The Emergence of Architectural Space: August Schmarsow's Theory of "Raumgestaltung" Author(s): Mitchell W.

Schwarzer and August Schmarsow Reviewed work(s): Source: Assemblage, No. 15 (Aug., 1991), pp. 48-61 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3171125 . Accessed: 05/06/2012 20:52
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1. Peter Behrens, Exhibition Rooms, InternationalArt Exhibition,Mannheim, 1907

During the latter part of the nineteenth century, the study of history in Germany was confrontedwith various methodologies drawn from the naturalsciences. Empirical observationof nature, positivistrule of facts, mistrustfor metaphysicschallenged both the traditionalconcern for rhetoric and the idealist school of descriptivehistorythat had been in place since the eighteenth century. As the historianJohann Gustav Droysen wrote, "Natureand History are the widest conceptions under which the human mind apprehendsthe world of phenomena."' Nature and human history, however, were not easily brought together. By the 1890s a major controversyon this point erupted within German historiography. Citing the factual consistency of the naturalsciences, Karl Lamprechtarguedfor replacingwhat he referredto as the descriptivestudy of ideas with empirical methods.2 In his book German History of 1894 and in a series of earlier articles, Lamprecht called into question Leopold von Ranke'snotion of transcendental forces not subject to causalityand stipulated, rather,psychological forces as those basic to history.3 This epistemological tension within general historicalstudies was also present in the history of art and architecture, which was in certain circles reconstitutedunder the imprint of the naturalsciences. The study of the sense organs, in particularsight, proved especially influential for the visual arts. In light of great advances in theories of optical perception, worksof art were positioned at the crucial intersection of the perceptivelaws of mind and nature. Paintings, sculptures, and buildings were evaluatedaccording to psychological and physiological criteria. Such investigations promised an independent methodologicalbasis for art history. Against aesthetic paradigms,based on a priori notions of cognition and reason or a Hegelian teleology of the spirit, the movement of perceptualempiricism within art historical studies shifted inquiry from "the domain of values, the world of ideas"to "the realm of reality,the world of facts."4 As perceptualempiricism took hold within art history, its application to architecturetook the form of a new concept of space based on perceptualdynamics. Like other perceptual notions, the idea of dynamic space was transcribed from nineteenth-centuryscientific theories of vision con-

cerned with how the mind and senses graspthree-dimensional forms and space. But while optical theoristshinted indirectlyat the implications for a spatial conception of architecture,art historiansbegan to look at space as essential to architecturalcreation. Among art historians,the writingsof August Schmarsowplayed a compelling role in the overall formation of a spatial paradigm.In this essay I intend to investigatethe intellectual backgroundof Schmarsow'swritingson architecture,to describe the salient featuresof his theory of Raumgestaltung, or spatial forming, and to evaluate its influence on subsequentthinking on architectureand space.5 Schmarsow'swritingson space and architectureare principally contained in the short book Das Wesen von architektonischenSchopfungof 1893, the essay "Uberden Wert der Dimensionen im Menschlichen Raumgebilde"of der 1896, and the methodological treatiseGrundbegriffe of 1905. Having spent most of his career Kunstwissenschaft as a professorof art history at the Universityof Leipzig, Schmarsowbelonged to a generation of art historians, including Heinrich Wolfflin and Alois Riegl, who attemptedto formulate a new disciplinaryfooting for the study of the visual arts. Far less known to Anglo-American readersthan those of his contemporaries,Schmarsow's writingson architecturejoined theories of visibility (Sichtbarkeit)and empathy (Einfiihlung)to an awarenessof the relativityof architecturalexpressionsin history.6In 1941 BernardBerenson wrote that, before Schmarsow,space had been conceived as a negligible void and creditedhim with developing a theory of form in which "objects,no matter how large or how small, exist only to make us realize mere extension, and exist for that alone."7 Schmarsowwas the first to formulate a comprehensivetheory of architectureas a spatial creation at the frontiersof the paradigmof perceptualempiricism. He differedmost from other theoristsin his insistence that bodily movement through space ratherthan stationaryperception of form was the essence of architecture.Certainly, he wanted to rebut Wolfflin's theory of the essential role of bodily masses.8Schmarsow'stheories, then, posed a challenge to the hitherto dominant notion of form in architecture; yet his spatial focus possesseda critical blindspot to the possi50

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bility that vision is not merely a scientific issue, but also culturally determined.

Theoretical Precursors
Schmarsow'sarticulationof spatial creation in architecture, like other late-nineteenth-centuryattemptsto expressa knowledge of art in the terminology of science, depended conceptually on earlier theories of psychologicaland physiological optics.9 George Berkeley'sessay on optics of 1709 establisheda paradigmof experientialor associationalperception that would exercise a profound influence on all subsequent theorists. 0 His argument hinged on the problem that we observe three-dimensionalobjects with a pair of eyes that can only record vague two-dimensionalpatterns of light and color. He assertedthat distance and form cannot be apprehendedwith the eyes alone; to form mental images of distance and magnitude requiresthe faculty of touch. Perception of visual space, then, resultsfrom the combination of memories of touch (tactile ideas) with immediate visual sensations. Berkeley'sconjecture engrossedoptical theoristswell into the nineteenth century. If our mental images of spatial objects are an empirical combination of differentvisual and tactile sensations, how do these images relate to what we conceive as the real world?Likewise, how do we form the mental images that serve as representations real of a hundred years after Berkeley, objects?Approximately Johann Friedrich Herbart'stheory of apperceptionpostulated a set of mental processesin which concepts (Vorstellungen) are received through the senses, preservedby the memory, reproducedby the imagination, and combined anew.11Herbartposed a strong challenge to the Berkeleyan paradigmof tactile-basedspatial perceptionfor he claimed that by eye movement alone "thereis a constant blending of concepts gained, an incitation of those which are strengthenedby perceptionsof what lies outside the middle of the field of vision, and an innumerable multitude of The conflict of reproductionsinterlacing one another."12 in the mind, the ceaseless arrestor blending Vorstellungen of new sensations with those previouslyassembled, proved especially provocativeto the new branch of philosophical studies known as psychology and set the tone for subsequent theorists.13

