various periods of the history of art on panels:
the classification criterion is complex, connected to both chronology and
the recurrence of some specific forms. The project’s title Mnemosyne refers
to the Greek Muse of memory, clarifying Warburg’s claim that the afterlife
of these images in time constitutes a primary foundation of memory. It is
not, however, a linguistic memory in the sense of classical mnemotechnics:
it is rather based on the reproduction of certain forms of corporeal ges-
tures. The body, represented in various positions with recurring expressive
features and repeated gestures, is transversally recognized by the observers,
who spontaneously grasp the emotional content. What is expressed by the
body represented in the image resonates in the viewer, as was the case with
Michelangelo’s slave.
Warburg’s thesis, like Wölfflin’s, anticipated scientific discoveries that
eventually proved the existence of these mechanisms in perceptual dynamics.
We may argue that similar pathos formulae can also be found in architec-
tural environments, in the sense that the configuration of some buildings,
or the way we move through them, produce in subjects a constant emotional
cue. The felt body responds to the physical qualities of spaces in ways that
are predictable: this is bound to both the nature of the sensorimotor system
and to the spatial relationship between body and environment.
Ritual postures
A telling example of this relationship can be found in the body’s rotation.
Rituals based on a circular movement can be found in many cultures,
normally associated to religious ceremonies, such as the Mevlevi, or
Whirling Dervishes, a mystic sect of Sunni Islam established in the 13th
century by the Persian poet Rumi and today mainly found in Turkey. As
with the majority of mystic religious ceremonies, the Dervishes’ rituals are
based on corporeal practices striving to achieve a state of meditative trance:
in this case the most interesting aspect – that has by now become a tourist
attraction – is their rotation, with the adepts dancing by spinning for several
minutes. As we know, a prolonged rotational movement induces dizziness,
as when children play by spinning. This corporeal state, which, in other re-
ligious practices, is achieved through breathing techniques or narcotic sub-
stances, is the antechamber of the mystical fusion with divinity, final goal of
many devotional ceremonies.
The Dervishes’ rotation is part of an elaborate ritual: yet even our everyday
experience of movement is constellated by gestures that are direct manifes-
tations of affective states (Buytendijk, 1972, p. 238). An example is the act of
bowing, a natural gesture expressing submission, since it distracts the dom-
inated subject’s gaze from the dominant one’s eyes, in the framework of an
antagonistic relationship. In most cultures such gesture expresses respect:
in pre-Roman Italy, defeated warriors had to walk beneath low-mounted
yokes, forcing them to bow in front of the winner, expressing the loser’s
humiliation (Figure 7.1). The downward flection of the torso is associated to
a corporeal contraction, which in itself produces an emotional response of
sadness (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 15).
The opposite case: straight torso, gaze thrust forward, the typical posture
of parading soldiers (Figure 7.2). This gesture is directly connected to
marching: it produces an inverse emotional response to bowing since the
felt-body’s movement is expansive, and the corresponding emotion is eu-
phoria or joyful anger. Even more telling is the gesture of the football player
who has just scored a goal, running with outstretched arms as if to release
the strong expansion animating his felt body. Here the running movement
unleashes the joyful energy through a forward and upward thrust.
These postures showcase a direction relationship between the felt-body’s
primary stirrings and the basic directions of up and down: contraction as-
sociates with weight and downward movement, while expansion is an ex-
pression of lightness and upward thrust. This may also explain why most
religions attribute to the sky a divine meaning of elevation, while earth is
considered immanent, and the chthonic underground world assumes the
greatest heaviness and an infernal character. The bust’s upward or downward
Gestures and rituals 59
Figure 7.1 Charles Gleyre, Romans passing under the Yoke, 1858. Musée Cantonal
des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne.
torsions are typical affective movements, leading to opposing emotional

responses. These connections, however, are not simply mechanical based
on a cause- effect relationship: is the posture generating the emotion, or does
the emotion lead to the posture? Or is this another case of codetermination,
unfolding within a continuous cycle?
A further relationship between posture and emotion appears in ecstasy,
which, according to the Basic Emotion Theory, is an accentuated form of
joy. Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in Ecstasy (Figure 7.3) depicts the moment
in which the saint, living in isolated retreat on the La Verna mountain, re-
ceives the stigmata. It is an event of extraordinary mystic power and Francis
is raptured by the ecstatic emotion: the body is turned upward, with the
torso pushed back to contemplate the divine light. A second work of art,
Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Therese (Figure 7.4), shows another
representation of this emotional state: here, the saint is not standing but
half-lying, yet the bust is equally turned upward, as if to receive the same
godly light pouring from the sky.
Figure 7.2 A military parade.
Figure 7.3 Giovanni Bellini, The Ecstasy of St. Francis, 1480. The Frick Collection,
New York.
The contrary downcast movement leads to fear, submission or vertigo:

in Gustave Doré’s plate for the XXIX canto of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the
poet and his guide are shown standing above the Malebolge – the evil ditches
(Figure 7.5). The terror expressed by this scene reverberates in the posture
Figure 7.4 Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Ecstasy of St. Therese, 1652. Church of Santa
Maria della Vittoria, Rome.
typical of one who gazes into an abyss, exact opposite of the upward motion
prompted by ecstasy. While ecstasy produces corporeal expansion, terror
brings about contraction.
Through their spatial organization, architectural environments are ca-
pable of eliciting certain corporeal movements, producing emotional
responses. Spaces such as wells bring about movements similar to those il-
lustrated in Doré’s plate. St. Patrick’s well in Orvieto (Figure 7.6) is a telling
case: the sensation experienced in this spatial setting is given firsthand by
the sense of vertigo, felt-body response sounding as an alarm prompting
us to step back. The motor system’s reaction leads us to stay away, mak-
ing us feel an almost gravitational attraction pulling us back. If we look
down into the well we take up a particular posture, unbalanced between the
direction of the downcast gaze and the tension pulling us in the opposite
direction. If we walk down to the bottom of the well we observe a differ-
ent response, proof of the fact that space is not homogeneous and that the
same architectural environment experienced from below and from above
Figure 7.5 Gustave Doré, engraving for canto XXIX of the Divine Comedy, 1857.
provides radically different felt-body sensations (Arnheim, 1977, p. 32). Here

the upward movement of the torso leads to an altogether opposite feeling of
strong contraction and compression.
A space’s sole height, however, does not automatically produce this com-
pression effect: the dynamics of architectural form are not a simple matter
of dimensions or proportions. If we compare the section of St. Patrick’s well
with that of the Pantheon, we note that the first has a greater height, 54
against 43 meters: yet the well is described as being deep, while a building
(or its interior) is high. Different forms, dimensions and proportions alter
our sensation of space on the basis of an interrelation that cannot be eas-
ily disentangled. One of the key characters of phenomenal space, vis-à-vis
Euclidean space, is its anisotropy, showing different properties in a different
direction (Koffka, 1936, p. 275).
The dynamics of upward or downward movement and the ensuing
emotional response of the subject casts light on some forms of experience
that remain otherwise opaque to interpretive models ignoring the subject’s
Figure 7.6 Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, St. Patrick’s well, Orvieto, Italy, 1537.
pre-reflective and spontaneous cues (Schmitz, 2019, p. 58). What happens,

for example, when we enter the Pantheon? The response in terms of affective
engagement is of surprise, and the corporeal stirring is an expansion. This
connects to the upward movement of the torso: regardless of the contingent
affective state of the subject entering the building, he will sense the body’s
tension, bringing him to respond in a way that attunes him to the building’s
space.
Architectural environments can thus lead us toward certain affective
states, in relation to emotional formulae bound to corporeal movement.
As Warburg identified in artistic objects recurring gestures that formed a
liaison to memory, in our spatial motions, we can trace the responses which
are dynamically shaped by our previous corporeal experience.
Affective movements
Observing corporeal movements associated to specific spatial qualities does
not clarify the entire experience of architecture, especially when it comes to
extraordinarily complex buildings such as the Pantheon. Nevertheless, we
observe the existence of an implicit and dynamic chain linking the upward
torsion to the emotions of surprise, joy and pleasure. It would be otherwise
difficult to identify what creates that stupefying sensation occurring over
and over again each time you enter the building, and that in other historical
moments would have been called sublime. It is something we also encounter
when facing a skyscraper: just like St. Francis and St. Therese express ec-
stasy in their upward and backward torsion, when beholding such buildings
we are prompted to move in the same way and experience a sense of awe.
Is it possible to argue for an affinity between the subject’s corporeal move-
ment and a wider sphere of motion suggested by buildings? Returning to ro-
tation, we can observe two very distinct buildings: the Kaaba’s courtyard in
Mecca’s Grand Mosque, and the Tibetan monastery of Labrang, in China’s
Gansu Province (Figures 3.4 and 7.7). Both are sacred sites hosting large
numbers of pilgrims, and an important part of the rite consists in perform-
ing a rotation – around the cube enshrining the Black Stone in the Kaaba,
around the entire sacred compound in Labrang. Muslim pilgrims must re-
volve seven times, Buddhist pilgrim once, spinning one by one the hundreds
of ceremonial prayer wheels mounted under the porticoes surrounding the
shrine. Rotation here is repeated at various scales: around the buildings,
rotation of objects, rotation of bodies, with the common intent of creating a
sense of vertigo, dizziness or disorientation, similar – albeit less intense – to
what is experienced by the Dervishes during their ritual.
What is the common root of a gesturality that can be tracked in very
distant religious cultures? Can we claim that rotational movement, be it
Figure 7.7 Tibetan Monastery of Labrang, Gansu, China.

of the body or the revolving around a building leads subjects to achieve
a certain affective state induced by dizziness? Is it a pathos formula as
intended by Warburg but extended to the dimension of built space? If we
consider the constancy of effect of a certain architectural configuration on
the subject’s felt body, we can observe the recurrence of typical situations,
where the stability of the response helps achieve an affective state that is
consistent with the building’s ultimate scope.
Architectural space can institute choreographies articulated by sequences
of movement that should be intended not only in the pragmatic sense of
displacement and functionality but also as rituals allowing the spontane-
ous achievement of a certain corporeal state. In facilitating this transition,
built space attunes the subject inhabiting it, establishing a correspondence
between corporeal states and the qualities of the architectural environment
(Bollnow, 2011, p. 197). This resonance that may be both coherent and dis-
crepant, as in the case of those buildings only allowing rigidly predeter-
mined movements, thus making us experience a coerced and compressed
felt-body
response.
Another type of ritual space that is based on movement are sacred roads,
appearing throughout the world in religious ensembles. These are the setting
for processions, the slow movement of a large group of people along a prede-
termined path, marked by rhythmic elements such as columns, as is the case in
Palmyra or other ancient Roman towns, or by statues in the Spirit way leading
to the Ming Dynasty tombs near Beijing. We can imagine how the particular
situation of the sacred procession affects the felt body: slow movement punc-
tuated by the seriality of architectural elements and music beating the rhythm
of steps, a collective experience shared with many other devotees. The repe-
tition of gestures – walking along a colonnade, spinning Tibetan ceremonial
wheels or saying a rosary – is a jaculatory form favoring the achievement of an
ecstatic state. The felt body stirs, tension rises and an intersubjective corporeal
resonance is established between participating subjects (Schmitz, 2011, p. 47).
The colonnade’s rhythmic sequence, with the recurring presentation of a se-
rial element, aligns with the implicit rhythm of the felt body, as expressed by
heartbeat, breathing and the cyclic pulsation of the nervous system.
Liturgies
Not all rituals unfold through spatial displacement: many are static, as dur-
ing most of the celebration of Christian liturgies. The basilica-type plan of
churches merges two different forms of movement: the central spine is left
free for the procession taking place at the moment of the Eucharist, while
during the rest of the celebration the members of the congregation remain
by their places. The proxemic relation between participants becomes rel-
evant: devotees are aligned in compact and parallel rows facing the altar
located in front of the apse. The liturgy’s ritual is based on sequences where
the congregation alternatively sits, stands or kneels, constantly preserving
the same orientation toward the officiant.
Figure 7.8 Jami Masjid (Friday Mosque), Ahmedabad, India.
We observe the same principle in mosques, where no fixed furniture occu-

pies the space, since the congregation sits directly on the floor (Figure 7.8).
Each devotee’s position is marked by a prayer carpet depicting the mihrab,
the semi- circular niche in the mosque’s wall indicating the direction of
Mecca or qibla. As in the Christian mass, at the moment of collective prayer
devotees and officiant face the same way, while the imam otherwise occupies
a position similar to that of the priest in basilica churches by sitting in the
minbar, a high pulpit on the niche’s side. During the prayer, devotees repeat
a sequence of ritual gestures, bowing, kneeling and standing up.
Japanese Buddhist temples share a similar spatial structure, such as in
Kyoto’s Higashi Hongan-ji (Figure 7.9). Devotees all face in the same di-
rection toward a group of officiants occupying a central position at the far
end of the room. These three examples from distant cultures show strong
analogies in terms of ritual organization, from the participants’ position
and orientation to the sequence of gestures that are being performed. Other
analogies are connected to architectural aspects, such as the lack of win-
dows opening toward the exterior, a feature reinforcing a sense of intimacy
through the reduction of the amount of natural light entering the building.
The spatial conditions produced by these architectural environments are
thus comparable: not in terms of material configuration, construction or
style, but in their converging toward a spatial organization that establishes
a common pathos formula. The devotee finds himself in the midst of a pray-
ing crowd facing the officiant and is called to perform rhythmic gestures
consisting in a sequence of downward corporeal movements, in an environ-
ment with low light and a soundscape often characterized by sacred music
and choral chanting: all this concurs to lead the subject toward a corporeal
state that is appropriate for the sacred rite.
Figure 7.9 Higashi Hongan-ji Temple, Kyoto, Japan.
Different rituals – such as in Tibetan Buddhism – require distinct typo-

logical articulations: in the ceremonial halls of monasteries, monks do not
all face in one direction, rather in parallel rows where they face each other,
and sit on places that are clearly demarcated by colored mats. The different
spatial organization derives from a ritual that is not only based on prayer
but also on the practice of theological debates between monks, thus requir-
ing the possibility of mutual visual contact.
The ritual, a codified choreography of gestures performed in an archi-
tectural environment, is articulated in relation to the form of built space
containing it and connected to the dynamic cycle of movement, perception
and emotion grounding the subject’s experience. Lived space relies on this
relationship with the physical environment established by the buildings and
by the re-presentation of pathos formulae that resurface, as with Warburg’s
images, in places far away in time and space.
8 The space between subjects
The subject’s presence in space is influenced by the relationship established

with other subjects, be they human or non-human. All that is animated – that
partakes in the fundamental dynamics of movement (Sheets-Johnstone,
2011, p. 46) – emerges in the subject’s horizon with a particular relevance,
producing a dynamic mesh of relations. We rarely inhabit the environment
by ourselves: it is therefore crucial to understand how our action unfolds
when other subjects share our horizon. Built space, furthermore, can exert
a strong influence on the way subjects encounter each other in architectural
or urban environments.
The relationship between subjects can be analyzed in many ways: the key
we adopt to produce this description is bound to the fundamental dynamics
of lived space: perception, movement and affective response, three actions
closely connected to each other in a process of mutual causation. Together,
they represent a system that allows the subject inhabiting the environment
through his corporeal presence to adapt to and interpret it.
The perception a subject has of another human being is based on the
evolutionary foundation given by the necessity of quickly understanding
if the other individual is friend or foe. In the latter case, the spontaneous
response entailed leads the subject to opt for fight or flight, a basic biological
mechanism crucial for survival and not limited to human subjects. It also
occurs if, on a mountain path, we encounter a large, threatening black dog.
Although our anthropic environment is largely pacified and harbors far less
threats than the original setting wherein the human species has evolved, the
latent afterlife of these spontaneous reactions influences our way of moving
in the high- density conditions of the contemporary city.
Recognizing faces
Among human subjects, the perceptual ability of recognizing other indi-
viduals is closely tied to vision and depends on the distance at which the
encounter occurs. If it is true that we are capable of recognizing someone
familiar from far away – especially observing the posture and the way of
walking – generally most information is provided by a person’s face (Izard,
The space between subjects 69
1977, p. 68). With increasing distance details become blurred, reducing our
ability to recognize that person. As Jan Gehl has evidenced by tabulating a
face’s recognizability with increasing street sections, this has obvious reper-
cussions on the way we experience humans in the built environment (Gehl,
2010, p. 34).
The visibility of human faces does not only impact on our ability to
recognize someone but also on the possibility of apprehending the other
person’s emotional disposition. As the distance increases, we lose notion of
the person’s expression, if he is smiling or enraged; verbal communication
also become impossible. Although some moods can be simply recognized by
the observation of a person’s posture, others cannot be revealed unless the
face is clearly visible, since most expressivity is conveyed by the eyes, mouth
and forehead.
Beyond a certain distance, the olfactive horizon disappears: a person’s
smell at a given moment influences the relationship between subjects.
Hormonal responses to emotional events such as fear or sexual arousal pro-
duce precise smells that influence corporeal communication between sub-
jects. In the 1960s, this notion was investigated by Edward T. Hall (1966,
p. 49) who underscored its fundamental yet pre-reflective role in proxemic
relations between subjects. In highlighting the cultural diversity bound
to this aspect, he also observed how the widespread use of perfumes and
deodorants and the abundance of clothing increasingly suppressed the ol-
factive horizon in corporeal communication. This has followed the sharp-
ened sensibility toward bodily odors risen since the Victorian age with the
introduction of sanitation inside private homes (Rybczynski, 1986, p. 129).
Hall’s interpretation, albeit tainted by a strong ocularcentrism and the
absence of any consideration of the corporeal dimension, outlines with a
certain clarity some dynamics between subjects allowing us to understand
their interaction in the environment. The reduced level of detail perceived
with increasing distance leads to a change in mutual behavior the anthropol-
ogist organizes in concentric “spheres” surrounding the individual: private,
personal, social, public (Hall, 1966, p. 116).
Intimate distance, favoring deep haptic contact between subjects, usually
only occurs among partners or parents and children; personal distance
allows a more limited physical contact and can be found among groups of
close friends or relatives; social distance is assumed by friends or colleagues
and does not imply physical contact. Public distance, finally, is character-
ized by a clear separation between subjects and is sometimes underscored
by a distinct spatial organization, such as in the case of someone delivering a
speech. Observing the distance between persons, along with their gestures,
often allows to understand the social relationship between them.
Hall concludes that the spherical distances articulating the relationship
between subjects are grounded on an evolutionary basis, which can change
according to cultural variations deriving from the corporeal entrainment
the subject receives as a child: in some cultures, for example, social distance
can coincide with personal distance. Although under some circumstances
the distance between subjects can be perceived as disturbing, such as when
one is pressed by a crowd, there are exceptional conditions: as when one at-
tends a rock concert, where all spectators are pressed together and lose any
possibility of autonomous movement, developing a form of corporeal col-
laboration. The perception of personal distance is therefore not reducible to
a mere metric or ergonomic fact since it can vary depending on the situation
and on the subject’s specificity.
The difference in height that may be found in public distance, besides
installing a spatial metaphor related to one subject’s superiority over others
(Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 14). is also related to another key issue of the
modern city – that of verticality. Gehl observes how the threshold of height
beyond which it is no longer possible to recognize a person’s face is around
five floors of an average building: depending on the surroundings, verbal
communication between the street level and the upper floors can become
difficult even at a lesser height (Gehl, 2010, p. 40).
Critics of the modern city

