Environmental & Architectural
Phenomenology Newsletter
The
Stairs at Säynätsalo Town Hall
The Perception of
Depth and the Experience of Space
Roy Malcolm Porter, Jr.
Porter has taught at the Universities of Kentucky and Wyoming; he currently serves as a Historical Architect in the National Park Service. Roy_Porter@nps.gov; © 2011 Roy Malcolm Porter, Jr. Originally published in EAP, vol. 22, no. 3 (fall 2011), pp. 14-15. For the introduction to this essay, go to "selected readings" and the co-authored essay by McCann, Hopsch, and Porter.
Both the sense of corporeality and repetitive sensation contribute to the perception of depth and experience of spatiality. By examining Finnish architect Alvar Aalto’s pair of stairs at Säynätsalo Town Hall (photograph, below), we can offer one perspective on that experience and affirm some primary relationships between ourselves as the beings who simultaneously enclose and occupy space and our cosmos.
Spatiality-as-experienced becomes possible with the full engagement of ourselves in its exploration. As Merleau-Ponty observes, we provide the point of origin for our perception of depth and recognize that space not only radiates outward from us frontally but also surrounds us completely [1]. Space is there. How do we engage it? How does space engage us?
While our eyes view space and inform us about depth, only through motion do we fully engage in the experience of space. As we move, we realize ourselves as beings in motion, material bodies sensing a variety of rhythms—the pace of our stride, our arm swing, our breathing. We find our attention drawn toward the front of our bodies. We perceive depth because it awakens something within us [2]This connection between the perception of depth and the organization of our bodies is evident. We find ourselves fully engaged because we perceive space with several senses. Our touch establishes a boundary, expanded with a glance as we visually project ourselves. As we stretch our arms, a sense of horizontality emerges. Our glance falls, and we trace a line perpendicular to the plane of the earth, echoing the vertical axis marked by our posture [3].
Our experience of space thus emerges during the simultaneous interaction of several phenomena. We supply the axes required for its creation because our posture presents a vertical axis, while the span of our arms provides a horizontal axis, which designates a minimum width. Implicit in the creation of space is our performance of the dual role of creator and spectator [4]. As the historian August Schmarsow notes,
every spatial creation is first and foremost the enclosing of a subject; and thus architecture as a human art differs fundamentally from all endeavors in the applied arts. At the outset, the creative and the appreciative subjects are one and the same [5].
When we are present, the vertical axis is visible; when we are absent, the enclosure of space defines that axis: the construction of space emanates from our self, “a projection from within the subject, irrespective of whether we physically place ourselves inside the space or mentally project ourselves into it” [6].
Yet our experience of spatiality is incomplete without the engagement of another dimension—depth. This dimension coincides with the path of our movement. Our attention focuses on those phenomena most closely tied to our own existence, and we are drawn to that which is enclosed, rather than the means of enclosure. Were we to do otherwise—“to articulate the structure and the exterior of the building, completely neglecting the invention of space” [7]—we would “lose sight of the inner aspect of architectural creation and of the perennial motive that supplies its psychological explanation” [8].
Investigations of the human experience of spatiality must give attention to the participation of the body in that process. Whether as a graceful extension of the arms, a casual turn of the head, or a purposeful stride toward a destination, physical activity serves as a means for engagement. Another aspect of this engagement is important, however, for it is fundamental:
The ground under our feet is the precondition for our corporeal sensation and our orientation to the general arena of the earth. However, it is also a precondition for our naturally developing sense of space, as it must develop in beings standing and walking erect [9].
Thus, the ground provides “the essential foundation for the living human being… as well as the common basis for our buildings” [10]. Nowhere are these phenomena more apparent than in architecture, and nowhere within architecture are these phenomena more apparent than in transition, as in the experience of stairs. The pair of stairs for the Säynätsalo Town Hall proposes their ascents as their preferred routes. In fact, several hierarchies have been established with the presentation of these stairs, but their competition is benign, lending itself to the creation of several unique experiences.
As the building’s plan illustrates (below), the paths have their own orientations and lead us to their own destinations. At one corner lies a set of stairs with an irregular outline, cascading from the plaza like the slope of a hillside in the nearby forest.When climbed, these stairs lead us to a point of entry to a plaza created by the enclosure of space by several elements. Situated opposite these stairs is a set of stairs more regularly organized with a typical arrangement of risers and treads that leads us upward to the same plaza. Yet the procession does not end there. Rather, the axis shifts and our path becomes extended, leading to the chamber of the town council.
While the stair processions are similar, they differ experientially. As we ascend, we are presented with increasingly full views of the plaza. Depth unfolds gradually as we climb. Only when we reach the plaza is its scale fully known and its spatiality fully grasped as its identity as a separate landscape is revealed. In these two processions, more and less formal, we are led to the same destination, although different experiences are provided during those processions.
There is another relationship introduced in the ascent and descent of the stairs and accented by different stair materials, whose textures provide their own sensations upon contact with our feet. We become more aware of site—the earth itself—as the very basis for our sense of our own corporeality and our uniquely human orientation [11].
Other relationships soon become evident, as we ponder the identity of this plane. Earth provides the counterpoint to motion, for Earth seems static, while we are mobile. It endures, while we yield [12]. Site soon reveals its own sense of spatiality, enhanced in the creation of landscapes unexpectedly discovered and fully embraced. We are flesh bound by space and disposed toward its rhythmic engagement.
Notes
1. M. Merleau-Ponty,
“Eye and Mind,” in The Primacy of Perception, J. M.
Edie, ed. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1964),
pp. 172-73, p. 178.
2. Ibid., p. 164.
3. A. Schmarsow, Grundbegriffe der Kunstwissenschaft am Übergang vom Altertum zum Mittelalter kritisch erörtert und im systematischem Zusammenhange dargestellt (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1905), p. 41.
4. A. Schmarsow, Das Wesen der architektonischen Schöpfung (Leipzig: K. W. Hiersemann, 1896), p. 17.
5. Ibid., pp. 13-15.
6. Ibid., p. 15.
7. Ibid., p. 21.
8. Ibid., pp. 21-22.
9. Schmarsow, Grundbegriffe, p. 182.
10. Ibid., p. 28.
11. Ibid., p. 182.
12. H. Mallgrave & E. Ikonomou, eds. Empathy, Form, and Space (Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center, 1994), pp. 65-66, p. 85.
Drawing above: Plan, Säynätsalo Town Hall (from Richard Weston, Town Hall, Säynätsalo. London: Phaidon Press, 1993).