Influenced by Herbart, Hermann Lotze furthermodified the Berkeleyanparadigmof tactile spatial perception through a doctrine of eye and body movement. Lotze's theory of "local signs"stated that, first, all spatialdifferences and relations among the impressionson the retina must be compensated by correspondingnonspatialand merely intensive relations among the impressionsthat exist without spatial form in the soul, and, second, from these, there must arise in reverseorder, not a new actual arrangement of such impressionsin extension, but only the mental presentationof such an arrangementin us.14 Local signs are memories of muscular feelings derived from the motions of the eye requiredto encompass the form of a visual object. For example, when we notice an object with our peripheralvision and then rotateour eyes to locate this object in the center of our vision, we are both creating new local signs (through the muscular action) and acting under the guidance of existing local signs. Our experience of qualities of the third dimension consists in our memory of the magnitude of the movement it took to bring the object into the line of clearest vision.15Lotze describedthe perception of three dimensions as follows: Fromthe manifold displacements of whichthe particular visual
images experience . . . we gain the impressionthat each line in

an imageoriginally seen is the beginning new surfaces of which do not coincidewiththatpreviously seen, but whichleadout into this space,now extended all sides,to greater lesser on or distances fromthe line.16 William Wundt likewise extended the discussion of how muscular movement contributesto ideas about spatial form, describing its influence on our judgment of distance, magnitude, and depth.17 His insight developed from the correlationbetween the expenditureof bodily energy and the perception of distance: Increasein motor sensation (or eye movement) leads to a rise in exertion that then induces a mental judgment of great distance. Distance is thus appraisedby the effort it takes the body (and particularly the eyes) to scan the full extent of an object.18 Wundt assertedthat vertical muscular movement is more difficult than horizontal because the former requiresthe use of auxiliary and complementary muscles.19Distances perceived by vertical movement thereforeappeargreater.Similarly, upwardeye movements involve a more intense sensation
51

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than downwardmovements and "forcedor interrupted movements require more exertion than free and continuous ones."20Since the energy of startingeye movement is a greaterpercentageof the total eye energy, an acute angle, for example, appearsrelativelylargerthan an obtuse angle. In the same way, we overestimatethe length of a straight line fixed by boundariesin comparisonwith a line whose limits are boundless. These observationsled Wundt to affirmwith Lotze that retinal (like tactile) impressions acquire spatial qualities through the coloring of related local signs. The formation of visual space is "a combination of this system of local signs arrangedin two dimensions, with a system of intensive sensationsof movements."21 As describedso far, spatial ideas were seen as compounds of sensations.22 Despite substantialdifferences, the empiricist theories outlined here all sharedthe belief that spatial ideas are not a priori intuitions but the fusion of the impressionsof bodily movements in the mind. Schmarsow's indebtednessto nineteenth-centurytheories of optical perception lay in his acceptance of this associationisttheorizing. Departingfrom Kantianaesthetics, Schmarsow the detranscendentalized concept of architecturalspace into a cognitive process by which spatial images are built up over time. This understandingallowed him to create an based on spatial expression. architecturalhistoriography Schmarsow'sapproachwas unorthodoxfor its time, and it is worthwhile to inquire into its motivations. In Das Wesen der architektonischen Schopfung, his proposalof spatial creation as the essence of architecturedescended from interpretivedebates in architecture,philosophical aesthetics, and art history. Renato de Fusco has commented that Schmarsow'sRaumgestaltungwas an attemptto persuade critics and architectsof the problem of space, in a period increasinglydominated by the stylistic eclecticism of art nouveau and an architecturecharacterizedmore by surface design than by essential structure.23 The idea of space in architecturewas earlier on embodied in the Greek notion of Taxis, the division of a building into parts.24 Subsequently, the classical traditionof writing on architecturetook up the notion of space in regardto proportionand, with it, the idea of beauty. But the origins