The reorganization of density in height begun with the modern city has
strongly impacted on our perception of urban space, considering the
interruption of the traditional relationship between buildings and street, and
the ensuing disappearance of continuous fronts. The increased distance –
both upward and horizontally – has been the main tool for the reduction of
density as proposed by modernist urban theories to increase the amount of
natural light and ventilation and, in general, provide a healthier living en-
vironment for city dwellers. At the same time, the increased height led to a
reduction of the urban fabric’s ability to serve as relational space: still today,
a century after Le Corbusier’s utopian urban visions, many building regu-
lations revolve around a control mechanisms based on distance referring to
purely quantitative hygienic criteria.
From the second half of the 20th century, rationalist urban models have
been questioned in the attempt to understand how the modern urban struc-
ture impacted on the inhabitants’ behavior and on their ability of establish-
ing social relationship in varying spatial configurations. Hall, observing the
process from the anthropologist’s perspective, distinguishes the conditions
of physical built space between sociofugal and sociopetal, i.e., reducing or
promoting the possibility of social interaction (Hall, 1966, p. 108).
In the early 1970s, Jan Gehl investigated the proxemic notions developed
by Hall in various urban space conditions: although belatedly trans-
lated, his most well-known book, Life Between Buildings, has turned
into one of the key texts for urban design in the last years of the 20th
century (Gehl, 2011). Gehl advocates a pragmatic design model for the defi-
nition of livable public spaces, focusing on the well-being and comfort of
inhabitants: a successful formula, given its ability to promote urban envi-
ronments devoid of any possible tension.
Many of the differences we can observe between urban spaces designed in
the 1960s and 1970s and contemporary practices derive from the ideas of Gehl
and other authors who have fiercely criticized the modernist urban models of
Le Corbusier, Hilberseimer and other theorists of the rational city. The factors
of livability and user-friendliness
have become central: this attention, however,
has “sedated” the qualities of urban public space, privileging a bland notion
of comfort over the built environment’s potential to deeply engage subjects.
The most radical criticism toward modernist urban models and top- down
planning practices was certainly that of Jane Jacobs, the writer and activist
who from the end of the 1950s championed many battles to save the tradi-
tional urban spaces of East Coast cities, especially New York and Boston.
Her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961,
is still today considered central for the social aspects of planning practices,
and the starting point of a deep movement of revision of urban space, whose
ramifications reach to our day.
From her position “outside” top- down planning practices, Jacobs fiercely
attacked large-scale urban plans, mainly due to their spatial configurations,
which would inevitably lead to poor living conditions, segregation and lack
of safety. She compared the bigness of public housing projects in post-war
United States with the compact city of some of Manhattan’s neighborhoods
such as the Greenwich Village, where she herself resided. Her most famous
expression, eyes on the street (Jacobs, 1961, p. 54), describes the social con-
trol spontaneously exerted in a traditional urban space, where the visibility
of what happens at street level leads to a feeling of safety and appropriation.
These authors have one thesis in common: the rupture of traditional ur-
ban proportions and the morphology connecting buildings to streets, and
the end of compact city form, causes the city space to become fragmented,
increasing distances between subjects and making it difficult if not impos-
sible to nurture social relations. The perceptual dynamics underlying this
transformation and influencing inhabitants’ behavior are also connected to
urban policies that from the beginning of the 20th century have favored
processes of gentrification and ghettoization throughout the Western world.
Despite the obvious and irreversible damage these processes are causing,
still today in many emerging contexts they are implemented due to their
ability of complying with the economic principles of neoliberal societies.
About looking and being seen

None of the above theories, albeit seminal, relates to the subjects’ corporeity
and affectivity, a grounding aspect of the experience of space especially in
urban settings (De Matteis, 2018). Their primary interest focuses on per-
ception, considered – according to a common thinking at the time – as an
isolated and passive reception of sensorial stimuli, especially visual ones. In
the relationship between subjects, corporeal dynamics are particularly im-
portant since they provide the basis for emotional response: the interaction
produces affective conditions that can exert powerful effects and are often
determined by the subjects’ topological relations.
The subject’s physical displacement through the environment leads to a
progressive unfolding of the horizon, sometimes articulated by the encoun-
ter with other subjects, whose presence modifies spatial perception. The
strongest of these encounters is that with gaze, which, according to Jean-
Paul Sartre, establishes the very foundation of both self-awareness and the
awareness of others (1976, p. 257). A gaze that observes us strikes us affec-
tively, acting on the dynamics of the felt body, which experiences a contrac-
tion (Schmitz, 2011, p. 31). It is one of the primary experiences of the urban
condition, becoming more frequent and intense if the city’s spatial configu-
ration is based on relations of proximity rather than distance.
The subjects’ reciprocal gaze is among the most important non-verbal
communication tools, as can be seen in the vast number of movies that lev-
erage on this relational potential: Ingmar Bergman, for example, frequently
builds images that are based on the crossing of gazes. The possibility of
reciprocal gaze represents a condition of parity, associated to certain bod-
ily gestures; in dominance-subjugation relations, the reciprocity of gaze is
interrupted, as in the case of the weaker animal lowering its eyes toward the
ground with a gesture implying defeat.
Several architectural devices are conceived to spatially organize the rela-
tionship between the subjects’ gazes. Carlo Scarpa, profound connoisseur of
these mechanisms, uses the dynamics of gaze to construct the exhibition space
in Palermo’s Palazzo Abatellis (Figure 8.1): he places the bust of Eleanor of
Aragon, a 15th-century statue by Francesco Laurana, framed within a portal,
orienting its eyes toward those who enter from the adjacent rooms (De Matteis,
2019). The woman’s gaze – who before being identified as an inanimate statute
is perceived as a human presence – “deforms” the space sensed by the subject,
who feels observed and returns his own gaze in that same direction.
Another example coming from the world of film and television are police
questioning rooms, where a faux mirror allows unseen external observers
to look at what is taking place inside the room. We can easily imagine the
corporeal sensation of those who are in the room and are aware that they
may be being watched by an invisible observer. Similar to this case is the
mashrabiya, an architectural element typical of traditional Islamic cities:
these are screened bow-windows or balconies protected by a dense wooden
lattice allowing those who are inside to look onto the street without being
seen (Figure 8.2). This device responds to the strong need for visual pro-
tection of traditional Muslim homes, connected to women’s role in domes-
tic space, thus establishing a “jealous” relationship with the public urban
space. At a wider scale, the Hawa Mahal in the Indian city of Jaipur, is a
building-sized
mashrabiya: it has a very reduced thickness and behaves as a
Figure 8.1 Carlo Scarpa, Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo, Italy, 1953–1954.
Figure 8.2 Mashrabiya, Cairo, Egypt.
large screen on the city’s main avenue to allow the women of the Maharaja’s
royal court to observe the religious parades passing by without being seen
by the population (Figure 8.3).
The architectural mediation of gaze is often connected to gender, as has
been highlighted by theories describing the objectifying power of male gaze
(Mulvey, 1989, p. 19). More in general, a subject’s ability of exercising a
dominant gaze over another emerges from an evolutionary root to become
a biopolitical mechanism, as described by Michel Foucault in relation to
the most exemplary architecture of dominant gaze, the panopticon devised
by Jeremy Bentham in 1843 (Foucault, 1995, p. 200). The panopticon is a
mechanism of control based on the presence of a central observation point
Figure 8.3 Hawa Mahal (Palace of the Winds), Jaipur, India, 1799.
Figure 8.4 Abandoned panopticon prison.
located in the middle of a circular array of elements (Figure 8.4). Here the
dominant gaze becomes paralyzing: although Bentham had conceived it as
a system of control over production during the early days of the Industrial
Revolution, the only real application was that of a prison. The guards occu-
pied the central tower, and in the inmates’ cells no movement could remain
unseen. Just like Sauron’s eye on Mordor’s tower in The Lord of the Rings,
whoever controls the panopticon can see anything, anytime.
In 1981, in a design competition for the redesign of a panopticon prison in
the Dutch city of Arnhem won by Rem Koolhaas, the proposed transforma-
tion consists in deviating the guards’ gaze, who are no longer located in the
central tower, but rather in low volumes at the ground floor. From those spaces,
the guards can no longer observe what happens inside the cells, reducing the
sensation felt by the prisoners in being constantly observed: the corporeal
contraction of the felt body associated to being observed, if extended over
time, almost becomes a form of torture (De Matteis, 2009, p. 73).
Collective embodiment
The relationship between subjects in the environment is strongly anchored to
visual cues but is not only limited to them. Corporeal presence is articulated
by an extended sensorial dimension and grounded in emotional response,
a fact that becomes evident in some spatial situations. The contemporary
presence of many subjects influences our movement, such as when we are
walking in a crowded street: each person is capable of pre-reflectively in-
teracting with the others, changing direction in order not to run into some-
one coming from the other direction. This spontaneous action is based on a
form of corporeal communication binding subjects in a coordinated move-
ment (Schmitz, 2011, p. 47).
Some activities, for example choral singing, entail a corporeal
collaboration among subjects: while walking on the street the nature of the
encounter is antagonistic, in singing the felt bodies resonate with each other,
following the common tune provided by the music. The same can be said of
ritual prayers, where collective embodiment represents a crucial experience
for all participants. In a military march the collaboration between subjects
is established by the rhythm of the footsteps even in the absence of music.
In all these cases, a tight corporeal communication between subjects allows
them to spontaneously perform together: the felt bodies operate in a way
that is not intentional, rather on the basis of a resonance. Although we are
rarely aware of this connection, in our experience of space the corporeal
resonance of the felt body is always active, resulting from the affective re-
sponse allowing us to dynamically attune to the specific spatial situation we
encounter at any given moment.
In the famous church scene in The Blues Brothers, when Jake and Elwood
first enter the building, they remain detached due to their notorious skepti-
cism toward religion. Nevertheless, once the music starts, the choir sings and
the devotees start dancing, they cannot resist the atmosphere. If their “ra-
tional” decision leads them to remain indifferent to what is taking place, the
felt body is “hijacked” and overwrites their original intentions. The ecstatic
feeling – musical more than religious – pervades space and captures them
as their bodies resonate with the festive congregation of Reverend Brown.
The festive atmosphere radically transforms space: what distinguishes a
full stadium from an empty one is thus not only the physical mass of human
bodies, rather the immaterial bond among them, which leads them to share
a common emotional state. During the celebration, everyone feels a certain
mood in space, and if the subjects’ response can be different depending on
their disposition, no one can remain entirely indifferent to what is taking
place.
The dynamics of corporeal communication among subjects ground
that form of “shared experience”, which can be defined as intersubjectiv-
ity (Crossley, 1996, p. 24). It is a powerful motion deeply influencing the
ways subjects relate to each other in space. For various reasons, intersubjec-
tive dynamics play an important role in architectural design: we are rarely
alone in built spaces, and some configurations can sustain or inhibit the
interaction between subjects, influencing their experience of space.
9 The feeling space
The model of space we have so far described radically differs from those
based on physical objects, intended as volumes occupying an empty,
unlimited extension, wherein they move in a condition of singularity
and separation from what surrounds them. In the species of space we are
observing nothing is truly divided, since all that partakes in it – objects,
human and non-human subjects – concur in bringing to life what we sense
as space in a colloidal way: each movement, either of the things present
in the environment or of the felt body, impacts on the subject’s feeling
(De Matteis, 2017, p. 313).
The environment providing the scaffolding for the emergence of this
space includes both the material structure and the dynamic relations
binding things to each other. The articulation in time, the changing and
recursive contingency defining its specificity produces situations, the here
and now encountered by the subject. What changes over time, creating situ-
ations, are not so much the physical bodies endowed with a certain degree
of constancy, rather the immaterial presences that, for their very own na-
ture, have no such permanence: they only exist in a condition of presentness
(Böhme, 2001, p. 62). This family of “intermediate” entities, not belonging
to the world of physical objects, nevertheless includes things under the form
of the expression of their presence, “emanating” from the material bound-
aries of the objects and reaching the subjects as a spatial manifestation
(Böhme, 2001, p. 133).
Between the subject and the world

These immaterial presences thus exist between the environment and the
subject inhabiting it. Some are characteristics of the natural environment,
such as light, wind, air and sound; others are bound to the subject’s affec-
tive presence, as he senses around him the expression of spatially poured
feelings, suggestions of movement, gazes, other animated subjects and their
corporeity, affordances as invitations for use and the expressive qualities
of things in their exceeding their physical boundaries and invading the
surrounding environment.
78 The feeling space
At the center of the horizon where these dynamics unfold, we find the
subject as seat of the experience of space. The world manifests itself through
situations, which are contingent and temporally articulated expressions.
Equally, the subject is not fixed entity, since from a common physiological
matrix sustaining many spontaneous dynamics of response to the environ-
ment grows a strong variability bound to skills, experience and charac-
ter. These particularities are further articulated by the intimate condition
the subject is experiencing at that very moment – a mood or disposition
(Bollnow, 2011, p. 217).
Space is therefore the manifestation of the environment’s specific
situation, as it is sensed by the subject at a given moment. It is the unrepeat-
able encounter between two conjunctures, elastically defined by the relation
among these two terms. This variability implies a difficulty in producing an
exact description of real space, since it is never a static condition, rather a
dynamic entity that is not given outside the corporeal presence of the subject
encountering it in first person (De Matteis, Bille, Griffero, & Jelić, 2019).
We have described the emotional response emerging at the moment of the
encounter with space, an affective dynamic where motion and emotion are
tightly connected: both movements produced by the motor system and the
stirrings of the felt body are linked to the emotional response. This bond
lacks a strict causal correlation and does not work only in one direction:
emotional response produces certain movements, and some movements
usually entail a certain emotional feedback. This cohesion is manifest in
the constancy of many ritual gestures that are often represented in the
architectural configuration of built spaces (Meisenheimer, 2004, p. 11).
So far, we have used the term space without any further adjective clarifying
the concept, with the sole exception of physical space, a notion endowed with
intrinsic directness. If, however, we consider space for its ability of striking
the subject that encounters it, producing an emotional response, we can
describe it as affective to clarify its grounding characteristic. In this sense,
among the immaterial presences that occupy space we must also consider
emotions: although they are usually considered a private fact pertaining to
the individual rather than spatially extended entities, in recent times, this
notion has been widely questioned (Griffero, 2017b, p. 20).
The daimon of space

