Space and mass

Space, that immaterial essence that the painter suggests and the sculptor fills, the architect envelops, creating a wholly human and finite environment within the infinite environment of nature. The concept that space can have a quality other than emptiness is difficult to grasp. When a building is entered, floor, supports, walls, and a ceiling are seen, all of which can be studied and perhaps enjoyed, while the space, in the sense that one is accustomed to think of it, is void: the absence of mass, filled by air.

But spatial experiences that express something are common to everyone, though they are not always consciously grasped. One feels insecure in a low cave or a narrow defile, exhilarated and powerful on a hilltop; these are psychological and motor reactions that result from measuring one’s potential for movement against the surrounding spaces, and the same reactions take root even in language (“confining” circumstances and “elevating” experiences are spoken of). An infinite variety of such reactions may be summoned by the architect, because the architect controls the limits above, below, and on all sides of the observer. People entering the architect’s space measure it in terms of the degree and the quality of their potential for movement. The concept of potentiality is important, first, because observers can anticipate where they may move merely looking about and, second, because they can conceive movements that they cannot execute. Thus, in the nave of a Gothic cathedral, the high walls closely confining the observers on two sides restrict their possible movements, suggesting advance along the free space of the nave toward the altar, or their compression forces the observers to look upward to the vaults and the light far overhead, there to feel a sense of physical release, though they are earthbound. The experience of Gothic space is called uplifting because it urges one to rise.

Renaissance space, on the other hand, attempts to balance its suggestion of movement, to draw observers to a focal point at which they can sense an equilibrium of movement in all directions, a resolution of the conflict of compression and release. At this point one feels physically at rest, at the opposite extreme from the elevating sensation of the cathedral.

Of course, one does not use the eyes alone to feel spatial quality, because only the simplest spaces—a cubic room, for example—can be wholly experienced from one standpoint. In a complex of spaces, such as that of the cathedral, the observer walks about, gaining new sensations, seeing new potentials for movement at every step. Most modern architecture, in its free organization of space sequences, demands mobility; its techniques have made it possible to remove the heavy walls and supports of the past, reducing the sense of compression. Walls become membranes to be arranged at will for spatial experience, and some are transparent and so extend one’s potential for movement into the limitless out-of-doors.

Spatial experience is not restricted to the interiors of buildings. The sensations one has in nature’s open spaces may be re-created by art. City squares and streets, even gardens, achieve a variety of expression comparable with that of interiors. The Baroque piazza of St. Peter’s in Rome, which directs the observer along its great embracing arcs toward the entrance, is at least as moving as the church interior.

The exterior of a single building, particularly one that is isolated from other architecture, does not create a space. It occupies the space of nature. Thus, it may be experienced as sculpture, in terms of the play of masses in a void. The aesthetics of masses, like that of spaces, is rooted in one’s psychology. When a tall tree or a mountain is called majestic and a rocky cliff menacing, human attributes are being projected. People inevitably humanize inert matter and so give the architect the opportunity to arouse predictable patterns of experience.

The appreciation of mass, like that of space, depends on movement, but this movement must be physical. It cannot be experienced in anticipation, because, no matter where one stands to observe even the simplest building, part of it is out of sight. The mass of a complex building is differently composed from every point of view. The 20th-century art critic Sigfried Giedion, emphasizing the need for movement in experiencing modern architecture, suggested that architecture may be four-dimensional, since time (for movement) is as meaningful as the spatial dimensions.

Some architecture depends much more on mass expression than on space expression. The Egyptian pyramid, the Indian stupa, and the dagoba of Sri Lanka have no meaningful interior spaces; they are architectural in function and technique, sculptural in expression. The interior of a Greek temple is of little interest compared with the wonderful play of forms on its colonnaded exterior, while early Christian and Byzantine architecture reverse the emphasis, making the simple exterior a shell for a splendid and mystical space. Gothic architecture balances the two, partly in order to express a dual content: earthly power over the world outside, spiritual power inside. Modern techniques permit a reduction of the contrast between space and mass expressions by reducing the mass of walls and the size and number of supports and by allowing the interpenetration of interior and exterior space.