of Schmarsow'sidea of space can be found more immediately in eighteenth-centuryEngland and nineteenthcentury Germany. In England, the neo-Palladianmovement placed great importanceon architecturalcirculation, the series of experiences a person undergoesmoving through a building.25At the same time, the articulationof the picturesqueand the sublime dramaticizedthe mental experience of worksof art. The link between space and architecturalobservationbecame overt. In Germany, by contrast, spatial concerns were interposedbetween those of function and construction. Half a century before Schmarsow, German architecturaltheoristsengaged the question of the functional (and spatial)interplaybetween material forces and architecturalforms. In the writingsof KarlBotticher, the tectonics of construction proceed from fundamental spatial requirements:for example, the space enclosed by a building determines its particulartechnology of roofing;the roof mandatesconstructiverequirements from which a structuralskeleton then emerges;finally, the entire system of constructivemembers forms the basis for artisticenterprise.The tension between spatialdemands and constructiveforms establishesan etiology for the architectural art. GottfriedSemper'sappraisalof the productionof architectural space followed Botticher'sexample. Unlike Botticher's tectonic preoccupation, however, Semper imagined architectural space as a nexus of social activity.27 Continuing a traditiondating back to Vitruvius, Semper consideredthe built enclosure and the separationof interiorfrom exterior The issue space to be the essential aspect of architecture.28 for Semper, then, extended to the forming of space by the various material industries(foremost, the textile arts). Social and ideological considerationsshape the building, as industrialforces create the formal contours of the spatial program.In 1870, promptedby Semper'sinvestigations, RichardLucae wrote of the importanceof the Raumbild, the spatial image arising in the imaginativemind of the architect and consisting of the effects of its dimensions, form, light, and colors.29Thirteen years later, Hans Auer situated the development of space in architecturebetween the poles of practicalneeds (including climate) and the By urge towardspiritualmonumentality.30 1900 spatial concerns were assimilatedinto discussions of the principles
52

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of architecture, and it became routine for architectsto reflect on the fundamental oppositions between different spatial plans and circulatorypatterns.31 Schmarsow'sfocus on perceptualempiricism may, in a different light, be read against the legacy of the position of philosophical aesthetics towardarchitecture.Beginning with Immanuel Kant, philosophershad degradedarchitecture as a stepchild of the fine arts because of its emphasis on the practical.32 Convinced that the ideas inherent to it - gravity,cohesion, rigidity,hardness- were low grades of the will's objectivity, Arthur Schopenhauer could dismiss architectureas a fine art.33Schmarsow,then, perhaps directed his writingstowardauthenticatingan integralbasis for architecturewithin the other visual arts, grounding its functional and technological operationswithin a unique doctrine of spatial ideas. If Schmarsow'sgeneral interest in space can be accounted for by developments in architecturaltheory and philosophy, his particularnotion of dynamic spatial perception cannot. For us to understandthe direct influences for his theory, we must turn to the late-nineteenth-centuryart historical culture. Art historiansof the period were increasingly attentive to the physical factorswithin artistic enjoyment and understanding,increasinglyconcerned with a visually founded correlationbetween internal states, perceptual faculties, and material forms. A conspicuous influence on art historical studies was RobertVischer's Uber das Optische Formgefihl of 1873, in which he adapted optical speculations on visual muscular activity (and their bearing on distance and depth perception)to the workings of artisticvision. Vischer was one of the first aesthetic theoriststo stressthat the eye in observingdoes not replicate a real object but, rather,manufacturesa "formed image"through effort and emphasis. Moreover, Vischer agreed with optical psychologiststhat the mechanism of producing an optical image yields the precise characterof the image produced. Schmarsow'snotion of the subjectcentered creative act drew heavily on Vischer's consideration of the similarityor dissimilarityof the object in comparison with, first, the arrangementof the eyes and, then, the construction of the entire body.34 Another importantpsychological inflection within art his-

torical studies was the theory of empathy. Introducedby und geometrisch Theodor Lipps in his essay "Raumasthetik of 1897, empathy came to be optische Tauschungen" defined as a state of pleasure enduced by a feeling of the Zusammengehorigkeit, consciousness of mutual belongIn between the soul and the thing perceived.35 empaing the source of pleasure resides neither in the thy theory, object nor in the subject, but in the relationshipof the consolidating perception between object and subject. Lipps believed that we find ourselves literally in the other (a mitmacheneines inneren Verhaltensof another)because in the act of perception we experience their form as if we were one with them. Thus a fundamental rule of empathy is the subject'sabsolute observationin the object.36And so the more pleasurablethe expressivemovement (Ausdrucksbewegung)of the eyes in relation to an object, the more we consider that object beautiful.37Generally, beauty resultsfrom our ability to perceive an object freely and unhindered. Lipps describedthis contrastbetween beauty and ugliness in spatial forms: The beautyof spatial formsis my abilityto live out an idealsense in of freemovement it. Opposed this is the uglyform,whereI to am not ableto do this, wheremy underlying to compulsion and the freelymovewithinand observe formis hindered not
possible.38

Other contemporarytheories underscoredthe perceptual bond between the art work and its creatoror observer.The form of the architecturalwork was, in the words of Konrad Fiedler, the "complete intellectualizationof all material elements."39For Fiedler, the mental life of the artistconstituted the constant production of artisticconsciousness, artisticform being the immediate and sole expressionof the consciousness, which was, in turn, a Herbartianprocess of sensory awarenessand cognitive acts of apperception.40 Form and consciousness, in this view, are equally important, since undue emphasis on form results in material determinism, while preoccupationwith consciousness leads back to the idealism of the aesthetic tradition. Schmarsowadaptedlarge partsof both Vischer's and Fiedler's conjectures on pure visibility as well as aspectsof Lipp's empathy theory. Nevertheless, his theory may be distinguishedby its explicit understandingof the signifi53