In 1969, German philosopher Hermann Schmitz published the book Der
Gefühlsraum, roughly translatable as “space of feelings” (Schmitz, 1969). Ac-
cording to his thesis, starting from the 5th century BC Western thought has
enshrined feelings in the psyche, a sort of private “black box” only accessible
to the individual subject. Before that moment, space was populated by ac-
tive presences – daimon – which interacted with men, striking and affectively
engaging them. An emblematic case is that of the encounter with divinity in
the natural landscape, as recounted in the Old Testament:
The feeling space 79
Now Moses […] led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came
to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared
to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the
bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over
and see this strange sight – why the bush does not burn up.” When the
Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within
the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” “Do not come
any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you
are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your fa-
ther, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At
this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
(Exodus, III)
This passage highlights some qualities of the demonic presences inhabiting

space. Moses responds to this event affectively: he is afraid of looking at God,
and thus covers his face. The daimon, the agent the prophet encounters in
the mountain, strikes him producing an emotion mirrored in the felt body’s
movement, which becomes paralyzed by contraction. The place where the
event unfolds acquires a special quality, having hosted a divine manifesta-
tion: it is made sacred, separated, and thus can only be entered after having
removed the sandals in sign of respect and worship. This act is the prel-
ude to the birth of architectural space: the creation of a holy enclosure, the
temenos, that sets apart divine space from the profane one, in the ancient
understanding of pro fanum – in front of the temple (Eliade, 1987, p. 33).
Mythical texts from all cultures are constellated by such occurrences:
considering Greek mythology, we can observe how most Olympian gods
derive from the humanization of natural elements – Zeus the thunder,
Apollo the sun, Poseidon the marine forces and others. Natural religions, as
the ancient Greek one, Shamanism or Taoism evolve as direct emanations of
the daimons that are encountered in the environment.
Sacred space is but one of the possible manifestations of these acting
powers: the same dynamics unfold in our everyday experience, since we are
aware that our environment is often “inhabited” by presences which are
difficult to identify. Their ineffable character limits our ability to describe
them, but all the same we sense the force through which they influence us
(Griffero, 2016, p. 92). Such “authority” provides insight into the transver-
sal character of many of our responses to spatial conditions: the affective
nature of space, the way it strikes the subject, sheds light on the sensations
of comfort or fear that we are afforded by the environment we inhabit and
on how these lead to attachment or rejection, appropriation or alienation.
For those who design space, the central question revolves around the gen-
erating elements that can be “produced” to solicit the emerging of certain
emotional responses from the subjects who will inhabit the buildings. The
strongest limit to design work lies in the fact that we can only defined phys-
ical matter, while the repercussions of this technical scaffolding on lived
space cannot be directly oriented. We can influence immaterial presences,
but not determine them unequivocally, just as we cannot “fix” the subject,
whom we can often only know in a superficial way. How can we then design
architecture’s affective potential?
Atmospheres in architecture
In recent years, the notion of atmosphere has been widely adopted and debated
in the fields of architecture and urban design, both as a means to understand
the affective dimension of lived space and as a tool for its projected transfor-
mation. By connecting to a previous strain of phenomenological thinking
in architecture, “atmosphere” has been considered a fundamental category
to describe the sensuous and intuitive character of lived space surpassing
the technical apparatus and programmatic approach of contemporary de-
sign and building practices (Havik, Teerds, & Tielens, 2013). The scientific
community’s deep interest in the topic has produced a wealth of scholarly
research (Tidwell, 2014), symposia, thematic journal issues (Bressani &
Sprecher, 2019; Buggert et al., 2019; De Matteis et al., 2019; Havik et al.,
2013) and innovative pedagogic approaches for architectural education.
A specific notion of atmosphere that considers the affective engagement
by means of the felt body has been introduced in the architectural debate
by Gernot Böhme, who has provided the first systematic elaboration of the
topic (2006). Böhme stresses the relevance of the subject’s bodily presence
as the origin of architectural experience, thereby countering the classical
notion of geometrical space – spatium – and the post-modern focus on place
theory. The experience of architectural space is considered to be funda-
mentally atmospheric, a grounding perceptual condition that is direct and
deambulatory, kinesthetic and affectively engaging, synesthetic/polymodal.
Buildings are thus no longer described as objects of visual art but rather as
affording possibilities of emotional involvement. The designers’ “aesthetic
work” can configure the material support facilitating the supervenience
of immaterial agents, such as light, sound, air, haze and fog, and so on,
which will influence the subject’s emotional response, thereby transversally
tincturing space for all those who are perceptually present. According to
Böhme, the effects of design are such that an atmosphere can be at least in
part produced, albeit considering the architectural configuration as a “stage
set” for the unfolding of variable and not fully determined situations.
In parallel to Böhme, from the early 2000s, Peter Zumthor has provided
some essential yet key reflections on the role of emotions and feelings in built
spaces (1999, 2006). In his view, the architect’s work is deeply shaped by
previous spatial experiences, feeding into the imaginative process by which
buildings are designed and crafted. Despite the meticulous care in the ma-
terial definition of his architectures, Zumthor considers experience as fun-
damentally oriented by atmospheres, evoked by means of light, sound, the
radiance of material objects and a diffuse emotional content that can pervade
space. He thus conceives of architectural design as a form of “emotional re-
construction”, where feelings both present and past become embedded in the
space the buildings institute (Zumthor & Lending, 2018, p. 68).
The work by Böhme and Zumthor has fueled a wide array of further
reflections and inquiries on the role of atmosphere in the understanding
and definition of architectural space. Juhani Pallasmaa (2014) grafts this
notion onto his preceding work centered around the subject’s perceptual
experience, grounded on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. He underscores
the fusion between felt body and experienced space, and how the perception
of and through atmospheres elicits an emotional response feeding into the
cognitive process. By considering the role of peripheral vision over the sin-
gle focal point, Pallasmaa highlights the potential of a vague and blurred
atmospheric perception as an antidote to the object- centered frontality of
classic architectural perspective.
Alberto Pérez-Gómez (2016) inscribes the concept of atmosphere –
intended as an “in-between” pertaining to architecture’s communicative
space – in a broad historical continuum, where the architects’ quest for at-
tunement to the natural world and its man-made objects represents the per-
manence of the classical discourse on harmony and temperance.
The theoretical implications of atmospheres in architecture have also
elicited criticism: David Leatherbarrow (2015) observes how the notion of
atmosphere is related to several other terms previously central in architec-
tural theory, such as character, mood, climate, ambiance and milieu. As a
specific concept, it sustains a transversal tendency in contemporary design
for architecture’s shedding of materiality, in an orchestration of effects that
intends to create an integral impression. In his view, the inherent limit of
atmospheres is their reliance on the first impression afforded by a spatial
setting, with little ability of explaining architecture’s capacity of giving rise
to thought and articulate practical experience. A further transversal con-
cern variously discussed by several authors is that of the subtle manipu-
lative power implicit in atmospheres, as exemplified by the architecture of
totalitarian regimes or late capitalism (Borch, 2014, p. 72).
The more general discussion on atmospheres has been complemented
by punctual explorations of some specific aspects of spatial experience,
such as architecture’s gestural qualities and their ability of suggesting
movement, central notions in Hermann Schmitz’s spatial theory (Jäkel,
2013; Meisenheimer, 2004). Extensive interdisciplinary research crossing
architecture and urban studies with anthropology and ethnography have
yielded contributions on thematic areas such as urban lighting (Sumartojo,
Edensor, & Pink, 2019), domestic interiors and lighting (Bille, 2019), and
archaeology (Bille & Sørensen, 2016). Several studies have focused on the
methodological issues of adopting atmospheres as a research tool, consid-
ering epistemological problems such as their representability (De Matteis
et al., 2019) or how they can sustain the transition between scholarship,
practice and policymaking (Sumartojo & Pink, 2019).
Besides such an extensive theoretical discussion, the notion of atmosphere
has also sparked several practice-oriented approaches variously grounded
on the emotional dimension for either the understanding or the conception
of architectural and urban space. Thus, atmosphere can be integrated with
objective data, to provide an account of the comprehensive qualities of urban
space or serve as descriptor of the character of a building’s interior space.
Eating with the right mood

A field where techniques have been extensively developed in this sense is that
of interior design. If for example we consider spaces designed for eating, we
can observe the implementation of many strategies that aim at producing
situations characterized by a certain affective tone. In an old-fashioned fast-
food restaurant (Figure 9.1), most design decisions are motivated by prac-
tical needs: tables have no linen or cutlery, they are fixed to the floor to
avoid confusion and all surfaces can be easily cleaned. Other aspects are,
however, not meant to respond to practical purposes only, such as the colors
and lighting, that converge on emphasizing some salient visual elements,
like the decorations based on strong palettes mainly using primary colors.
These aim at producing a synesthetic sensorial excitement connecting the
architectural setting to the food served.
A second restaurant, with a completely different character, intends to
create an environment we could describe as “romantic” (Figure 9.2). Com-
pared to the previous space, physical objects occupy the room altogether
differently: the hall’s configuration, the size of tables and distance between
them, the artificial lighting are all designed with another intent. What mainly
distinguishes these two environments are materials, colors and lights, such
as the “intimate” lamps on the tables of the upscale restaurant. In both
images, human presence is limited or absent, yet we can clearly imagine
Figure 9.1 Interior of a fast-food restaurant.

Figure 9.2 Interior of a “romantic” restaurant.
what type of situation could unfold in each of these restaurants. Beyond

the physical organization of the two spaces, it is the immaterial presences
suggesting a certain attunement, capable of creating a specific character – a
quality becoming evident in the elements we see in the photographs, but that
is not entirely hinged to them: we can speak of an atmosphere.
Atmospheres
Atmosphere is a term we have already used in the previous pages without
stopping to clarify it. In common vocabulary, it takes up many different
meanings, from the scientifically objective one to others often used when,
in a certain place, we sense an ineffable quality which is nevertheless un-
deniably present since it is felt by all those who are there at that time. It is
something we feel but often do not understand and that affectively engages
us: we are unable to fully control the effect it produces on our feeling. This
sentiment, despite lacking a precise position in space, is clearly anchored to
the situation we encounter. Schmitz uses the term atmosphere to describe
the presence of a spatially poured emotion: it is what tinges a space with a
certain affective connotation that can be sensed by all those who inhabit it
(Schmitz, 2019, p. 94).
Atmospheres are a manifestation of that family of immaterial presences
inhabiting space and influencing the experiencing subject. Although they
may not be analyzed through a mere additive logic, we can consider that
in some spaces these immaterial elements converge to produce a certain
emotional tone. At the same time, atmospheres in themselves can emanate
from something singular, indivisible, being anchored to individual objects
that are present in space, such as in the case of the weeping willow, which
with its sad posture can affectively tune an entire environment. Atmos-
pheres cannot be separated from the experiencing subject: they only emerge
through the corporeal presence of those who perceive them, since they only
exist when we resonate with them (Böhme, 2017, p. 86).
Atmospheres are produced by those acting forces we have attributed to
the daimon: something that is present in space, influences the subject and
affectively engages him, but cannot always be connected to a single object.
Differently from physical bodies that may have stability over time, atmos-
pheres only emerge from the contingency of a specific situation. A very tell-
ing example of how an atmosphere can overcome the physical qualities of
a space drastically altering its affective tone, is showcased in the restaurant
scene in Kill Bill, vol. 1. If we consider the dining hall before Beatrix Kiddo’s
bloodshed, we can state that it is pervaded by a certain atmosphere emerg-
ing from the room’s physical features and by the attitude of the satisfied
guests. But in the following scene, the situation has entirely changed: the
hall is filled with dead bodies littering the floor in a horrendous bloodbath.
Physical space – at least its designed elements – is the same, but the atmos-
phere one breathes has been dramatically transformed, and the restaurant’s
design had no role in determining this new supervenient feeling.
Even in situations less extreme than this, atmospheres, as roots of af-
fective space, produce on subjects experiencing them responses that can
be rather constant. Further film spaces allow us to outline this transver-
sal character (Figures 9.3 and 9.4): the first is the diner from Grease, where
a group of youngsters, among which the movie’s two main characters, sit
around a table. Which atmosphere can we sense in this scene? By what is it
produced? We can observe a precise use of colors, lights and materials and
the scant layout of the table, just like in the fast food restaurant. This is the
setting for the subjects’ actions, and their gestures make us apprehend a free
and informal situation: some sit, others stand, their gazes cross determining
different corporeal orientations responding to the various conversations si-
multaneously taking place.
The second frame comes from the film Babette’s Feast: here the situation
is the opposite from the previous one. The commensals are all dressed in
black attire and sit in an orderly and poised fashion around an accurately
laid table, where plates, glasses and silverware establish a rigorous formal
geometry. Lights are low and mostly come from the table’s candelabra. The
subjects seem to move in unison, almost as if following a choreography, at-
tuning the body’s movements and posture to the rigid structure of physical
space. The meal’s environment is different, the subjects are another set of
humans – old rather than young, religious devotees rather than baby boom-
ers. In both cases the felt bodies resonate with the qualities of the spaces,
responding to the atmosphere that pervades these rooms and which, in turn,
Figure 9.3 Film still from Grease, Randal Kleiser, 1978.
Figure 9.4 Film still from Babette’s Feast, Gabriel Axel, 1987.
is modified by the subjects’ presence. If we were to swap these two groups of

subjects, we would certainly obtain some rather interesting dystopic effects;
nevertheless, despite the discrepant sensation they could experience, they
would not remain entirely immune to the emotional offering of these spaces.
Atmospheres do not only invade interior spaces: emotions can occupy
any environment. Despite the fact that we often do not sense them, we
constantly live immersed in atmospheres: most of the time they remain la-
tent, since they do not contrast against the background of our individual
mood and disposition. In some cases, however, the atmospheric charge of
a designed space can powerfully emerge: this happens, for example, when
visiting a potent military bastion lost in the desert, a building rising out
of fog, a garden with ruins covered by vegetation or a gigantic industrial
hall occupied by a sort of artificial sun. What makes these spaces atmos-
pheric? How can built architecture produce or interact with the immaterial
presences and with the ephemeral elements of the natural environment?
The nature of atmospheres is similar to the daimon of the ancient world:
they are presences acting on the subject but cannot be easily circumscribed
or defined since they are endowed with an intrinsic vagueness (Rauh, 2017).
They are related to physical space, but their position cannot be ascertained:
the question where is the atmosphere? usually makes no sense. As they come,
they can disappear, in their emerging from a situation that changes over
time. They produce an affective response through the corporeal resonance
and invite subjects to move in ways that are largely constant.
Who designs architecture can determine the physical scaffolding for the
situations that may emerge but can never take complete control over space:
for this reason, it is necessary to leave open the doors for the unfolding of
unexpected events. To design, argues David Leatherbarrow, can in some
ways be compared with the setting of a table: we can lay out the objects and
assign a place to the commensals, but only once the meal is completed and
everyone has left the room will we be able to read on the stained tablecloth,
among the displaced plates and glasses, the traces of what has happened
around that table (Leatherbarrow, 2009, p. 122).
10 Forms of time
In our description so far, space is of a dynamic nature, a continuously

changing system of relations between the environment and those who
inhabit it: it is what emerges from the encounter, an entity between subject
and environment, devoid of physical qualities that can be precisely meas-
ured, yet endowed with an acting force which can influence the perceiver
(Schmitz, 2019, p. 91). The concept of situation, the specific conjuncture
characterizing the environment at a given moment, introduces temporality,
pointing to the variable way in which the world presents itself to the subject.
The changing quality of this encounter highlights the fact that experi-
ences of space and time are tightly related to each other, to the extent that we
are sometimes incapable of clearly separating them. The subject’s here and
now tend to merge in the sense of presence, the awareness of the self, blur-
ring the margins of the distinction between a topological and a temporal
dimension. As lived space exceeds three- dimensional physical space, lived
time is articulated in a complexity that cannot be reduced to the canonical
linear representation, a simplification through elementary geometry. The
subject senses space and time one as an expression of the other: in everyday
experience, they become assimilated and can only be separated by means of
an abstraction (Minkowski, 1970, p. 30).
Chronographic architecture
In architectural culture, the spatialization of time has always been a central
topic, leading to a body of representations of its measurable form. The
cyclicity of time we experience in the natural world – the alternation of night
and day; the movement of sun, moon and all other celestial bodies; or the
cycle of seasons – has been one of the most observed phenomena ever since
remote ages. It is a need emerging with the end of nomadism and the birth
of agriculture, which required precise forms of organization for all activities
connected to it. The utilitarian aspect of measuring time merges with the
religious dimension, paving the way for many architectures that we could
define as chronographic: building-sized calendars, which, from Stonehenge
to Pre-Columbian pyramids, associate solar cults to the need of measuring
the sequence of seasons.
88 Forms of time
Figure 10.1 Jantar Mantar, Jaipur, India, 1734.
If the conventional representation of time is organized on a straight line,

