Structures Of Visual Space Perception In Architecture

Definitions of space are as diverse as the disciplines in which it plays a fundamental role; from science and philosophy to art and architecture, each field’s perception of space is often simplified or reduced. This consequently denies access to ‘new spaces’, whose definitions and perspectives, strategies and impacts on human perception are rarely considered in any cohesive manner. This is where the Aedes Network Campus Berlin (ANCB) programme ‘No Space Without Traits’ came in: particularly through artistic approaches, it aimed to open doors into spatial worlds that until now have remained closed. The symposium ‘PERCEPTION in Architecture. HERE and NOW’ was part of this programme and invited critical and comprehensive contributions by academics, artists, architects, designers and curators. These presentations are brought together in this volume to reflect upon new spatial concepts and thus access ‘new spaces’ of perception in architecture. The symposium stimulated a discourse focused on spaces as a collective entity, notions of spatial truth, the multiplicity of experience, and Wahrnehmnungsapparate, as well as physical, visual, acoustic and virtual manifestations of space in relation to social, cultural, historical and political forces.

The space we see around us is the end product of a long series of processes: physical, physiological, and cognitive. It is a highly structured perceptual entity. In contrast to the fact that most studies of visual perception are concerned with local phenomena in this visual space, the main purpose of this book is to discuss the global structure of visual space. The physical space which surrounds us is of Euclidean structure, but its perceived image is not necessarily structured in that way. Problems such as why the sky appears as a vault and why the horizon is located at eye level are discussed in the book.

Conceptual ordering, spatial and social narrative are fundamental to the ways in which buildings are shaped, used and perceived. This intriguing book explores the ways in which these three dimensions interact in the design and life of buildings.

This book makes the extremely complex process of architectural perception far more transparent and thus contributes to a better understanding of our built environment. Why is there so much debate about the appearance of our built environment, about the aesthetics of architecture today? Why do opinions about the aesthetic quality of buildings often diverge extremely even among experts? Why can’t we agree on architecture, on what is beautiful and what is not? Most areas of construction, such as statics and building physics, are measurable and can therefore be substantiated with objective arguments. Yet this does not apply to the unquantifiable aesthetics of architecture. Accordingly, judgments on aesthetics are always subject-specific, and strongly dependent on the viewer. Nevertheless, the aesthetics of architecture is not just a matter of taste. Many relationships between buildings as objects and viewers as subjects can be determined objectively with the help of perceptual psychology and information theory, as this book demonstrates.

An authority on the psychological interpretation of the visual arts directs attention to the expressive visual features of buildings and the perceptual consequences of architecture.

Tom Porter explores the way we see and the way we draw architectural ideas. He looks at the new ways of depicting the shapes and colours of architectural constructions using modern computer aided design software and "virtual reality models."

Certain aspects and contexts of the perception of architecture can best be explained by means of images - that is the idea upon which this book is based. The author has divided selected structural details into individual chapters, including such subjects as space, color, dynamics and surface. The reader can discover analogies as well as contradictions and view the photos completely independent of the texts. In the back of the book all the information about the structures depicted in the front can be found, as well as a complete view of the buildings and texts about architecture and perception. The photographs were taken in foreign countries on every continent and depict a great number of famous and representative structures from different ages and cultures.