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cance of kinetic perception. Both Vischer and Fiedler stressedthe sedentaryartisticperception, privilegingthe work of art over the viewer. Lipps developed only a rudimentary idea of the potential of space, seeing spatial intuition as a way to visualize the inner soul life of matter through the physiognomy of the outer mass.41Schmarsow's realizationthat the perception of architectureoccurs during the movement of the body through determinedspaces or was a clear advance. His notion of Korperempfindung, differsradicallyfrom the subjectiveNachbodily sensation, erleben, or "afterexperience"of the senses describedby is Lipps and even Wolfflin. Korperempfindung a vital proin which spatial form takes shape through the intercess action of human stature, nature, and movement.42

Described psychologicallyratherthan historically,Schmarsow situated the dependence of spatial consciousness on human physiognomy. In 1903 he wrote that "the germ and central point of all art . . . remains man, and the human As body."44 a rule, all spatial intuition arises from the interactionof the body's sense organswith the body itself and with aspects of the materialworld - the two essential spheres of sensation. Generally speaking, the inner realm, or touch region (Tastregion),constitutesthe site of bodily while the outer realm, or sight region values (Korperwerte), widens our perceptivesphere into a series of (Sehregion), initially flat visual impressions.45 Schmarsowmaintained that a rudimentarylevel of spatial consciousness begins in the inner realm. For example, from the tactile sensation of internal bodily combinations (head, joints, torso) and external bodily surfaces, a special inclination arises to a cubic conception and the visual and tactile handling of all tangible things.46The firststep towardspatial consciousness thus leads from bodily sensations to an awarenessof the space and form of our own body as circumscribedby the space around it. The primordial position of the body in regardto external space is a standing figure whose arms are held down. This erect stance (aufrechteHaltung) is the essential axis of human relationshipsto the outside world and leads to the idea of height as our firstdimension.47Likewise, our own physiognomy, the symmetricalpairing of our two hands or eyes, forms the principle of the dimension of length. Like Lipps, Schmarsowaccepted the importanceof this schema for the judgment of art objects. Elementaryaesthetic feelings of harmony, rhythm, and proportionsupposedlyall spring from the "familylaw" (Hausgesetz)of human nature.49 The dimension of depth, however, is unaccounted for by autonomous human traits;instead, finding expressionin the body's movement through the world. Sense of depth, therefore, unlike that of height or length, is developed only space. through the locomotive rhythms in particularized It is here that the spatial consciousness truly emerges. In accordancewith optical theories that emphasized the dependence of spatial understandingon movement, Schmarsowwrote, "The movement from place to place in the third dimension first brings us the experience of our
54

Architectureas Spatial Intuition

An exposition of Schmarsow'stheory of architectureas Raumgestalterinwill make evident his concept of spatial intuition.43Echoing empirical psychologists,Schmarsow reiteratedthat spatial intuitions have their own evolutionary history, developing from simple and unconscious impulses in primitive societies to sophisticatedmathematical calculations that accommodate the most complex needs of the modern age. A crucial tenant of this process is the maturationand differentiationof spatial ideas through something akin to a Herbartiansynthesis of associativeperceptions. Spatial thinking thereforearisesas a branch of consciousness and develops in complexity as new perceptions are gained and associated. Indeed, an understanding of architectureas Raumgestaltungcan explain how our sensation of the chaotic world is transformedinto what we term rational knowledge. Schmarsowattemptedto base all artisticcreation on the Accordingly,each of feelings of the body (Korpergefiihlen). the principal visual arts is to be understoodas a means of depicting corporealintuitions. Both painting (Flachengeare fiihl) and sculpture (Korpergefiihl) concerned with representingthe body. Space, however, while it can be representedin painting and in relief, can only be created and experienced in architecture.Architecturerepresentsin tangible form the results of the body's interactionswith the world.

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Like Lotze, Schmarsowconceived immediate extension."50 of space as the kinetic extension of bodily impulses into the world during movement. For example, as we move through a building, a continual stream of visual images combine in the mind to yield an ever-changingconcept of spatial relations. The spatial perceptionscreated through movement are furtherdeveloped in the mind in a process of associativeenlargement of sensationalknowledge. The mature spatial consciousness associatedwith architecture is clearly dynamic.51 For Schmarsow, since all spatial awarenessmust originate within an apparentlyoverriding concept of self-awareness,it follows that all architectural forms depend on bodily structure, sensation, and movement. The spatial form of a building can likewise be viewed as the result of a repertoryof gesturesand motions, a projection of desires and needs from the subject to the world. An enumeration of Schmarsow'soverall engagement with architecturewas renderedby Hermann Sorgel: in a fromtheirfirstbud [Keim] Man manifests his activities reflexive movement the outerworld.This can be dividedinto to immediate threeways: work,or play.Eachmovespontaneity, an whichis at the sametime already ment has its expression of and thereinlies the artistic unconscious power gesture,
creation.52