along which historically determined events are placed in sequence, the
spatialized version in architecture is more often based on circular forms,
derived from the movement of astral bodies and expressing the recursivity
of natural time. Some chronographic buildings rely on spectacular mor-
phologies, such as the Jantar Mantar, solar observatories built in Northern
India in the first half of the 18th century by king Jai Singh (Figure 10.1). Still
today, the allegoric representation of time is based on curved forms that
have also been useful to materialize the new conception of space-time pro-
posed in the early 20th century by theories of Albert Einstein and Hermann
Minkowski. A profound revision of the concept of time is carried out in the
years between the 19th and 20th centuries, binding it for the first time to the
notion of space in a concretion that from the physical science would extend
into all fields of culture (Kern, 1983).
In the space-time binomial, velocity appears as an intermediate term,
rooted in the first two at multiple levels: speed that can slow down the flow of
time, in the acceptation given by relativistic physics, or with the meaning of
magnitude, as the time necessary to cover a certain distance, thus as a three-
dimensional extension that can be numerically quantified. Velocity becomes
one of the heroic terms of early 20th- century modernity, fed by the exponen-
tial growth of high-speed transport systems – from trains to automobiles,
leading up to airplanes and space flight – and is capable of nullifying the tra-
ditional concepts of regional territory and place. Many artistic avant-gardes
of the early 20th century reflect on the concept of speed: from Cubism,
which decomposes the perceptual sequence presenting it simultaneously as
a layered, re- composed image, or Futurism, which stages it as a crystallized
representation of movement. In the work of Umberto Boccioni, the themes
Forms of time 89
of space, time, movement and speed are continuously intertwined, creating
a transversal bond expressed through the plasticity of forms.
About memory
Another expression of time that has experienced great success in architec-
ture is memory, to which cultural history has granted a central role in various
moments, from classical antiquity to the Renaissance. Traditionally, mem-
ory was understood as the reappearing of images the subject had acquired
in the past and remained “impressed” in the mind. Memory was conceived
as the ability of deliberately recalling these images or as their spontaneous
resurfacing in an associative way, stimulated by something encountered in
the external world. In this sense, memory is the quintessential representa-
tion of time past, according to a tradition that has long considered the mind
as an archive of these images: the subject would preserve mnestic traces of
the past in the form of elusive engrams (Rossi, 2001, p. 80).
The traditional conception of memory has produced some emblematic
representations where we can observe the deep relation between subject,
time and space: one of the most emblematic is the Palace of Memory, a
technique adopted by ancient Roman orators to memorize their speeches
(Tarpino, 2008, p. 31). It is described by Cicero in De Oratore and consists in
imagining a large palace divided into many rooms and corridors, each with
niches, alcoves and other spaces where to position the parts of the text to be
memorized as if they were objects. When delivering the speech, the orator
had to ideally walk through the building, thus coming upon the objects he
had previously placed there.
The idea of memory as an archive remains valid until the Renaissance,
when mnemonists, adopting the methods inherited from classical orators,
were capable of memorizing incredible amounts of books and treatises. Due
to their ability of providing a model for the organization and representation
of the world, the techniques for “artificial” memory rise to become forms of
art (Rossi, 2001, p. 38). In the mid-16th century, philosopher Giulio Camillo
conceives the Theater of Memory, a structure divided into sections organ-
ized according to a precise classificatory system (Yates, 1966, p. 144). Dif-
ferently from a conventional theater, here, the spectator is located at the
center of the stage, while the whole of human knowledge unfolds before his
eyes. Camillo’s system of organization anticipates encyclopedic knowledge:
a representation of memory that helps us understand how it was conceived
in a static way in the form of objects arranged in the mind, with a clear
distinction between past and present time.
In architecture, memory as the representation of past events has been
traditionally expressed through monuments. The intent of allowing the ob-
server to recall certain historical events, which have often not been per-
sonally experienced but rather belong to a community’s heritage, is usually
achieved through the expressivity of symbolism, staging a narrative requiring
90 Forms of time
Figure 10.2 Jessica Jamroz and Frederic Schwartz, Empty Sky Memorial, Jersey
City, 2011.
a shared linguistic code. Contemporary memorials, on the other hand, act

on the subjects’ experiential sphere, as in the case of Rome’s Mausoleum of
the Fosse Ardeatine, or the Empty Sky Memorial in Jersey City, dedicated
to the September 11 attacks (Figure 10.2). Narratives here are not linguistic,
since they strive to produce corporeal responses of disorientation, instabil-
ity or anxiety through spatial compression, deviation from verticality, light
effects or the material qualities of surfaces. Rather than recreating the his-
toricized image of an event, these architectures lead subjects to experience
an affective condition similar to the sense of anguish of those who were
victims or otherwise witnesses of the attacks: these are memorials intended
as tools for the presentification of a certain corporeal state.
Lived time
Just as for space, the felt body is the seat of the experience of time, becoming
the node where these two entities merge. Time is a subjective fact, in the
sense that it is bound the subject’s first-person experience, in a condition of
movement and variability grounded on spatial presence and exceeding the
conventional division between past, present and future, metric equivalent of
Cartesian space. This conception first emerges in the last years of the 19th
century in the work of Henri Bergson, who introduces the notion of duration,
distinguishing linear chronometric time from that sensed by the subject,
which can only be represented through an intuition (Bergson, 2001, p. 89).
Equally, the idea of memory as a crystallization of past time, as a “library”
Forms of time 91
preserved in the mind, is questioned starting from the 19th c entury, with the
emerging awareness that it rather acts in a performative way, based on the
repetition of actions calling into play the subject’s corporeity (Casey, 1987,
p. 148; Rossi, 2001, p. 204).
In the fertile cultural humus of the early 20th century, Bergson’s ideas will
produce a strong impact, starting from literature – Marcel Proust’s work is
profoundly influenced by Bergson – to psychiatry, where Eugène Minkowski
extends the Husserlian phenomenological method to the idea of duration,
introducing the key of the felt body (Minkowski, 1970). The notion of lived
time derives from the phenomenological observation that it manifests itself
in a non-linear and inhomogeneous way. We all know the sensation of time
which never passes, or that passed too quickly; we are also aware that often
the journey taking us to a certain place lasts more than the return trip, and
that some events of the recent past seem to have taken place a lifetime ago.
In terms of exact and measurable magnitudes, these differences make no
sense since the perception of time, just as of space, is bound to situations
which, despite their physical equivalence, may be entirely different one from
the other.
Each one of us spends much of his existence immersed in mental activities
that are apparently disconnected from our spatial and temporal presence.
When we are in a familiar place, we usually inhabit it in a pre-reflective
way, and only occasionally do the circumstances require our full attention
(Schmitz, 2011, p. 19). What happens when we are not fully present in space?
We move freely through time, reviewing past events or planning future
ones – an imaginative ability that is both rational and fantastic but in both
cases anticipates a future that becomes a present fact. The subject’s exist-
ence unfolds in a lived time intertwining past and future, to the extent that
these conceptual containers become unreliable: present is only the space
we experience, and memory is an active factor in the constitution of such
presence.
This definition of time is grounded in embodiment, the coincidence of
mind and felt body overcoming the traditional scission in two entities that
have long been considered separate and independent. In this sense, memory
is not located in a disembodied mind, according to the Cartesian dualism
between thinking matter and extended matter: memory temporally artic-
ulates the subject’s presence, and the felt body inhabits the environment
in a constantly spatial condition. Our “internal back and forth” between
past and future is therefore connected to our presence in space: although it
might not always be evident, the mental routines we perform can be deeply
influenced by the environment we experience at a given moment.
Involuntary memories
If we observe the body’s dynamics in the environment, we can better
understand the workings of this connection between lived time and space.
92 Forms of time
Imagine walking on a grassy lawn, perhaps lost in other thoughts, for
example crossing a small park in the middle of a city when quickly going to
work. Passing from the sidewalk to the grass, our footsteps change: we may
notice this mutation, or it could remain beneath the threshold of awareness.
Nevertheless, even if we do not notice what has happened, it could be that
from the “magma” of our thoughts suddenly emerges the memory of a hike
in the mountains, where we had walked for a long time on a grassy hillside.
These mnemonic-motor resonances occur with a certain frequency: they are
not deliberately recalled memories, rather affective dynamics bound to the
felt body.
Marcel Proust, a keen observer of the corporeal dynamics and of their
relation to involuntary memories, defines these events with the term
intermissions of the heart, describes in a passage of Sodom and Gomorrah:
For with the troubles of memory are closely linked the heart’s intermis-
sions. It is, no doubt, the existence of our body, which we may compare
to a jar containing our spiritual nature, that leads us to suppose that all
our inward wealth, our past joys, all our sorrows, are perpetually in our
possession. Perhaps it is equally inexact to suppose that they escape or
return. In any case, if they remain within us, it is, for most of the time,
in an unknown region where they are of no service to us, and where even
the most ordinary are crowded out by memories of a different kind,
which preclude any simultaneous occurrence of them in our conscious-
ness. But if the setting of sensations in which they are preserved be re-
captured, they acquire in turn the same power of expelling everything
that is incompatible with them, of installing alone in us the self that
originally lived them.
(2003, p. 173)
Lived time affectively influences the subject, becoming a spatial manifesta-

tion. It also re- emerges through our corporeal sense of the features of the
natural cycle: there is much evidence of the workings of this dynamic. We
could begin with the affective relation to the alternation of day and night
or to the seasons: if we observe the same urban space in different months of
the year we may note that despite the same physical configuration the situa-
tion we encounter can significantly vary. This change is not only purported
by the different incidence of sunlight, temperature or the changing aspect
of vegetation: these are only factors bound to the physical objects that are
present in the environment. If we describe this change from the point of view
of the subject, we can claim that the way we feel in a same place in summer
or winter is just not the same. Let us for example consider a beach: we know
very well how it differs from summer to winter. A difference in temperature
and sunlight, of measurable climate phenomena, but even more of the way
the subject resonates with this environment in two distinct situations.
Forms of time 93
The term we can adopt to describe a condition of this type, the encounter
with a certain situation and our ineffable response is affective tone (Binswanger,

1933, p. 624). The same beach, visited in summer or winter, affords the sub-
ject two very distinct affective tones: this implies not only the change in the
physical context but also the subject’s different emotional response. An affec-
tive tone, intended as a presence in space, is again encountered between the
subject and the environment: more than a constituent part of the world, it is
a transient quality, possessing expressive characters becoming accessible to
anyone and producing an affective response (Griffero, 2014, p. 36).
Natural time
The cycle of day and night allows us to observe the variability of space at
different levels: the most immediate lies in the measurable change of light
during the night, in the transition from daylight to artificial lighting, and
also in the reduction of traffic and congestion in the city producing a greater
stillness. These thresholds are clear and at least in part measurable, for ex-
ample in relation to the city’s soundscape (Bollnow, 2011, p. 211). The change
of these conditions, however, produces not only a different situation but also
a specific corporeal response, which depends on the environment’s varying
conditions. There is a clear difference between the same space experienced
at day and at night, and a further nuance between the early evening, when
the sun has set but the city’s space is still alive, or at a much later hour, in
the heart of the night. These are not only literary metaphors: we all know the
sensation we experience in a dark place in the middle of the night.
The sensations emerging as a response to the environment’s cyclic tempo-
rality often become manifest in an undifferentiated way since it is difficult
to anchor affective tones to specific objects. Some entities, however, allow us
to connect certain situations to affective responses or moods: one of these
is light, both natural and artificial, in relation to its intensity, provenance,
temperature and color. Colors ranging from red to orange and yellow are
synesthetically perceived as being warm, while those in the white-green-
blue range as cold. The difference in temperature contributes to a space’s
affective tone, which, synesthetically, we could compare to major and minor
tones in music. Returning to the beach, it becomes clear how the different
colors and changing hues produced by the sun’s angle over the horizon in
summer and winter lead to different corporeal resonances.
From his window overlooking the Rouen cathedral, at the end of the
19th century, Claude Monet carried out an extraordinary experiment by
recording the qualities of sunlight in the day’s cycle and under different at-
mospheric conditions. Although his exploration was based on the façade’s
response to light, it is clear how the various situations that emerged both in
real space and in the painted image entailed a different corporeal response
in the observer.
94 Forms of time
The cyclicity of natural time leads some conditions of the environment to
reappear, producing typical situations that the subject is familiar with and
recognizes in his own bodily response. The typical character of these situa-
tions can enter the toolbox of architectural design, especially in temporary
installations for concerts, fairs or other events taking place in urban spaces,
which in fact are often considered as scenography – indicating the construc-
tion of a specific setting. The typical Christmas market, with its vernac-
ular decorations, represents a practice of urban scenography that aims at
re-presenting a manifestation of cyclical time.
The situation one encounters here – made of lights, colors and typical
Christmas smells – highlights how the return of conditions we have previ-
ously experienced constructs the memory of space, the articulation of its
temporality. This also happens in relation of the subjects’ ability of remem-
bering certain actions they have performed in these situations: so the Christ-
mas market, just like the weekly farmer’s market that occupies a square the
same day every week, become acting presences even when they are not phys-
ically present. Scenography leverages on this ability of artificial situations of
re-presenting past experience; it is therefore considered today as a possible
paradigm for architectural design (Böhme, 2013; De Matteis, 2015b).
The gardens of memory

The lived time of the subject’s experience and space are tightly connected:
they also share the same difficulty in being directly determined by design,
since we can only act on them in a mediated way. Many buildings, how-
ever, seem to act exactly on this level, installing in “one move”, through
the subject’s corporeal memory, both experienced space and the sense of
temporality. An interesting case is that of classical Chinese gardens (Figure
10.3): they are based on informal designs devoid of clear geometric struc-
tures since they have often grown over extended periods through the ad-
dition of architectural and landscape elements. They are entirely artificial
environments, where each single portion is accurately defined through the
use of typical elements such as pavilions, porticoed pathways, bridges and
enclosures. Vegetation is also arranged with a precise picturesque intent by
means of artificial hills, rockeries and ponds.
Site plans of these gardens reveal little about their spatial structure: they
are based on a purely experiential dimension, in line with a picturesque tra-
dition. As part of luxurious homes, the gardens are enclosed by high walls
separating them from the surrounding city; several pavilions are arranged
along the enclosure’s perimeter, organized around the artificial ponds. The
pavilions look onto the water, turning their back to the enclosing walls,
performing a clear architectural gesture; nevertheless, the interstitial space
between the two is not a simple backside but rather becomes a “phenom-
enological room” used to create precise effects influencing the impression
received by the inhabitant.
Forms of time 95
Figure 10.3 Garden of the Master of the Nets, Suzhou, China.
Each pavilion has a theme, generally inspired by poetry, dedicated to the

description of natural landscapes in specific seasonal conditions accord-
ing to the Chinese classical ideal of life in contact with nature. In this way,
the pavilions and surrounding elements are transformed into microcosms,
with distant views on the lakes and trees, together with carefully orches-
trated sounds and smells – for example the sound of rain falling on large
leaves – that are afforded by the plants located at the pavilion’s rear.
The staging of temporality in Chinese gardens consists in the recreation
of a certain situation, inspired by a seasonal character experienced by the
subject inhabiting the pavilion. These spaces acquire their full expression at
particular moments of day or night, as when the moon reflects of the lake’s
surface, or in different seasons. Just like contemporary memorials act on the
subject’s sphere of feelings, stimulating the re- emerging of a certain emo-
tion, so in the garden the spatial condition influences the subject’s corpo-
real response. The melancholic sense of Autumn evoked by the Osmanthus
96 Forms of time
flowers, by the sound of rain and the breeze shaking the trees, allows the
subject to explore time through his experience of space.
The subject’s presence in space is thus articulated by a complex tempo-
rality, not simply bound to the present but also intertwined with past and
future events, to the extent that these three dimensions become deeply inter-
twined. The relation between the subject’s temporal presence and the space
he encounters is influenced by the situation, and it is through these emerg-
ing manifestations of the environment that a design can orient the subject’s
temporal presence. It is a matter, in other words, of “installing” certain con-
ditions through the configuration of environments, leading the subject to
sense a corporeal affect related to his previous individual experiences.
11 The affective city
The model of space we are considering is not specific to some particular

kind of environment: the constancy of experience is given by the subject’s
centrality rather than by a typological classification of the built world.
However, especially in consideration of architectural design, we can take
into account some recurring situations that to a certain extent may solicit
comparable emotional responses: one of these is the urban environment.
The first question to address, in this sense, is the fact that the term “city”
points to some very different realities, from an Asian megalopolis to a
small village hidden in the mountains. The urban condition cannot be de-
fined by its mere magnitude; rather, it is defined by the collective aggrega-
tion of a certain number of individuals who share a limited territory: even
some smaller centers can thus be considered fragments of a city. Despite
the obvious differences, there are many analogies: in the urban condition,
built space prevails over the “natural” one, since most areas are occupied by
buildings, and whatever is left free is normally used for displacement, either
pedestrian or mechanized.
In the urban environment we find a certain amount of population per-
forming a multitude of tasks, from residential to productive ones, public
or private, formalized or spontaneous, planned or improvised. The city
can be large or small: the size of buildings, streets and the intensity of hu-
man or vehicular traffic are factors leading to a further classification in
categories – a taxonomic exercise that is not relevant here.
On the contrary, it is crucial to observe that the urban environment in its
manifold declinations represents the ecological habitat for the majority of
the planet’s population. If we cannot truly speak of evolution – the urban
phenomenon, even in its most ancient manifestations, is much more recent
than the biological mutations of the human species – we are undeniably
observing a process of adaptation to a certain environment. In this sense,
human subjects inhabit the city with a set of corporeal and perceptual skills
of much older origin that have evolved in conditions which were not urban
at all, like the savannah or the forest. This evolutionary root must be consid-
ered to fully understand what happens when we inhabit the space of the city.
Starting from the second half of the 19th century – roughly with the
exponential growth of the western metropolis – the city has occupied the
center of attention of scholars from all academic branches. The modern city
represents an altogether new phenomenon in comparison with the tradi-
tional one, both in terms of its material constitution in relation to its dy-
namics of growth and transformation, and for the human life unfolding
there. In the last two centuries, and increasingly from the end of the 19th,
we have witnessed the birth of a huge body of studies on urban theory, with
a multitude of models for the planning of new cities that have yielded the
most varied implementations.
Despite the great variety of these conceptual tools, a recurring point
lies in the limited importance attributed to the human subject, who is usu-
ally conceived in a rather standardized way (Rowe & Koetter, 1978, p. 17),
consistent with the idea of seriality intrinsic to most architectural theory
of the early part of the 20th century. Even in those cases when the sub-
ject was somehow considered, it was nevertheless as a disembodied entity,
deriving from the mental autonomy stemming from Cartesian dualism
(De Matteis, 2015a).
The human city

Only from the 1950s onward, through a wider cultural movement advocating
a revision of the modernist project, emerged the calls for a greater focus
on the city’s phenomenological dimension. Although corporeity still re-
mained largely latent beyond the conceptual horizon and perception was
still considered a primarily visual fact, several British and American au-
thors started investigating the nature of urban space through first-person
perspective, trying to outline how the subject’s experience of the city was
articulated on the basis of novel psychological and anthropological ideas.
We are not speaking of the flâneur – a character condensing a vast array of
cultural references – but rather of an everyman, pertaining to the city in the
way an animal belongs to its ecological habitat.
In his 1961 book Townscape, Gordon Cullen proposes a way of observing
and designing urban spaces derived from the picturesque tradition, based
on the observer’s movement through the environment. The book’s great
popularity, sustained by its conceptual and communicative simplicity, was
based on the idea of visual pleasure, advocating a direct relationship between
perception and the organization of objects in physical space: the meter for
architectural design shifts to the effect it produces on the moving observer.
A more structured method is that outlined by Kevin Lynch in his clas-
sic book The Image of the City (1960). Starting from an interdisciplinary
approach merging planning and anthropology, Lynch devised a method to
produce cognitive maps of the city, capable of indicating how urban spaces
create an ecological habitat comparable to a natural one. The architec-
tural aspects remain in the background, while the interviews conducted in
The affective city 99
Boston, Los Angeles and Jersey City highlight the characters of use and
orientation that help or hinder the inhabitants’ movement through the city.
Lynch considers the subject mainly in his biological matrix, underscoring
the primary natural bond between individuals and urban space. The city is
viewed in an altogether different way from the gigantic designed “machine”,
which, from the end of the 19th century, was the focus of urban theory: the
categories adopted by Lynch in his analysis, tied to perception and usability
of the city, and to its capacity of impressing the inhabitants’ memory, are to
a certain extent still used today to explain phenomena of appropriation and
rejection.
Urban atmospheres
Since the middle of the 19th century, with the rise of the modern metropolis,
the city has become a privileged ground for the observation of human activ-
ity. The relationship between the physical structure composed of buildings
and open spaces and the inhabitation of human agents is deeply trans-
formed by the onset of mass culture and modern infrastructures, creating a
previously unknown condition for the subject. In the early years of the 20th
century several authors, such as Georg Simmel (1964), Sigfried Kracauer
(1995) and Walter Benjamin (1999), explored and described this transformed
dimension, providing accounts merging the built environment with the
atmospheric situations produced by human action.
In recent years, the theory of atmospheres has proven particularly fertile
in a range of observational approaches to the city and urban space. With
the notion of affective atmosphere, geographers Ben Anderson (2009) and
Matthew Gandy (2017) refer to the prepersonal and transpersonal dimen-
sions of affective life and everyday experience as collective emotions that are
simultaneously indeterminate and determinate. In their being both experi-
enced and created by the subjects’ bodies, atmospheres play a crucial role
in the politics of urban space, influencing the relations between individuals
and groups as they unfold within the physical infrastructure of the city. Al-
though this approach is less focused on the specific architectural qualities of
the urban settings, it is nevertheless capable of describing how the processes
of transformation of the city are shaped by the affective atmosphere and
mood toning the inhabitants’ individual and collective presence.
With the concept of ambiance – related to that of atmosphere – Jean-
Paul Thibaud addresses the experienced qualities of urban spaces primarily
in terms of the situated, built and social dimension of sensory experience
(2011, 2014, 2015). By shifting the focus from physical space to affective and
experienced space, ambiances provide an operating mode that is both ana-
lytical and design-oriented, considering the sensory environment as a field
of action, as an alternative model of intelligibility including the contempo-
rary concern with atmospheric phenomena. When observing a city’s space
atmosphere thus becomes a privileged descriptor of both human relations
in urban environments and the relation between the human and the built
environment (Albertsen, 2019).
Moving and perceiving in the city

To understand the processes subtending lived space in the contemporary
city, we must observe that the way we experience urban environments is
primarily dynamic. We use streets, boulevards, squares and other public
spaces of various nature mostly for movement, intended here as physical
displacement. The occasions in which we actually stay in outdoor urban
spaces for a longer time are limited since most activities are bound to inte-
rior spaces, except special cases such as concerts, markets or other public
events, or the contemplative pause a tourist takes when visiting a city for the
first time. The contemporary city is primarily a place of transit, as attested
by exponential growth and diversification of means of public and private
transportation.
How does displacement through urban space determine its perception? In
large cities most movement is mechanized, aboard various means of trans-
portation: architects and urbanists at the beginning of the 20th century
were fascinated by the way in which this transformation in the speed and
quality of motion had changed the perception of urban space, creating new
dynamic panoramas of the metropolis (Neumeyer, 1990). Le Corbusier’s
and Hilberseimer’s projects for the new city always show moving cars, just
like Mies van der Rohe’s German and American urban designs are based on
the cinematic vision from vehicles in motion.
Moving through a city by car, bike or by walking produces different expe-
riences due to the various speeds, the selection of routes which can be taken
and the varying degree of attention that we must pay to what surrounds us.
When walking – especially along a familiar path – we can immerse our-
selves in thought to the extent that we may lose notion of the route we took;
if we travel on a bus or in a car as a passenger we can fall asleep, yet if we
drive any vehicle – car, motorbike or bike – our attention is more focused on
movement itself, leading us to a different interaction with the surrounding
environment. We are co- embodied with any object transporting us: we sense
a road’s bumps through our car’s wheels, the angular acceleration through
the seat’s pressure on our back, and a bicycle becomes, in fact, an extension
of our own body.
Independently of the nature of movement, there is a bond between our
action and how this is connected to perception in the framework of a sen-
sorimotor dynamic where these two processes are only partially separated
(Noë, 2004, p. 6). Perception is not a passive act by which we inertly re-
ceive an inpour of undifferentiated stimuli from the surrounding environ-
ment that are then somehow “sorted” by an internal processing center: it is
rather a form of action, to be understood as a continuous palpation of the
environment performed to seek possibilities of use or potential threats.
Walking
In this sense, in an evolutionary perspective, the only means of motion to
which our sensorimotor system is fully aligned is walking: the ecological
condition of the city as habitat, with its proliferation of mechanical vehicles,
introduces the necessity of continuous adaptation on the side of the subject.
A clear example is bound to visual perception when we move at high speed
in a car, with the difficulty in distinguishing details such as people’s faces
or the text written on a billboard. However, even if the only “natural” expe-
rience of space is that which can be acquired by walking, this does not im-
ply that other forms of movement are not relevant to understand the urban
environment and its spatial manifestations.
The experience of urban walking has been at the center of philosoph-
ical debate ever since the early 20th century, and authors such as Walter
Benjamin and Michel de Certeau consider it substantially inherent to the
urban condition (Benjamin, 1999; de Certeau, 1988, p. 91). Moving through
the metropolis must not be understood as a linear, uniform displacement
along rails: locomotion requires a constant adaption of motor dynamics to
the conditions of terrain and the ensuing kinesthetic sense of variability in
posture and muscular tension. The body’s movement is never entirely neu-
tral since it always affects the subject’s emotional stirrings.
An example of what it means to walk uphill: as Dante’s ascent along the
trail of Mount Purgatory is a voyage of purification, where bodily fatigue
is linked to the aspiration of reaching a place that is located on the summit
and toward which we strive with a sense of reverential subjection, so also in
the city buildings of a certain importance are often elevated and isolated
from the surrounding fabric. Sometimes this is due to defensive needs, since
military structures were often located on natural reliefs: nevertheless, this
elevation is often designed to leverage on the corporeal dynamics of walk-
ing uphill. This is the case of Rome’s St. Peter’s basilica, where despite the
square’s large dimension the ascent toward the entrance makes the mov-
ing subject approaching the façade experience a certain corporeal stirring
(Figure
11.1).
Figure 11.1 St. Peter’s Rome, section of the square with the rise toward the basilica.
From Carlo Fontana, Il Tempio Vaticano, 1694.
The mirroring between motion and emotion is one of the hinges of urban
space. Our perceptual action – visual and of all other senses – explores space
as soon as it is encountered, providing us with information regarding what
we could find there. The subject’s emotional response pre-reflectively influ-
ences the decision to walk ahead or withdraw from a given environment
and the way we move into and through it. Movement is guided by the distal
perception that precedes our physical position and by a system of affec-
tive feedback continuously appraising the opportunity of action, expressed
through a code of emotional signals (Colombetti, 2014, p. 42).
Urban situations
Some of the city’s morphological qualities can produce in subjects constant
responses, such as in the case of a narrow alley delimited by walls so near
that they can be simultaneously touched just by extending one’s arms
(Figure 11.2). This condition is common to many historic centers throughout
the world; independently of context, the way we walk through these spaces
is influenced by the suggestion of movement afforded by the walls and by
the subject’s response corporeally sensing the possibility of contact between
converging surfaces. Perceptual exploration does not stop with the evalua-
tion of what is actually present in the environment: it protends to forecast
what could happen in a certain space through affordances and suggestions
of movement.
This anticipation is influenced by a situation’s specific character: if we
experience this space in full day, we may be able to easily walk through
it, since the distal quality of vision and the sunlight pouring into the al-
ley allow us a certain possibility of control. If some threat were to appear,
we could turn back and run away. But if our perceptual capacities become
reduced – for example at night, when the alley is dark or only dimly lit – the
emotional response will be altogether different, changing the body’s tension
Figure 11.2 Alley in Changmen, Suzhou, China.

and the way the subject moves, looking sideways and behind him much more
frequently and paying attention to any noise that could herald the presence
of some unseen menace.
When walking through a city our movement is not homogeneous: it is
continuously articulated by the encounter with buildings, objects, people,
sounds and smells, immaterial presences, expressive qualities and atmos-
pheres. The urban environment hosts these spatial agents that produce cer-
tain impressions on the subject who responds to them affectively. Among
the various encounters in the space of the city, one of the most relevant is
that with other subjects: these are part of our daily life, and the dynamics
of how they unfold often does not rise to our awareness. Nevertheless, at a
pre-reflective level, they represent moments of immediate and mostly spon-
taneous interaction based on distinct modes of corporeal communication
(Schmitz, 2011, p. 29).
If a person enters our visual field, we immediately try to recognize him,
spontaneously evaluating if he could pose a threat to our safety. This
dynamic is constantly at work, but only occasionally abandons its latency
and comes to the foreground: what happens if at night, in the narrow alley
we are describing, we suddenly see someone in front of us? The emotional
response expressed through a strong contraction of the felt body can be so
intense as to paralyze us. It is also connected to the particular configuration
of the environment, to the opportunities for flight or shelter that it offers.
The nocturnal encounter with a potentially menacing stranger is an ex-
treme situation; in blander forms, it pertains to our everyday experience and
to how we inhabit urban spaces. Their configuration is the basic physical
scaffolding for the dynamic relations between subjects since the morphol-
ogy of built masses determines the limits and temporal dimension of per-
ception, which can be distal and immediate, or reduced and articulated in
time, purporting a different impact on our affective sphere.
If we observe a street in a traditional urban environment (Figure 11.3),
another common condition throughout various contexts we notice is the low
and dense fabric, the reduced distance between buildings and the strong
possibility of introspection due to the fact that the homes face directly on
the public space so that the residents can exert visual control over those who
walk through the neighborhood. How is the experience of walking through
this street articulated? Our gaze does not allow us to cover a great distance
since the tight fabric of houses interrupts the line of visibility. The presence
of many openings – windows, doors, entrances and intersections with other
alleys – produces a complex set of movements since we are continuously
invited to turn sideways to verify what is to be seen in those sideway direc-
tions: a window or door can conceal a gaze, a presence requiring interac-
tion. In such a densely structured fabric the subject unfamiliar with it finds
himself in a condition of near alert, since at every moment he must be ready
to react, thus fragmenting the continuity of spatial experience and the flu-
idity of movement.
Figure 11.3 Street a Changmen, Suzhou, China.
The affective and motoric response to the environment’s configuration

varies depending on the subject that is walking through this alley: a resident
of the neighborhood knows every window and each person living there,
whereas an occasional visitor, perhaps a foreigner entering that area for the
first time, will react in a different way. Movement changes, and so does the ex-
pectation of what could happen in a certain place, a grounding condition for
familiarity. The profound knowledge we have of the places we usually inhabit
influences our response to space: on one side this depends on the entrainment
to use these domestic spaces, one of the qualities defining the subject’s spec-
ificity. On the other hand, even indirect experience can have an impact on
these dynamics, as we well know from the evidence of being capable to feel at
home also in places we have never visited before. It is a sensation we have all
encountered in some circumstance, tied to the subject’s previous corporeal
experience and to the way our spatial presence is temporally articulated.
Let us observe another type of environment, typical of the modern city
(Figure 11.4): a planned residential neighborhood, with well- defined propor-
tions between masses and open space devised to reduce the traditional co-
hesion between buildings and streets. Urban areas such as this can be found
in most major European cities, resulting from the various public housing
programs implemented during the 20th century: it is another condition to
which inhabitants have adapted over the course of the last century. What
is the spatial experience unfolding here? Differently from the dense tradi-
tional fabric, the configuration of built masses allows a substantial freedom
of horizontal movement: the subject is not forced to follow a pre- established
route, since passages at ground floor level are free, and one can choose the
Figure 11.4 Decima residential neighborhood, Luigi Moretti, Rome, 1965.
distance at which to stay from the built fronts. Visual perception plays out
differently: we can look in the distance, while remaining protected from the
encounter with other gazes. Jan Gehl’s previously mentioned studies high-
light how facial recognition becomes difficult at a great distance: if this can
lead to the alienating character of the modernist city, where the interaction
between subjects is hindered by the excessive distance or the presence of
obstacles, one is however freed form the “tyranny” of gaze as a tool of so-
cial and corporeal control. The opening up of urban space thus cuts both
ways, producing positive or negative effects on the subject’s response and
on the social potential of the built environment depending on the various
conditions exceeding the city’s mere physical configuration.
Intimate urban spaces

Changing perceptual dynamics also imply different forms of motion, which
in turn influence the process of perception. In some cases, however, even in
the urban environment we can identify conditions of rest rather than move-
ment: these are often public spaces appropriated by inhabitants, although
they lack at least in principle a strictly domestic quality (Figure 11.5). We are
still speaking of urban environment, yet we immediately understand that
the traditional categories of “exterior” or “public” here are not the opposite
of “enclosed” and “private”. Some characters that are typical of interior
space, which is private and intimate, are projected outside: what determines
the possibility of this transposition?
Figure 11.5 Trullo residential neighborhood, Roberto Nicolini and Giuseppe

Nicolosi, Rome, 1940.
Domestic space can have many different configurations, but its constant
qualities are privacy and protection: a dwelling’s interior is where we en-
tirely master the environment, exerting a nearly complete control on what
happens. In addition, there is a certain degree of separation from the public
sphere ending at the home’s threshold. In urban space, we sometimes come
upon these same qualities, for example when we experience a sense of pro-
tection: from traffic, noise, close-up contact with other people, but also from
the possibility that someone might sneak up on us from behind, catching us
by surprise.
This sense of comfort originally derives from a condition of the natural
environment: well before the birth of the city, these same qualities were in-
herent to safe places where our ancestors could find shelter from an other-
wise hostile environment. In these protected spaces – that could be caves
or other natural features of the terrain – our forefathers were safe from the
many threats they were usually subjected to and could reduce the state of
alert toward what could emerge from the surrounding environment. When
a subject comes upon spatial conditions that afford this same sense of pro-
tection, he spontaneously alters his perceptive mode and the quality of cor-
poreal movement, giving way to a different emotional disposition. In some
urban spaces we can thus identify the same corporeal condition that we ex-
perience in the protected shelter of our home.
The urban environment’s physical configuration can thus substantially
influence the way we move, how and what we perceive, our sensations and
the emotional response to what we encounter in the city. This is not an au-
tomated or mechanical response, since it varies according to situations –
day and night, climate conditions, crowdedness or emptiness – and to the
subject – resident or visitor, local or foreigner. Spatial perception always
results from the encounter of two contingencies, returning a gamut of
individual responses deriving from the same spatial situation.
The city’s memory