other words, is conceived not as an opaque and timeless entity, but as a living amalgamationof human impulses, created perceptuallyby its creatorand its users. Armed with his concept of the development of spatialconsciousness in an individual'slife, Schmarsowextended his theory to the emergence of differentspatial forms in history. From his interest in origins, he proposeda spatial Urformarising out of his definition of Raumgestalterin.In Schmarsowrelated der Grundbegriffe Kunstwissenschaft how the art of architecturebegan with the fencing in of a space by four walls upon which a roof was added for protection from the elements: the paradigmof Laugier'sprimitive hut transformedinto an elemental walled enclosure. Furthermore,he envisaged that buildings that accentuate their correlationto human activity (such as the nomadic tent or the bamboo hut) would providebetter starting points for the historian than closed forms (such as the obelisk). Schmarsow'spreferencefor activities understood in the observableterms of perceptionand movement 57 clearly emerges here. Throughout his writings, we detect a predilection for the vital space over the silent form, the space whose contours are shaped by the demands of human life. 58 In applying his theory to historical periods, Schmarsow refrainedfrom either speculative or materialistexplanations, always basing his conclusions on perception. His was greatly influenced by Alois Riegl's Stilhistoriography Kunstindustrieof of 1893 and his Spdtromische fragen 1901. Riegl underscoredthe historyof architectureas an evolutionaryprogressionfrom haptic modes of perception to optical modes. In Spdtromische Kunstindustrie,Riegl stressedthat ancient art (exemplifiedby the tactile perception of Egypt) searched for a comprehension of material essence, avoiding the representationof space and sacrificing the dimension of depth. Ancient art intended "representation of objects as individual materialphenomena not An in space but on the plane."59 awarenessof depth, Riegl first appearedin the foreshorteningand shadowbelieved, ing of the art of fifth-centuryGreece, but only reached full expressionin the optically oriented art of Rome, exemplified by the Pantheon. While adhering to Riegl's interest in tactile and optical
55

Schmarsow, in fact, wrote of architectureas the enlargement of bodily feelings into spatial feelings (Raumkorper von aussen).53These principles were one of the earliest attemptsto redirectthe conception of architecturefrom formal to spatial essence, a condition wherein "the entire Raumgebildeappearsto [its creator]as the exteriorbody of himself in general space, and along with that notion is displaced all the foundations for the exteriorbuilding."54 Schmarsow also pointed out that "each figurationof space is first of all a surroundingof the subject, and because of this end, differsessentially from all effortsof kunsthandwerk."55 Accordingly, the spatial form of architectureis the figurationof human activities that necessitate some type of boundary:architectureis a functional art, the building of enclosed spaces within which people enjoy free and willful movement.56Considerationsof the facade, of ornament, of individual supportingmembers are subordinatedto the overall urge for space. Architectureas spatial forming, in

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perception as well as to his advocacyof forgotteneras, Schmarsow'squarrelbegan with his repudiationof Riegl's haptic ideal of Egyptianart, which separatedthe perception of built forms from the visual capabilitiesof the viewer. Schmarsowargued, instead, that the subjective optical viewer is present in all eras of architecture.His real interestlay in the interiorsof pilgrimagetemples and he describeda series of courtyardswithin the enclosed confines of the Egyptian temple complexes. The choreography of movement through these courtyards,commanded by societal needs, generatedspecific spatial ideas. In turning his scrutinyto the internal patternsof use of the temple, Schmarsowdemolished Riegl's theory of the evolutionary path of the Kunstwollenfrom Egyptianto Greek architecture. for The wholeof the Egyptian templeis a spatial composition a whichcan onlybe comlong temporal sequenceof impressions, with musicor epic and dramatic Perception pared compositions. if of the templeis a seriesof acts,especially the performance of fromno otherviewing the experience hereproceeds placethan thatof the humanbreast. different the Greek is Completely the templewith its columnrowsaround oblongbuiltformof the cella. Herethe exterior the mainpoint. It is as thougha courtis yardof the Egyptian temple,withits columnson the innerside of the wall enclosure, turnedfrominsideto outside.Here(in was the Greektemple)is trulya building surveyable of bodilyvolof the preponderance the determined umes, but likewise through lengthoverthe depthdimension.60 Schmarsowfaulted Riegl for judging the fundamentalgoal of ancient architectureto be the creation of clear boundaries, of strong centralized entities. Accordingly,he wrote that "one wins a completely false impression, if the superiority of the inside as the only means of measure is not Since internal spaces are recognized or also only veiled."61 the "testingstone" of the artisticimpulse (Priifsteindes Kunstwollens),the Greek temple is actually an isolated form. For Schmarsow, the essence of architectureresides in the generation of culturally stimulated rhythmic patterns of movement through enclosed inner rooms, passages,and courtyards.Transitionalareas between spaces are of exceptional importance for his theory. Spatial openings, to one or more sides, markedby walls or by columns, increase spatial relations by linking and combining inner spaces.62

By applying this principle of descriptionto buildings from ancient Egypt to Byzantium, Schmarsowabandoned Riegl's strictlylinear historiography, likening, for instance, the trafficof people along the nave in early Christianbasilicas to the promenadesof Mesopotamianand Egyptian temple complexes.