The familiarity with urban spaces is crucial to this dynamic: familiarity,
however, is not to be intended as the mere knowledge of a place, the fact
of having been there before or knowing the people who inhabit it. We can
experience a sensation of familiarity also in cities we have never visited be-
fore but showing some resemblance with others that we know. In this case,
recognition does not occur only through analogy or association, when we
see in the buildings or streets features we already know from other places
or from images; it is also about the recurrence of previously experienced
corporeal states. When in summer we go to the seaside, we know the sen-
sation of being at the beach even when we have never been to that specific
beach before: the re-presentation of some conditions is sufficient to allows
us to experience the corporeal state that is typical of a summer day at the
sea. The same happens in the urban environment, where some situations we
encounter – characterized by the physical configuration of built space and
by immaterial presences – allows us to recognize what is embedded in our
corporeal memory.
In this sense, urban space is articulated by the temporal dimension of
experience, the depth of which eludes a linear representation. The conven-
tional division of time in three distinct spheres does not render the complex
process of the recurrence of experience not as an image but as an acting
force in the subject’s sense of presence. The city intended as human habitat
provides many examples of these dynamics, for example in the temporary
uses and occupations of spaces, such as a street that is crowded during the
day but deserted on a Sunday morning, or a weekly market animating a
square. When the street is crowded, the urban space’s situation is defined by
human presence, by the density of objects and activities taking place there.
What changes from one situation to another is not only physical space but
also the atmosphere as a spatially extended emotional content, experienced
through the corporeal resonance of the subject encountering it. In the after-
noon, once the market stands have been disassembled, the square becomes
very different from what it is the morning, when it is saturated by human
life. Those who are not familiar with the market and visit the square in the
afternoon will not notice any difference, but those who live nearby and
know the market’s atmosphere will recall it also when it is not there. This
is the impact of memory on urban space: memory not intended as the rep-
resentation of past events, rather as the permanence of affective states that
are corporeally bound to certain situations and environments. Those who
know the market’s atmosphere somehow perceive the invisible (Baier, 2000,
p. 56): this does not mean that they see things which are not there, but that
the contingent experience of space is altered by presences not occurring in
the present. In this case, spatialized feelings are not openly accessible, only
becoming available to an individual subject or to a group of persons who
“extract” them from a previous temporal condition, almost as in an archae-
ological excavation acting on the affective dimension of embodiment. This
particular understanding of memory, very different from many others that
have polluted the modern discourse on the city, can at least partially explain
the phenomena of place attachment and rejection, one of the central pillars
for the understanding of the dynamics of human space.
To understand urban space, it is thus not sufficient to describe its phys-
ical configuration: it is necessary to turn our eyes toward the subject and
observe how he moves, perceives and affectively responds to the city’s envi-
ronment. In cities understood as shared human habitats, subjects are united
by a common feeling, expression of social and cultural provenance; never-
theless, we cannot fully understand their nature without considering their
exact position within a system of differences between young and old, men
and women, locals and foreigners, with all the further hues describing each
of these categories.
The city’s image, borrowing a term from Kevin Lynch, is both individ-
ual space, as it emerges from our personal encounter with the urban envi-
ronment and a collective form expressed as the conglomerate of different
experiences, as if it were a shared community of perception. These spatial
images are neither all the same nor all different: we should rather consider
the gamut of variations that ultimately merge them within a coherent frame-
work, which is the reality of urban space. In doing so, we can shed light on
the effects that space produces on the subjects inhabiting it, allowing us to
understand in greater depth how some of these conditions can be designed.
12 Interiors
For various reasons, over time the theory of space in architecture has
developed a close bond with the dimension on interiors. Differently from
what happens with urban space, interiors are frequently the result of a de-
liberate design, perhaps not produced by a specialist, but still less subject
to the incidental and chaotically plural character of the urban condition.
A morphologically enclosed space where the natural environment is largely
absent is usually expression of a project, blurred as it may be. If the natu-
ral environment happens, and the city is manifestation of a process emerg-
ing from an intentionality that is both diluted and diffused, interior space
is more simply made. Architectural theory has therefore always claimed a
theoretical primacy over its conceptualization.
In the protected domain of the interior, architects have enjoyed a wide
freedom of experimentation of design practices and innovative ideas. The
notion that architecture produces on the experiencing subject a certain ef-
fect, influencing his sensations, first emerges in relation to this field and,
more precisely, in the intimate dimension of homes. It is an idea which has
been widely accepted since ancient times: literature of all cultures, from
ancient Rome to Persia, in Renaissance treatises and all the way to 20th-
century theory, is rich in descriptions of how an accurately designed inte-
rior space can have a beneficial – or punitive – effect on those inhabiting it.
From the first half of the 18th century, with the rise of the modern notion of
subject, we also witness a form of identification of interior space – especially
the domestic domain – with the individual’s “interior” space, in an analogic
process that sometimes verges into simplification (Vitta, 2008, p. 137).
A second reason for the centrality of interior space in architectural theory
is the consideration that, even more than the city, this represents a second
nature for the human subject. Our life mainly takes place inside build-
ings: homes, schools, offices, public and private collective buildings such
as airports and shopping malls or diminutive habitats like the interiors of
automobiles or trains. This condition of marked artificiality departs from
the human subject’s evolutionary root, based on the interaction with exte-
rior spaces: a condition, however, to which we have widely adapted, since
we often spend only a few minutes of our day outdoors. Furthermore, the
110 Interiors
biological foundation of our relation to external spaces also explains our
preference for interiors with specific configurations.
The birth of interior space

During the 20th century, architectural critics have emphasized the near-
coincidence of the notion of space with the interior of buildings: authors
such as Sigfried Giedion (1941) and Bruno Zevi (1957) primarily define
space as the internal volume of an architectural shell. This conceptual
model derives directly from Cartesian space and is linked to a materialistic
ontology – and to these critics’ marked preference for certain architects over
others. This conception – still widely considered valid today – is reduction-
ist and dismisses the presence of a moving subject corporeally experiencing
the built environment.
In previous architectural theory we can point out several moments where
interiors rose to be a paradigm to understand how space could exert its influ-
ence on subjects. From the mid-18th century, with the spread of David Hume’s
empiricism and Étienne de Condillac’s sensism, emerges a strong attention for
the role of perception in the cognition of the world: the subject is no longer
hinged to abstract causal thought and in reality is considered to be only ap-
prehensible through direct sensible experience. The long wave of these cul-
tural transitions impacts on architecture at the end of the Baroque age, which
had produced an extraordinary array of design techniques capable of creating
interior spaces dramatically choreographing the subjects’ experience.
The link between Baroque scenography and a new way of understanding
interior space is evident in Giovan Battista Piranesi’s Carceri d’invenzione,
published between 1745 and 1760, and inspired by Ferdinando Bibiena’s
stage designs from the 1711 treatise Architettura civile (De Matteis, 2012,
p. 164). The arbitrary collage of architectural elements derived from Roman
antiquity, not organized by a tectonic logic but by a dark and mysterious im-
aginative sentiment, makes of these engraving some of the earliest and most
powerful explorations of interiors spaces as devices producing an affective
impression. Piranesi’s oneiric drawings show no trace of rationality; rather,
they display the abundance of effects modulating the subject’s affective tone.
During this period, the interest for interior spaces is common to many
European architects in both theory and practice. The very concept of in-
terior undergoes a deep transformation: on one side, with the emerging
awareness that the qualities a designer can convey through his work can
have a significant impact on the inhabitant’s mood; on the other, with the
notion that domestic space is a mirror of its occupants. In 1780, French
architect Nicolas Le Camus de Meziérès published a treatise titled Le génie
de l’architecture, ou L’analogie de cet art avec nos sensations: in describing the
most appropriate characters for each room of a urban dwelling he not only
outlines qualities required for practical purposes, but also the sensations
these spaces must afford their inhabitants (Le Camus de Mézières, 1992).
Interiors 111
The title Le Camus selects refers to the presence of a “genius”, an acting
force demonically pervading buildings: it is what endows space with the
power of influencing individuals, who are not entirely free to be the subjects
of their agency, but also subject to the emotional raptures produced by the
qualities of space (Griffero, 2019, p. 17).
The pathos-laden atmosphere of European Romanticism, distilled in the
theory of the sublime which, from Edmund Burke’s 1757 essay “A Philosoph-
ical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”, per-
vades all fields of culture, surfaces in architectural theory in Étienne-Louis
Boullée’s designs, utopian visions created as teaching tools for his students
at the Académie Royale d’Architecture. In his essay “Architecture, essai
sur l’art”, written to complement these projects and belatedly published in
1953, Boullée argues that the architect must learn from nature the ability
to stimulate human sensation, introducing atmospheric effects through the
buildings and their interior spaces (Boullée, 1953). His most remarkable de-
sign, Isaac Newton’s cenotaph, presents an accurate construction of spa-
tial sequences and surprise effects that we may imagine resonating deeply
with the visitor’s corporeality. The access to the cavernous spherical dome is
granted to visitors by means of a narrow underground tunnel: the corporeal
compression afforded by this passage prepares the subject for the subse-
quent spatial explosion projecting him into an almost cosmic dimension.
The building’s configuration therefore modulates the emotional sequence
the subject experiences in his visit. Boullée and his contemporaries inherit
the great tradition of Baroque stage design: their work cannot only be un-
derstood in its quality of built matter but must include the orchestration of
movement, effects and atmospheres.
Next to Piranesi’s and Boullée’s utopian vision, other authors across the
18th and 19th centuries experimented on the small scale of domestic interi-
ors, leveraging on the deep pathic potential of enclosed space. In his renown
home in London’s Lincoln Inn Fields, John Soane weaves a complex mesh
of spatial relations, based on atmospheric effects and on the continuous ar-
ticulation of gazes conveyed by mirrors and a multitude of inanimate ob-
jects located in key positions of control in the rooms. The exhibition of his
collection is not guided by a rigorous philological rationale but rather ex-
ploits the interaction between objects and inhabitants, allowing the antique
statues and sculptures to haunt the house with their presence. Soane places
his own bust portrait in classical style at the center of the tall vertical shaft,
becoming the household’s protecting divinity – another demonic presence
inhabiting space.
The “autobiographic” criterion for the construction of domestic space,
bound to 19th- century collector culture, will breed famous homes where
the personal significance of accumulated objects overlaps with a spatial-
ized sentiment emerging from the expressive powers of what is exhibited.
Mario Praz’s Roman home represents an exceptional case: the collection
of neoclassical objects and furniture, beyond its stylistic homogeneity, is
112 Interiors
organized in the scholar’s apartment according to the pieces’ ability of influ-
encing the inhabitants. The home’s “biography”, narrated in his 1958 book
The House of Life, is not only the story of a collection but also a lucid system
that exploits the demonic powers of the objects occupying the rooms along
with real humans (Praz, 1964).
Analytical spaces
The idea of home as a mirror of the individual, reaching Praz’s residence at the
climax of a 19th-century tradition rooted in bourgeois culture, Biedermeier
taste and the domain of intimacy, is attacked frontally by modernist avant-
gardes that oppose the Romantic ideal of subjects governed by passions and
the universalism of a heroic individual, disembodied and master of his own
destiny (Ábalos, 2001). The “Freudian archaeology” of the Victorian home is
rejected in the name of a renewal that is ideologic, functional and aesthetic.
Among the various manifestoes of this radical transformation, Le
Corbusier’s 1922 Paris house-atelier for Amédée Ozenfant represents not only
the harshest reduction of domestic expression but also the transition toward a
different way of conceiving visual perception, conveyed through Purist painting.
More than a painter’s workshop – at least in its stereotyped image – this space
is conceived to perform exact visual tasks, exploiting the objective and uniform
quality of natural light. The modern idolatry for brightness, born with the In-
dustrial Revolution and the advent of artificial lighting, is expressed by this
room’s aseptic character, showcasing a clinical nature that speaks of hygiene
and exactitude. The “ghosts” lurking in the shadows of John Soane’s London
house have been repelled by the light of Reason.
The history of European painting in the years crossing the 19th and 20th
centuries shows the increasing penetration of novel scientific discoveries in
the field of art, from space-time to the physiology of vision: the work of the
duo Le Corbusier/Ozenfant, conceptualized in the early 1920s in the pages of
L’Esprit Nouveau, concentrates on the analytical capacity of sight as a tool
for the control of space as a material manifestation. We can interrogate the
relation between the atmosphere experienced by Ozenfant in his Paris atelier
and the character of his paintings: perhaps we could trace a cause- effect link,
or rather consider this formal mirroring between built space and painting as
an analogy. But if we credit the fundamental notion that built spaces affec-
tively influence those inhabiting them, without the possibility of remaining
neutral, we can conclude that Ozenfant’s algid paintings could have hardly
come to life in the chaotic vitalism of an atelier such as villa La Californie,
where Picasso lived in the 1950s, or Andy Warhol’s New York Factory.
Is home the place of affects?

The built environment – and especially interior space – is never inert, since
it continuously induces emotional responses in the subjects inhabiting it,
Interiors 113
recordable through corporeal stirrings and the dynamics of movement.
It also influences its occupants with the familiarity they establish by layer-
ing experiences over time: habit is what makes the emotional dimension of
architecture appear with greater evidence (Jacobson, 2009, p. 367). The deep
bond between subject and space is not to be intended as the stereotype of
“home as the place of affect”: if our ancestral home is, according to Gaston
Bachelard, the archetypal place of profound interiority (1969, p. 16), it can
also turn into the theater of dramatic interpersonal relations that impact
on the subject’s corporeal tone in an enduring way. The spatialization of
the felt body can unfold as the homothetic connection between subject and
environment: so Picasso’s villa-atelier was eventually put up for sale by his
niece Marina many years after his death, since she wanted to get rid of the
house that had staged the tensions between the artist and his son Paulo, a
conflict which had deeply affected her as a child.
The rejection of an interior space can occur under many circumstances,
such as in a school where one feels rejected, or in an office space that har-
bors tense professional relations, or in the claustrophobic prison of Lenny
Abrahamson’s film Room, where the two main characters, confined in a
blind room, develop a complex relationship with the space. For the subject
who has experienced these human situations, space remains permanently
and dramatically “inscribed” since it forces him to relive unpleasant cor-
poreal affects.
Urban interiors
The individual, biographical space of one’s home does not exhaust the vast
range of interior spaces hosting contemporary life: our everyday experience
is played out in private or public buildings that we visit regularly or occa-
sionally, or others which we enter only once, as can be the airport in a for-
eign city where we land to start a trip. The contemporary city is replete with
spaces deliberately escaping strong characterization, anesthetizing spatial
qualities to reduce the chances of producing a strong emotional response.
Among these are shopping malls and large transportation hubs, spaces that
Marc Augé defines as non-places,
a category of generic architectures ex-
emplified above all, according to Rem Koolhaas, by airports (Augé, 1995;
Koolhaas & Mau, 1995, p. 1248).
These large buildings are often conceived by borrowing spatial models
from urban space: dimensions controlled to guarantee a certain proxemic
relationship between visitors, pedestrianization, active fronts, multiple
possibilities of use, furnishing and often artistic decorations with an ur-
ban character. Their architecture usually highlights their interior qualities
above the over-sized, hardly graspable external volumes, thus becoming
an ersatz version of traditional urban space (Vitta, 2008, p. 176). The way
the subject moves in these interior spaces shows clear analogies with typi-
cally urban arrangements: walking in a shopping mall, for example, is now
114 Interiors
an acquired practice for city dwellers, likely to produce a certain familiar
response (Thrift, 2008, p. 8).
The transposition of some urban practices to interior spaces highlights
that the typological distinction between interior and exterior – as many
other dualisms in architectural theory – does not consider some grounding
analogies bound to the experiencing subject’s centrality. The most substan-
tial differences lie in the type of movement subjects are invited to perform
in these spaces: they do not entirely equate to what happens in the urban
environment, yet they are at least in part similar, such as in the case of the
state of repose that we are afforded when an urban situation provides us
with a sense of protection and intimacy.
Private comforts
Other corporeal dynamics are specific to interior spaces, above all those
connected to the sense of comfort. Although this is one of the key drivers
in the realm of domesticity, sometimes overshadowing more nuanced dis-
tinctions in the qualities of residential spaces, comfort has a rather recent
history connected to the rise of bourgeois society (Rybczynski, 1986). Eva-
nescent as cultural totem, comfort becomes a clearer notion if we describe it
from the point of view of the corporeal sensation experienced by the subject:
we all know in detail the comfortable feeling offered by the encounter with
an intimate interior, or with a single piece of furniture such as an armchair
that softly hosts our physical body. These objects can express their ergo-
nomic qualities as “molds” of a suggestion of movement, and a domestic
space can irradiate an atmospheric sense of comfort.
Seventeenth- century Dutch painting, in the work of artists such as Jan
Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch or Emanuel de Witte, shows the early signs of
the spatialization of the sense of domestic comfort, articulated by the seg-
regation of activities according to their degree of privacy (Figure 12.1). The
organization of these domestic interiors, substantially different from those
represented in Italian Renaissance art, produces controlled corporeal dy-
namics, accurately screening gazes from external public space but also be-
tween the home’s various domains: the multiplication of protected nooks
invites to the relaxation of the dialectics between corporeal contraction and
expansion. These rooms are not large, and the subject’s felt body, no longer
compressed by a sense of being exposed, expands to voluminously occupy
all available space: there is no direct metric relationship between a room’s
physical dimension and the felt body’s dynamics. The familiar atmosphere
we sense in these paintings is proof of the reemergence of a corporeal con-
dition that we have all experienced in our own domestic realm.
The sense of comfort arises from certain conditions of movement, percep-
tion and relation between subjects. To see while not being seen, controlling
the environment from a hidden or protected position, creates a key corpo-
real sensation for both interior space and the urban domain. The prospect/
Interiors 115
Figure 12.1 Pieter de Hooch, Two Women and a Child by the Wardrobe, 1663.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
refuge theory, set forth by geographer Jay Appleton (1975, p. 70), identifies
in a specific relationship between organism and environment the biological
roots of our preference for some spatial configurations, those allowing us
to detect potential threats from a safe place: the affective root of the com-
fort we sense in interior spaces is largely bound to this deeply embedded
mechanism.
In many works by Frank Lloyd Wright, one can find spatial configura-
tions that intuitively leverage on this principle: Fallingwater’s living room is
among the most evident examples (Figure 12.2). The building’s rear is nearly
sealed, protected by the hillside against which it leans, while the front gener-
ously opens on the forest lying below the house’s level with a 180° panoramic
window. Dwelling in the woods is not easy: to neutralize the menace the
subject implicitly senses, Wright creates a secure nook, corroborated by the
muscular expression of the rusticated stone masonry. The Kaufmann fam-
ily can thereby enjoy the natural setting, pacified by that sense of comfort,
which, on the contrary, must have been absent in Ms. Edith Farnsworth’s
glass house. In Mies’s building, the 360° glazing creates a sense of vulnera-
bility, placing the possibility of control over the exterior on the same level as
that of gazing into the transparent interior.
Many of Wright’s domestic interiors are known for their limited ceiling
height, another quality underscoring their protective character. Intuitively,
116 Interiors
Figure 12.2 Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater, Bear Run, Pennsylvania, 1936.
we could state that the living room’s compression, produced by the propor-
tions between breadth and height, brings about a corporeal contraction: yet
there is no direct relation between the physical volume of a room and the felt
body’s stirring. In their complex articulation, several of Wright’s buildings
install a sequence of spaces that are concentrically organized, locked one
into the other and at times almost coinciding with the physical dimension of
a human body. This system, which could produce a claustrophobic sense
of closure, is in fact accurately calibrated to provide the primary sensation of
being protected.
Comfort can often be sought in diminutive spaces that almost embrace
the human body. In his book The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard pro-
vides an elaborate phenomenological account of a home’s minimal elements,
such as corners and nooks: these are the places where a child seeks refuge,
learning to control his body in a grounding architectural experience that
will eventually orient his future relationship to space (1969, p. 136). To hide
in a closet or underneath a bed, both minimal spaces preventing the body’s
free movement, allows the child to exert control from a protected position:
it is a spontaneous quest to identify the most viable situation offering a re-
lationship between prospect and refuge, the one that makes us feel safest.
Domestic gazes
Homes are usually defined by their comfortable character, but as the case
of La Californie shows, houses are not always welcoming, or at least not for
everyone: sometimes the spatial device can be organized to produce asym-
metric tensions between the various inhabitants. This is the case with some
Interiors 117
of Adolf Loos’s houses, most clearly in the Moller home. In Beatriz Colomi-
na’s remarkable interpretation, the complex systems moving the inhabitants
through these spaces are devices allowing one subject to exert control over
another: in the Moller house the lady, comfortably sitting in her alcove, can
cast her controlling gaze over all movements taking place within the build-
ing (Colomina, 1992b).
The lady’s boudoir, located in a bow-window recessed from the build-
ing’s center, gives Frau Moller an advantageous position, placing her above
those who enter the living room from the stairs located to her right: a spatial
configuration favoring protected control. Those who enter turn their back
to the alcove and are seen before being able to look back. Any movement
performed in this floor, like climbing or descending the stairs, must pass
through this node of vision, allowing the lady to look without necessarily
being seen: the alcove is located in front of a window, and the backlit open-
ing further protects the beholder from being quickly detected.
What could be Mrs. Moller’s corporeal sensation? Her elevated position
grants her safe and comfortable observation, emphasized the corporeal ex-
pansion produced by the alcove’s intimate dimension that hosts her like one
of Bachelard’s protective shells (De Matteis, 2016). The other inhabitants
of the house, however, would experience an altogether different bodily stir-
ring: when one senses that he is being observed, the felt body contracts. The
familiarity with the space’s configuration would also imply that this feeling
would emerge even if the woman was not actually sitting in the boudoir.
They had to confront her gaze by turning backward or sideways from their
path to verify if was is sitting in the alcove, thus experiencing a torsion that
further reinforced the corporeal contraction.
Architectural interiors can thus be saturated by immaterial presences
such as gazes, corporeal stirrings and other dynamics articulating the ex-
perience of space. These can become powerful design tools, as we can see
in the long genealogy of buildings, which, from the Baroque age onward,
have invented strategies to affectively strike the subjects who inhabit these
interior spaces.
13 On the archaeology of
emotions
The subject’s presence in the environment is articulated by a complex

temporal dimension engaging the individual’s structure, his corporeal dis-
position and his previous experiences. These differences orient the action
of individual subjects, influenced by the entrainment sustaining our mo-
toric capacities, the skills allowing us to apprehend different environmen-
tal affordances, both active faculties that actualize in space the embodied
memory of past experiences. Once again, we must highlight the subject’s
centrality in the emergence of space and in the dynamics he establishes with
the surrounding environment.
Before individuality, however, life in space is oriented by a transcendent
set of attitudes leading subjects to experience the environment in compa-
rable ways. We know that some spatial configurations solicit homogene-
ous responses operating above differences, both personal and cultural. The
way these environments influence us affectively grounds our subsequent
informed appraisal: it is the linguistically articulated description acquir-
ing structure after our first encounter, a critically structured operation
spanning a wide variety of orientations. If, for example, I were to ask a
foreign tourist about his opinion of a city he is visiting, I would receive an
answer quite different from the one provided by a local resident; neverthe-
less, the direct sensations the two subjects experience in the city’s space are
largely homogeneous.
What are the environmental qualities influencing this response? We
cannot simply untangle the manifold factors, separating those that are cul-
turally determined from others which have an evolutionary basis; nor can
we identify clear cause- effect relations since the first-person experience of
lived space escapes tomographic analyses. Nevertheless, we heuristically
know that there is a certain homogeneity in the sensation of spaces, emerg-
ing with greater clarity in some particular circumstances.
What is it like to be in Venice?

One of these cases that can serve as a useful ballon d’essai for a description of
some of a lived space’s qualities could be Venice. Why is this city so popular
On the archaeology of emotions 119
with tourists, making it one of the most visited attractions in the world?
There are many reasons, and not all derive from its architectural quali-
ties: one may go to Venice also because it is one of the places in the world
you have to visit in your lifetime, because the travel agent offers a special
travel deal, because it is fashionable to visit Venice or because it is one of
the world’s cities with the widest cultural menu of museums and exhibitions.
Nevertheless, the central reason is that most of the city’s visitors find it beau-
tiful and atmospheric, an opinion shared by people from all provenances and
cultures, ages and levels of education.
One could easily object that the beauty of Venice is a commonplace
notion, a statement so deeply rooted in global culture that it becomes im-
possible to step away from such a widely shared assumption. Yet beyond
the cultural processes often overwriting our experience of things with an
external prejudice, anyone who has been to Venice knows that the city’s par-
ticular atmosphere cannot be found anywhere else in the world. Few large
historic centers have preserved their original configuration in a compara-
ble way; the city’s urban fabric is almost entirely based on the traditional
architectural structure. The absence of cars is not, as in other towns, the
sole result of their being banned from delimited pedestrian areas: this has
allowed the survival of a particular soundscape, different from what we en-
counter in many other historic cities. Street lighting, delivered from the need
of reaching the levels of brightness required for vehicular traffic, can remain
at a much lower intensity.
Venice lacks some of the fundamental traits of the contemporary city:
despite this, we cannot state that the experience of its urban space is compa-
rable to a pre-modern one. We are not speaking of a village lost in the jungle
or hidden in the mountains, since Venice is a city hosting contemporary
forms of life and urban practices. Several parts of the city are furthermore
permanently invaded by masses of visiting tourists: the collective corporeity
unfolding there can be so strong – mostly in a negative sense – that it leads
the experiencing subject to affectively reject the spatial situation.
Away from the crowded areas of town that produce overwhelming
sensorial stimuli, we can observe how the physical structure of Venice’s en-
vironment allows us to occasionally encounter the spatial situations of an
ancient city. It is not an ephemeral theatrical setting, such as during the
carnival, when people stroll around the streets dressed in traditional cos-
tumes: the persistence of a certain material configuration gives us the pos-
sibility to experience a precise dynamic of perception, motion and emotion,
re-producing the manifestation of space that has been inhabiting Venice for
centuries.
Post-modern architectural theory set forth the proposition that the source
of the magnetic character of a place like Venice can be tracked to the genius
loci, an elusive concept discussed by Christian Norberg-Schulz (1980). It is
a “presence” inhabiting places, almost to be understood as a transcendent
spirit, not strictly reducible to the physical environment nor pertaining to
120 On the archaeology of emotions
ordinary temporality. One cannot identify the anchor points – neither physi-
cal nor immaterial – of these demonic agents that seem to become diluted in
the nostalgic discovery of archetypal forms, materials and signs (Griffero,
2016, p. 214). There is no hint at the notion of the subject’s corporeity and of
its interaction with the environment, which eventually reduces the spirit of
places to a shallow objectivism.
The sense of presence that we experience in a place like Venice can hardly
be described in an analytical way, but we can still highlight some crucial
nodes influencing the subject’s corporeal response, leading to the emergence
of that particular sensation of being in Venice. A relevant part of this feeling
can be ascribed to the continuity of the city’s urban fabric: Venice is not the
only historic center of the world, yet its insular character has protected it
from the many fractures, interruptions and dimensional leaps of all those
other cities which, from the 19th century onward, have been subjected to
processes of modernization. Venice’s relationship between built environ-
ment and subject is far more constant, given the homogeneity of dimensional
relationships between buildings and open spaces. It is not only a matter of
the streets’ width, which sometimes are just narrow alleys, but is also due to
the buildings’ heights, which are always contained.
We have previously observed the corporeal response to the verticality of
buildings, connected to upward movement and torsion: the way this hap-
pens in a historic center in relation to the built fabric’s density is quite differ-
ent from what we usually experience in contemporary cities. When walking
through Venice’s streets, with the corporeal movement this induces, we
also experience visual dynamics grounded on seeing and being seen: distant
gaze is an exception here, and mostly happens when the city opens onto the
lagoon, signaling the abrupt end of the urban fabric.
In Venice’s alleys, perception is primarily based on the close-up encoun-
ter with things and people, a fact sustaining the emergence of corporeal
resonance. The same object or person, encountered at a decreasing distance,
remains unvaried only in physical terms: the effect its presence engenders
when we draw near increases exponentially. In cities characterized by wider
dimensions, this occurs less frequently, explaining that sense of coldness
that we might feel, for example, in the wide boulevards of a modern planned
neighborhood.
Venice’s urban atmosphere is strongly influenced by its aquatic character.
Water is present in the circulatory system of large and small canals and in
the opening toward the sea: two very distinct relations, not measurable in
terms of liquid mass but for the effect these diverse configurations produce
on the subjects encountering them. The large basin connecting Venice to
the sea brings into the city wind, the visibility of the sky and distant views,
while the narrow canals weaving around the houses create an effect bound
to the reflection of light and buildings, the sound of moving water and the
(sometimes unpleasant) smell.
Subjects establish with water a deep corporeal resonance: if bathing in
the sea or in a swimming pool is a modern practice recovering the tradi-
tions of many ancient aquatic cultures, such as the Romans or the Islamic
world, the relationship with beaches, lakes and rivers, as well as showers and
bathtubs, is not only of a cultural nature. All living beings, including non-
aquatic ones, have a privileged bond with water, if not else for the ecological
necessity of drinking. Yet beyond a mere functional matter, the attraction
to water manifests itself through a corporeal resonance, which, in a city like
Venice, acquires an urban dimension and becomes pervasive.
Like in many other historic centers, a relevant character anchoring Ven-
ice’s spatial manifestation is its materiality. The built fabric is rather ho-
mogeneous, using a limited range of materials: load-bearing brick walls,
stone cladding, plastered surfaces painted in prevailingly warm colors and
wooden fixtures. The constancy of materials gives the city a consistent and
easily recognizable appearance; the buildings’ ages and the humid climate
purport the flourishing of an omni-present patina layered on the artificial
materials as sign of the passage of time, becoming itself an object of con-
servation. In its widespread diffusion, this condition manifests itself as ma-
terialized historicity: not in the sense of a critical scripture, rather for its
irradiation in space influencing the subject’s experience.
The organic quality of traditional materials, which allows them to weather
and assume the character of natural substances, is an intrinsic feature of
historic buildings denouncing their authenticity. Its appreciation has a long
cultural history and is at least in part an acquired taste: on the contrary,
from the early Industrial Age, the preference for the aesthetic value of new-
ness, highlighted in the early 20th century by Alois Riegl, has led to consider
the traces of a building’s life as unacceptable signs of decay (Salvo, 2016,
p. 24). Nevertheless, the expressive character of patina partakes in a spa-
tial dynamic that is not only cultural but rather bound to the pre-reflective
sensing of a natural quality – like the growth of moss on a tree’s trunk in the
forest – revealing the profound affinity between the subject and the environ-
ment. This pervasive presence on Venice’s walls thus actively enters into the
subject’s experience of space.
Someone else’s emotions

All the characters of Venice we have so far outlined precede cultural accre-
tions: they are intrinsic to the city’s material constitution, to the dynamics of
movement and perception performed by the subject and to the very spatial
quality he pre-reflectively senses before the emergence of a structured criti-
cal evaluation. Physical environment, movement, perception and emotional
response are all related to each other and give life to the experience of space:
when some of these qualities survive, we can argue that the same affective
state can resurface under different circumstances.
It is certainly impossible to reproduce the entire profundity of human
presence in space, what was felt by a Venetian citizen in the 17th century
under the rule of the Doge or during the plague, since these are historic
atmospheres that belong to the past, together with the corporeal disposition
they purported. Yet if we limit our consideration to involuntary experience,
the foundation of our relation to space (Schmitz, 2019, p. 43), we can admit
the existence of some overlapping qualities where the subject’s actualized
presence produces spatialized emotions that are comparable to those of an
ancient Venetian, attested by the persistence of an environmental condi-
tion. In some situations, thus, the space we experience in Venice can lead to
the re-presentation of affective states that have occurred in the past, in the
corporeal sensations of other subjects.
In this sense, the built space of architecture can be grounded on the intent
of staging a spatial condition presenting historicized emotional responses
extracted from the existing environment, as if it were the physical scaffold-
ing for the emergence of such atmospheres. We could speak of an “archae-
ology of feelings”, not aiming at the uncovering of material remains, but
rather of spatial and affective conditions which have survived in their being
anchored to the physical structure of the environment (Zumthor & Lending,
2018, p. 68). This seems the implicit design strategy of Carlo Scarpa, an
architect of exceptional sensibility, who adopts Venice’s atmospheric humus
as construction material.
The Querini Stampalia foundation he designed in the early 1960s is based
on this ground: it eludes a linguistic dimension, concentrating on rendering
a space based on the expressive qualities of materials intended as atmos-
pheric generators (Figures 13.1 and 13.2) (Böhme, 2017, p. 92). The adoption
of traditional finishing techniques, surfaces and warm colors, and the use
of polished plaster connect the building’s interior to a markedly Venetian
aesthetic ecology. Scarpa allows the water of the nearby canal to freely enter
through a metal gate, flooding an articulate system of steps and platforms
and becoming itself a directly accessible and living surface inside the build-
ing’s ground floor (Cadwell, 2007, pp. 12, 41).
Scarpa presents a typically Venetian situation, eschewing any typologi-
cal or mimetic intent: he installs a familiar perceptive condition bound to
the relation between materials, colors and water, opening to a corporeal
resonance the subject recognizes – it is the way we feel in a Venetian palace –
sustained by a deep affective response to the environment’s physical con-
figuration. The emotional dimension of spatial experience, hosted in the
subject’s felt body, moves him through this form of feeling, influenced by
the environment’s material and immaterial qualities. It is only through the
first-person description of this corporeal resonance that we can bring to
light the primary sense of the encounter with architecture, which precedes
the cultural specificities of the subject, opening to the transversality of
experience.
Figure 13.1 Carlo Scarpa, Querini Stampalia Foundation, Venice, 1963.
Figure 13.2 Carlo Scarpa, Querini Stampalia Foundation, Venice, 1963.
Atmospheric materials
In describing lived space, we have so far focused on the immaterial qual-
ities of the environment, on the acting presences that are often unhinged
from the materiality of things and emerge at the moment of the subject’s
arrival. Nevertheless, the physical configuration of an environment influ-
ences our overall reception of it: not because of the objects’ substantiality,
rather through the qualities irradiating from them and invading surround-
ing space. This emanation of objects becomes itself an intangible agent, an
active repercussion of the material qualities such as color, texture or smell,
which in moving beyond the physical boundaries of things can be termed
ecstasies (Böhme, 2001, p. 131; Griffero, 2014, p. 96).
In this sense, many buildings are grounded on a non-tectonic use of
materials: construction does not only serve the physical making of the object,
but also the realization of this ecstatic space, exceeding material boundaries
and emanating toward the subject. The way an object manifests itself does
not only derive from its geometric and formal configuration nor from its
materiality in a strict sense: a major role is played by the ecstatic atmosphere
it irradiates. This is not connected to our ability of linking certain materials
to a codified meaning, rather to corporeal resonance. These forms of use are
unhinged from technical considerations and fully enter the aesthetic sphere.
Kyoto’s celebrated Ryōan-ji Buddhist temple, built in the 15th century,
is a telling example of this concept (Figure 13.3). The internal courtyard
encloses the archetypal karesansui – mineral garden – composed of stones
arranged on a gravel surface, with a minimal presence of vegetation. The
walls around this garden are finished with a particular type of plaster con-
taining an oily substance that produces an irregular patina: it expresses the
concept of wabi-sabi,
a hardly translatable term derived from Zen philoso-
phy and deeply embedded in Japanese aesthetic culture. This ideal implies
the imperfection of reality and the transitory nature of human experience,
central notions of mystic Buddhism (Pasqualotto, 1992, p. 88).
The creators of Ryōan-ji understood well the atmospheric capacity of
materials, the fact that the irregular appearance of an artificial surface pro-
duces an effect unbound from practical constructive purposes, setting the
stage for a pre-reflective corporeal resonance in the perceiving subject. As
in the case of Japanese tea bowls and Chinese philosophers’ stones, the rela-
tion between subject and object must not be understood dialectically, rather
Figure 13.3 Ryōan-ji Temple, Kyoto, 15th century.