Culture and Spatial Architecture

By giving epistemological preeminence to the relationship between the stature, movement, and perceptionof the human body and the spatial attributesof buildings and urban forms, August Schmarsowhelped to formulatea new conception of architecturalessence. His historical examination of spatial creation in architecturerevealed aspects of human activity obscured by a preoccupation with studies of form. Schmarsow recuperatedspatialthinking - originally the province of geometry and physics and later taken up by psychology and physiology- for an inquiry into man's kinetic relation to the built environment. Transformingan idea that dated back to Renaissance proportionstudies, his spatialdoctrinesdisplaced the proportionsof a static figure with the charged musculature of human movement. In the twentieth century the persistenceof spatialthinking in both design and architecturalhistory underscoresthe importanceof Schmarsow'stheories of space. In modern architecture,his idealization of spatial perceptionmay have contributed, in part, to liberatingarchitecturalunderstandingfrom traditionalstrictures.In architecturalwriting, the resonance of his thinking was directly reflectedin a series of amendments to his fundamentalcharacterization of the spatial consciousness. The voice given to space was first echoed in Paul Frankl'sstudy Die Entwicklungsphasen der neuerenBaukunst of 1914.63In this work, Frankl pointed to spatial composition as the leitmotiv of the Florentine and Roman Renaissance. IntegratingSchmarsow's Raumgestaltungwith Wolfflin's stylistic polarities, he constructeda morphology of forms for ecclesiasticalarchitecture based on spatial addition and division. A few years later in 1918, in Theorieder Baukunst, Hermann Sorgel set forth a notion of "effectivespace"(Wirkungsraum)as a third phase in the delineation of spatial
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consciousness. Enhancing what he saw as the earlierforms of spatial thinking (Renaissanceone-point perspectival space and dynamic perceptualspace), Sorgel proposedan underlying architecturalspatial consciousness as the "selfevident connection of the spatial essence of architecture with the sober and fundamental demands of function inherent in the essence of building and living."64 Schmarsow's spatial theories were also influential for Paul Zucker. In an article written at the end of World War II, "The Aesthetics of Space in Architecture, Sculpture, and City Planning," Zucker emphasized the spatialdivisions that Schmarsowhad previouslygiven to the three visual arts.65 Alongside architecture(shaped space and formed mass), Zucker rehabilitatedsculpture as a spatial art (formed masses and spaces shaped by them) and added the new categoryof urbanism (shaped space and organized
directions).66

internal space to addressfunctional needs is, in part, an outgrowthof perceptualideas that stressspatialform as the extension of human life. Emphasizing interiorspace freed architectsfrom the bonds of the formal block plan and allowed them to redirecttheir effortstowardthose locomotive patternsderived from use. Modern architecturehas also been characterizedby an avoidance of historicalornament. In concentratingon the perceptionof spaces, Schmarsow relegatedthe historical vocabularyof forms to an afterthought.Such focused awarenessof space provided a source of new imagery and expressiveconcerns, emphasizing abstractgeometries and smooth surfaces. August Schmarsow'ssensibility, however, showed itself not only in the study of architecturalcreation and perception through the lens of scientific theories of the senses, but also in the study of architectureviewed through cultural acts and values. He wrote that "the history of architecture is a history of spatial feelings, and with that, consciously or unconsciously, a foundational component of the historyof At Weltanschauungen."72 first glance, Schmarsow'stheory of Raumgestaltungappearsmore integratedwith general cultural studies than those of Fiedler, Hildebrand,or Wolfflin. Hoping to find a perceptualexplanationfor the relationshipbetween human essence and artisticproduction, Schmarsowwent so far as to call for a collaborative effort among art historians, ethnologists, and anthropologists.73Writing in commemoration of his eightieth birthday, Oscar Wulff remarkedon Schmarsow'sdesire both for an autonomy in the inquiry after architecturalhistory and for the relevance of art historical studies within the humanities: of factsof the He demands indeedthe establishment the intuitive in of of casewiththe severity the procedure observation the natuat ralsciences.He held, however, the sametime, thatarthistory and to in shouldbe pursued close connection othercultural historical studies, since it has equal rightswith these other branches

In architecturalhistory and criticism of the 1920s and 1930s spatial concerns again came to the forefront.67 In 1930 Gustav Platz insisted in his history of modern architecture that "the abstractspace without any decoration . . . The representsthe highest cultivated form of our time."68 architect R. M. Schindler wrote in "Space Architecture" of 1934 that modern architecturelies "in the minds of the artistswho can grasp'space' and 'space forms' as a new medium for human expression."69 Finally, we have only to look to Siegfried Giedion's immensely influential Space, Time and Architectureof 1940 as an exemplar of the accentuation of space as the basis for a modern syntax of architecture.70 This preoccupationwith space developed alongside a metaphysicsof modern design whose telos was understoodas an outgrowthof human activities. Although Schmarsow'sdirect influence on architectsmay have been negligible, his theory could be seen to have impacted (through intermediarycritics) the development of modern
architecture.71