as a fusion between two entities. This notion is not far from the classical idea
of beauty before this aesthetic category was subjected to the secularization
and normalization of Western culture.
Timeless buildings
Several contemporary designers conceive their work as a process of
archaeological extraction of affective states conveyed by the ecstasy of ma-
terials: in his Ningbo Museum of History, Wang Shu adopts a traditional
local construction technique reusing bricks and roof tiles from demolished
buildings (Figure 13.4). This system, which was usually adopted to make
simple walls for low- cost homes, is here applied to create large elevations
where bricks are stacked without mortar, resisting by compression. In this
building, the architect does not strive for an economic solution or a techni-
cal optimum: the goal is to produce a certain effect, playing out at different
levels. The first is symbolic: the reuse of a large amount of bricks from the
demolition of Ningbo’s traditional neighborhoods is a manifesto against
contemporary urban transformation practices in China. The second, strik-
ing visitors the most, is the timeless appearance of the building: what does
this term imply, considering its frequent and often hollow use in the descrip-
tion of architecture?
The building’s morphology, recalling that of a fortress, creates visual
associations with the many historic military buildings dotting China. The
material quality of the patina further emphasizes the effect, turning it into a
polemic form of wabi-sabi. Wang Shu’s use of weathered materials produces
a corporeal resonance in line with what happens in the Kyoto temple: it is
not a simple visual cue, since as we have seen in Venice’s historic streets,
Figure 13.4 Wang Shu / Amateur Architecture Studio, Ningbo Museum of History,
China, 2008.
here one breathes an ancient atmosphere. The architect accurately stages this
dynamic, creating walls with the recovered bricks facing others in concrete,
dialectally underscoring the difference between the two.
There is a permanent connection between the materials of architecture
and the subjects’ affective response: not in the sense of authenticity, as
meant by Cesare Brandi’s theory of restoration (Brandi, 2005) or by Walter
Benjamin’s concept of aura (Benjamin, 2008, p. 22), rather through the phe-
nomenal hinge between some materials and affective states – stone, water,
brick, wood, concrete or metal. Archaeological reconstruction and restora-
tion, in this sense, beyond acting on the cultural liaison between object and
subject can leverage on the latter’s prenoetic sphere.
This is what happens in the Garden of Memory in the Spanish town
of Vinaròs, designed by architects Camilla Mileto and Fernando Vegas
(Figure 13.5). The work consists in the restoration of a church demolished
in the early 2000s and eventually covered by a parking lot: the designers use
the original excavated materials, creating an archaeological garden, with a
technique resembling in smaller scale the one adopted by Wang Shu. Once
again, the use of historic materials with their imperfections and historic
patina is instrumental in the creation of certain atmospheric effects, a sen-
timent that ever since the Renaissance has been associated to ancient ruins.
In the case of Vinaròs, there is a direct archaeological intent of revealing
a vestige of the past; in Wang Shu’s building, it is only metaphorical. What
these two buildings share is the use of the material hinge to produce a sit-
uation, that “ancient” atmosphere allowing visitors to experience a corpo-
real condition which can be thought to be the most appropriate for the full
Figure 13.5 Camila Mileto and Fernando Vegas, Garden of Memory, Vinaròs,
Spain, 2015.
enjoyment of an architecture such as this. The physical constitution of the
environment can therefore become a middle term in the resolution of that
subjective clause assigning to the individual alone the ability of experiencing
a certain affective state (Sørensen, 2015). In the construction of space and
in the encounter with architecture we can thus re-present latent emotional
conditions, anchored to the materiality of things and from there ecstatically
irradiating into the environment.
Beyond the material hinge, a designer can exploit the staging of an atmos-
pheric condition through other means not relying on the physical qualities
but rather on geometric construction. The artist Edoardo Tresoldi, recon-
structing the Romanesque basilica of Santa Maria di Siponto in the Italian
town of Manfredonia (Figure 13.6), rejects direct materiality and reproduces
the building’s architectural volume through the use of a semi-transparent
and neutral metal mesh. The re-presentation of an affective condition does
not pass through a deliberately anodyne material, rather through the phil-
ological reproduction of the historic masses, soliciting the corporeal move-
ments that are induced by architectural forms.
What we can conclude is that architectural design, in its manifold var-
iations, is capable of building space not only in the common understand-
ing of a physical construction: as we have observed, it can also establish it
as the manifestation of the contingent encounter between the environment
and the subject inhabiting it. One of the strategies that allow us to achieve
this consists in extracting from the subject an emotional response based on
the dynamics of movement, on the modulation of perception and on the
use of building materials for their capacity of exceeding their mere physical
Figure 13.6 Edoardo Tresoldi, reconstruction of the basilica of Santa Maria di

Siponto, Manfredonia, Italy, 2016.
constitution. As Scarpa reconstructs through his buildings a way of feeling
the atmosphere of Venice, we can argue that this re-installing of affective
space lies at the base of a deep and shared cultural heritage: what, in other
words, identifies a community.
14 The primacy of feeling
Drawing to the conclusion, we could describe the experience of space as

a sentimental journey the subject performs in inhabiting the environment.
It is the chronicle of a first encounter with space, of that fleeting moment
endowed with an ineffable duration, capable of engendering our sense of
presence. We sense this affective experience in our own felt body, which is
moved and at once perceives its own movement. Architecture, as the para-
text of human dwelling, orients and governs the path of this journey with the
modes and tools of a wider dynamic of being in the environment.
The story does not end here: once space emerges, after the brief moment
of the first encounter, the subject traverses from pre-reflective experience
to the complex universe of interpretation, meaning and the construction of
sense. The interpretive keys change and multiply depending on the many
different ways we have of looking at the world according to our knowledge,
culture and skills. Yet regardless of these tools, our understanding of archi-
tecture will always be influenced by that early moment of the spontaneous
encounter with the world.
The history of architecture provides us with an endless archive of ways
of building based on tectonic or processual models, intrinsic or extrinsic
languages, experiential installations or complex grammars of form and
suggestions coming from the domains of ecology, technology, sociology,
anthropology or economy: in any case, be the designers’ intention mani-
fest or latent, the result will bring to a transformation of the environment
wherein the subject will move. More than representing these meanings,
built space ultimately presents only itself: any further level of interpretation
is grounded on a dense mesh of culturally defined relations which are not
transversally available. All this provided that architecture, which Nelson
Goodman frames with the presentational rather than with the representa-
tional arts, may actually be capable of expressing something, if not in a way
that is altogether different from other forms of art (Goodman, 1985, p. 642).
Clearly, architecture partakes in establishing the horizon of sense of in-
dividuals and communities, playing a fundamental role in this process. The
anthropological bond between the subject and the environment to which he
belongs is embodied in the way the world is modified, and in the practices
130 The primacy of feeling
of dwelling: the act of domesticating space, to choose it rather than suffer it,
establishing a dense network of symbolic references (Leroi-Gourhan, 1993,
p. 313). Yet the first root of this emergence of sense is the subject’s corpore-
ity, the way we affectively respond to the space we encounter and how this
sentiment invites us to act in the environments we inhabit, moving through
them and modifying them.
Only if we credit this feeling of space can we understand the sense of
ineffable plenitude which architecture is capable of offering to our experi-
ence: accepting that, before our intentional orientations and deliberate en-
deavors, we are primarily subjected to an emotional dimension of existence
and that the space we encounter is capable of carrying us away (Griffero,
2016, p. 9). We cannot describe space as a thing that is separate from us: we
are always a part of the space we inhabit, in a condition of non-indifference
that we do not choose but receive.
We could conclude our discourse on the affective dimension of space
with a similitude: our bond with architecture is like love, the most ineffa-
ble of feelings, non-verbal, made of incontrollable raptures, bodily stirrings
and sensations that make us dizzy. There is no objective way of describing
love without somehow banalizing it, reducing it to cold matters of hormo-
nal impulses or other technicalities. The same can be said for architectural
experience: objectivating it in scientific terms we may well achieve a descrip-
tion which will however lack the pathos that grounds our life in space. We
must thus acknowledge the primacy of feeling, since this ultimately seems
to be the most interesting part of architecture, just as of love. Therefore, we
cannot but ask a poet to seal this book, and, along with E.E. Cummings,
conclude that if sentiment is what counts most, paying too much attention to
the syntax of things will keep us away from the depth of the world.
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Affective spaces – image credits
A2l 9.1
Massimo Alberici 3.4b
Marcin Bialek 8.3
Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence 6.5
Jack E. Boucher 12.2
Chrisfl 6.6b
The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown 2.1
The Cleveland Museum of Art 3.2
Daniele Costantini 3.4d
Crusier 6.4a
Jean-Pierre Dalbéra 13.1
Federico De Matteis 3.3, 6.7a, 6.8, 7.7, 7.8, 7.9, 8.1, 10.3, 11.2, 11.3, 11.5, 13.3, 13.4, 13.6
Roman Dial 4.2a
Dnalor 01 7.4
The Frick Collection, New York 7.3
Friman 8.4
Vicente A. Jiménez 13.5
Michael Johanning 6.6a
Michelangeloop 4.2b
Joyseishowaa 10.2
Kateer 6.3
Gunnar Klack 3.4a
Liné1 6.4b
Ahmed Yousry Mahfouz 8.2
Mauro Morichi 7.6b
Nora Rupp/Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne 7.1
Panorama Film International / Alamy 9.3
Paramount Pictures / Moviestillsdb.com 9.4
Fabio Poggi 7.6a
Official website of the President of Ukraine 7.2
Olly 9.2
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 12.1
Stefano Santoro 11.4
Andreas Schwarzkopf 6.1
seier+seier 6.2
140 Affective spaces – image credits
Roxanne Shewchuk 10.1
Basil D Soufi 3.4c
Daniel Villafruela 6.7b
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore 3.1
Ivana Wingham 13.2
Index
Abrahamson, L. 113 Einstein, A. 88

affordance 43–44 embodied simulation 51
Anderson, B. 99 emotion 3, 6, 26, 35, 44, 45–51
Appleton, J. 115 empathy (Einfühlung) 50–51
Aristotle 19, 39–40, 45 Euclid 19
atmosphere 80–81, 83–86
Augé, M. 113 felt body (Leib) 32–35, 41, 44, 46–49,
52–53, 57–58, 61–62, 65, 75, 81,
Bachelard, G. 113, 116–117 90–91, 103
Bellini, G. 59 Fiorentino, M. 52
Benjamin, W. 99, 101, 126 Focillon, H. 23
Bentham, J. 73 Foucault, M. 4, 73
Bergman, I. 72 Fröbel, F. 20
Bergson, H. 90
Bernini, G.L. 59 Gandy, M. 99
Bibiena, F. 110 gaze 35, 58, 61, 72–74, 105, 114–116
Boccioni, U. 88 Gehl, J. 69–70, 105
Böhme, G. 3, 5, 80 gesture 23, 36–37, 57–60, 68–69,
Bollnow, O.F. 3 72, 84
Boullée, É.-L. 111 Gibson, J.J. 4, 43
Brandi, C. 126 Giedion, S. 1, 110
Burke, E. 111 gongshi 25
Goodman, N. 129
Camillo, G. 89 Griffero, T. 3
Caravaggio 16 Günzel, S. 3
Cicero 89
Colomina, B. 117 Hadid, Z. 17
corporeal dynamics (contraction and half-things 19
expansion) 32–33, 41, 46, 52, 56, 58, Hall, E.T. 69–70
61, 72, 103, 116–117 Hasse, J. 4
Cullen, G. 98 Heidegger, M. 3
Hilberseimer, L. 71, 100
Dante 60, 101 Hockney, D. 15
de Certeau, M. 101 Hume, D. 110
de Condillac, É. 110 Husserl, E. 2–3, 6, 32
de Hooch, P. 114
de Witte, E. 114 Ingold, T. 4
Descartes, R. 32
disposition (corporeal) 36–37, 46–47 Jacobs, J. 71
Doré, G. 60 Jai Singh 88
142 Index
Jodry, J.-F. 52 Riegl, A. 121
Joedicke, J. 2 Rosch, E. 6
Köhler, W. 40 Sartre, J.-P. 3, 32, 72

Koolhaas, R. 75, 113 Scarpa, C. 72, 122, 128
Kracauer, S. 99 Schmitz, H. 3, 56, 78, 81, 83
Shu, W. 125–126
Langer, S. 1 Simmel, G. 99
Le Camus de Méziéres, N. 110 situation 14
Le Corbusier 70, 100, 112 Soane, J. 111–112
Leatherbarrow, D. 81, 86 Soja, E.W. 4
Leonardo 19, 30 spatial turn 3
Loos, A. 37, 117 suggestion of movement 55, 102
Lynch, K. 98, 108 synesthesia 40–42, 82, 93
Mallgrave, H.F. 5 Takita, Y. 26

Merleau-Ponty, M. 2, 5, 32, 81 Thibaud, J.-P. 99
Michelangelo 51, 55, 57 Thompson, E. 6
Mies van der Rohe, L. 100 Thrift, N. 4
Mileto, C. 126 Tresoldi, E. 127
Minkowski, E. 7, 91 Turner, J.W.M. 11–12
Minkowski, H. 88
Monet, C. 93 urban atmospheres 99
Nancy, J.-L. 32 van de Ven, C. 2

New phenomenology 3 van Doesburg, T. 21
Norberg-Schulz, C. 119 van Esteren, C. 21
Varela, F. 6
Ozenfant, A. 112 Vegas, F. 126
Venice 118–122
Pacioli, L. 19 Vermeer, J. 114
Pallasmaa, J. 5, 81 Vesely, D. 5
Patočka, J. 3 Viguier, J. -P. 52
perception 23–25, 27, 34–35, 39–40, Vischer, R. 51
42–43
Pérez-Gómez, A. 5, 81 Warburg, A. 57, 63, 65, 67
Perugini, G. 52 Warhol, A. 112
Picasso, P. 112 Wölfflin, H. 50–51, 57
Piranesi, G.B. 110 Wright, F. Ll. 115–116
Plato 19–20
Praz, M. 111 Zevi, B. 1, 110
Proust, M. 91–92 Zumthor, P. 47–49, 80

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Affective Spaces

This book explores the notion of affective space in relation to architecture.

Federico De Matteis is Associate Professor of Architectural Design at the

Research on ambiances and atmospheres has grown significantly in recent

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.

ISBN: 978-0-367-54110-1 (hbk)

List of figures vii

1 Introduction: life in space 1

2 What is space all about? 8

3 Objects and stranger things 18

4 The living body 30

5 Sensing the environment 39

7 Gestures and rituals 57

8 The space between subjects 68

9 The feeling space 77

11 The affective city 97

14 The primacy of feeling 129

Architecture is so generally regarded as an art of space, meaning actual,

After nearly seven decades, philosopher Susanne Langer’s disappointment

Phenomenology in architectural theory

About this book

Architecture is the art of building space: a statement that seems obvious,

Objective vs. subjective

Who is the subject of spatial experience?

Objects and half-things

Architecture as a system of objects

Irregularities are fully displayed, showcasing the object’s materiality; at

Figure 3.3 Gongshi, or philosopher’s stone.

If we describe a tree-lined boulevard in terms of objects, i.e. of the material

erroneously – always in full control of himself. In Western culture, with its

The felt body

Figure 4.2 Walking in the mountains.

The felt body interacts with the surrounding environment in a similar

Understanding the subject’s perceptual dynamics in the environment

The five senses and other commonplace notions

a sensation that “resembles” the collision’s sound, along with a distinct

Gibson’s theory has deeply shaped how perception is understood today.

Space is an entity between the environment and the experiencing subject,

Emotions and the environment

Figure 6.4 A pine tree and a weeping willow.

Figure 6.5 Michelangelo, Slave (Atlas), 1520–1523. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence.

of their expressivity as experienced in the subject’s felt body. The feeling of

Weight and lightness

Figure 6.6 Temple of Era II, Paestum, and Olympieion, Athens.

We can therefore describe space as the particular manifestation of the

The dynamic relationship between motion, emotion and perception

torsions are typical affective movements, leading to opposing emotional

Figure 7.2 A military parade.

The contrary downcast movement leads to fear, submission or vertigo:

provides radically different felt-body sensations (Arnheim, 1977, p. 32). Here

pre-reflective and spontaneous cues (Schmitz, 2019, p. 58). What happens,

Figure 7.7 Tibetan Monastery of Labrang, Gansu, China.

Figure 7.8 Jami Masjid (Friday Mosque), Ahmedabad, India.

We observe the same principle in mosques, where no fixed furniture occu-

Figure 7.9 Higashi Hongan-ji Temple, Kyoto, Japan.

Different rituals – such as in Tibetan Buddhism – require distinct typo-

The subject’s presence in space is influenced by the relationship established

Critics of the modern city

About looking and being seen

Figure 8.1 Carlo Scarpa, Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo, Italy, 1953–1954.

Figure 8.2 Mashrabiya, Cairo, Egypt.

Figure 8.4 Abandoned panopticon prison.

Between the subject and the world

The daimon of space