and stepchild.74 (e.g., literature) is not merelya historical In modern design the free plan and the unornamented shell are central to the legacy of Schmarsow'sspatialthinking. Schmarsow'schampioning of human spatial movement was consonant with later demands by architectsfor the adaptationof building plans to contemporaryliving conditions. The modernist preoccupationwith shaping These remarksseem to make sense in light of Schmarsow's own formulation of buildings as "the fossilized shells of long-destroyedcultural organisms."75 Yet is Schmarsow'stheory of architectureanalogous to cultural history?Regardlessof its pretensionsand despite the
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integrativepossibilitiesin a spatial approachto the history of architectureseen as a sequence of psychologically derived expressions, Schmarsowexpressedno real interest in knowing how differentcultures perceivedthe spaces they created and used. Cultural values regardingbuilding were secondaryto impulses of the spatialconsciousness. His concessions to the historical relativityof spatialappearances never extended into an analysis of the interaction between these appearancesand unpredictablehuman factors. Likewise, he never engaged considerationsof the impact of religious, social, and economic conditions on architecturalspace or the position of spatialperception within a greatersocial process of signification. Schmarsow's typology of spaces, while admittedlybased neither on a progressiveKunstwollennor on other teleological agents of history, conforms to objective standards.In the end, he understoodspaces in buildings accordingto a set of normative perceptivefaculties. Were Schmarsow'snotion of Raumbildung the sole considerationof architecturalstyle, for instance, the domed spaces of the most disparateperiods of human history could be seen to possessessentially the same inspiration.76 Obviously inspiredby Fiedler'sdescriptionof intellectual form making, Schmarsowconceived of architectureas the pure creation of spatial forms through the intellectual and perceptualdevelopment of the spatial consciousness. Consequently, the only reliable way to discern the manifestations of the architecturalconsciousness was through the unhindered interpretationof the built phenomena themselves. Restrictedto the realm of art historical investigation possible under the paradigmof perceptualempiricism, Schmarsow'stheory was centered on an all-knowingsubject. His idea of the history of architecturalspaces rested on the ability of the art historianto recreatethe realityof the building through deduction. Insofaras the building was a structureof hollows sculpted by human impulse, it became the art historical task to fuse this appearanceof materialitywith the motivationsand spiritof its creator. Schmarsowgeneratedthe descriptivepropositionsnecessary for this endeavor from a set of spatialaxioms. Since these axioms (Raumgefiihl, for example) were derivedfrom a scientific study of the senses, the unfolding of spatial ideas in

buildings subordinatedworldly manifestationsto a normative manifold of the consciousness. Although architectural diversitycould be accounted for by the differentstages of a spatial consciousness, the universalnotion of this consciousness denied the possibilityof diverse cultural manifestationsof similar spatial impulses. Ultimately, then, Schmarsowstandardizedhuman culture to the inclinations of the spatial consciousness. He turned to historyto provide an explanation of the nature of spatialthinking. Like other art historiansworkingwithin methodologies drawn from the natural sciences, he preferredto reconcile human creationswith natural processes;yet in his elaborationof architectureas a grand historical narrativeof the spatial consciousness, Schmarsowfailed to recognize that the varieties of human spatial consciousness belong to complex sets of cultural ideas irreducibleto any scientific model.

his received MitchellW. Schwarzer Ph.D. in History, Theory,andCriticism of Institute fromthe Massachusetts of Professor He is Assistant Technology. of at Architectural History the University Illinois,Chicago.
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Notes
1. Johann Gustav Droysen, Outline of the Principlesof History, trans. E. Benjamin Andrews(Boston, 1893), 9. 2. Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History:The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herderto the Present (Middletown:Wesleyan, 1983), 199. 3. See Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval and Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1983), 279. 4. Walter Passarge,Die Philosophie in der Kunstgeschichte der Gegenwart (Berlin:Junkerand Dunnhaupt, 1930), 1. 5. The German Raumgestaltung translatesliterally as "interiordecoration." Schmarsow'suse of the word, however, is more expansive and includes a conception of spatial information and spatial creation. 6. To this date, none of Schmarsow's writingshave been translated into English. 7. BernardBerenson, Aesthetics and History in the Visual Arts (New York:Pantheon, 1948), 88. 8. See Heinrich Wolfflin, Prolegommena zu einer Psychologieder Architektur(Munich, 1886), and idem, Renaissanceand Baroque, trans. Kathrin Simon (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1966). 9. For a discussion of contemporaryperception theories as they relate to architecture, see Julian Hochberg, "Visual Perception in Architecture,"Via 6 (1983): 27-45. 10. George Berkeley,An Essay Towardsa New Theoryof Vision (London: J. M. Dent, 1910). 11. Johann Friedrich Herbart,A Textbookin Psychology,trans. Mar-

garet K. Smith (New York:D. Appleton, 1891), 1-9. 12. Ibid., 132. in 13. In Der Symbolbegriff der neuesten Aesthetik(Jena: Hermann Dufft, 1876), Johannes Volkelt traces the development of this concept from Herder'sstudent Robert Zimmermann to Robert Vischer and Conrad Fiedler. 14. Hermann Lotze, Outlines of Psychology,ed. and trans. George T. Ladd (Boston:Ginn and Co., 1886), 53. 15. The physicist Hermann Helmholtz furtherdeveloped the dynamics of the formation of mental images with reference to Lotze's theory of local signs. See Hermann Helmholtz, "The Recent Progressof the Theory of Vision," trans. Philip H. Pye-Smith, in Popular Scientific Lectures, ed. Morris Kline (New York:Dover Publications, 1962), 175. In accordance with his "empiricaltheory of vision," Helmholtz suggestedthat we can create ideas of three-dimensional space because the sensations we receive from each eye are not exactly alike, while our mental images of spatial form are created from the synthesis of several visually derived images. Hence eye movement confers a present transmissionof spatial form that is subsequentlycombined in a mental operation with previous images drawn from the cognitive faculties of imagination, association, and selection. 16. Lotze, Outlines of Psychology, 59. 17. Wilhelm Wundt, Outlines of Psychology,trans. Charles Hubbard Judd (London: Williams and Norgate, 1897). 18. Wundt claimed that for any two local signs, a and b, there will be a correspondingsensation of

progetto, 10). Cornelius van de Ven also claims that Schmarsowborrowed Semper's notion of "three moments," substitutingrhythm for de Ven 19. Wundt, Outlines of Psychology, Semper'sdirection. Van writes that "Schmarsowwas the first 123. to define the Semperian purpose as 20. Ibid., 125. being identical to the creation of limited space, in which man could 21. Ibid., 127-28. move around freely. . . . Space 22. William James distinguished meant not merely sheltering man's between sensations and perceptions: labor, but also his Play Room" pure sensations are abstractionsof (Cornelius van de Ven, Space in objects or their attributes,while The Evolution of a Architecture: perceptionsencompass the conNew Idea in the Theoryof the Modsciousness of further information ern Movements [Assen/Maastricht: associatedwith the object of the Van Gorcum, 1987], 90). sensation. Accordingly, "sensations 28. Nonetheless, Schmarsowwas and reproductivebrain-processes critical of Semper'stheory, characcombined . . . are what give us the terizing it as a mistaken attempt to content of our perceptions."See combine the technical and decoraWilliam James, The Principlesof tive arts. He felt that Semper'ssysYork:Dover, Psychology(New of tem of continual reinterpretation 1986), 2:2-82. certain formal motifs made archi23. Renato de Fusco, Segni, storia tecture too dependent upon none progettodell'architettura (Rome: human factors. All the forms of Laterza, 1973), 93. architecture, Schmarsow main24. For a discussion of this founda- tained, "arecomplete and special tional concept, see Alexander spatial works"that are indifferentto Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, Classimaterial use and construction techcal Architecture: The Poetics of nique. Whatever material unfolding Order(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT of architecturalform takes place, whether in the act of creation or Press, 1986), 9-34. that of observation, is actually an 25. See Rudolf Wittkower,Palladio unfolding of intuition through the and English Palladianism (New mechanisms of sight. The essence York:Thames and Hudson, 1974), of architecturalform is infected "ClassicalTheory esp. chap. 13, with movement, for "throughthe and Eighteenth-CenturySensibilexperiences of our visual sense . . . ity," 193-204. come to rest the intuition forms of the three-dimensionalspaces" 26. KarlBotticher wrote of the determinateinfluence of the Raum- August Schmarsow, Das Wesen der Schopfung einrichtung, or spatial organization, architektonischen on the logical shaping of the plan [Leipzig:G. B. Teubner, 1893], 10). and structureof a building in Die Tektonikder Hellenen (Berlin, 29. Richard Lucae, "Uber die 1838), 14. asthetische Ausbildung der Eisen27. As De Fusco writes, SchmarKonstruktionen,besonders in ihrer sow was indebted to Semper for his Anwendung bei Raumen von interest in the genesis and evolution bedeutender Spannweite,"Deutsche of artisticforms (Segni, storia e Bauzeitung 4 (1870): 9-12. See also movement arising from the movement through the distance a-b and serving as a measure of that distance.

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idem, "Uber die Macht des Raumes in der Baukunst,"Zeitschriftfir Bauwesen 19 (1869): 293-306. 30. Hans Auer, "Die Entwicklung des Raumes in der Baukunst,"Allgemeine Baukunst 48 (1883): 6567, 73-74. 31. The literatureon space after 1900 is large, and attemptswere made to found a journal concerning the spatial theme. See Hendrik Berlage, "Raumkunstund Architektur," Schweizerische Bauzeitung 49 (1907); Hans Cornelius, "Elementargesetzder kiinstlerischenRaumgestaltung,"Die Raumkunst 1 (1908); Josef Scherer, "Gedanken Neudeutsche iiber Raumasthetik," Bauzeitung 9 (1913); Bruno Specht, Deutsche Bauzeitung "Raumkunst," 29 (1895); and Hans Streit, "Uber Raumkunstund Raumstudium," Rundschau 23 Architektonische (1907). 32. Belief in the inability of spiritual meaning to reside in a building caused Hegel to characterizearchitecture as best exemplified by the naturalaspects of symbolic art and not the higher romantic art of the spirit'ssubjectivity.See G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics:Lectureson Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). 33. Arthur Schopenhauer, The Worldas Will and Representation, trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1969), 212-14. 34. RobertVischer, Uber das OptischeFormgefihl: Ein Beitrag zur Aesthetik(Leipzig:Hermann Credner, 1873). Altering the premises of Wundt, Vischer wrote:"Die horizontale Linie is befriedigend, weil unser Augenpaareine horizontale Lage hat, sie streiftaber ohne einen anderen Formgesetz an den Eindruckder Indifferenz. Die vertikale Linie dagegen kann bei isolirter Wahrenhmung storend wirken, weil

sie den Bau des aufnehmenden Augenpaaresin gewissen Sinne widerspricht,indem sie sehen eine compliezierte Funktion deselben nothwendig macht" (p. 8). 35. Theodor Lipps, Aesthetik (Leipzig:Leopold Voss, 1923), 21. 36. Lipps wrote that "ich bin nur dies ideelle, dies betrachtendeIch" (Aesthetik,247). 37. Ibid., 141. 38. Ibid., 247. 39. KonradFiedler, Essay on Architecture,trans. Carolyn Reading (Indianapolis, 1948), 23. Fiedler wrote that "the genuine artistic spirit rules only where there is an obvious attempt to redeem the elements of architectonic form from an existence determined by and limited by materialityto the freedom of a purely intellectual expression" (p. 26). 40. See KonradFiedler, On Judging Worksof Visual Art, trans. Henry Schaefer-Simmernand Fulmer Moon (Berkeley:Universityof California Press, 1949), 21-25. 41. Van de Ven, Space in Architecture, 83. 42. Hermann Sorgel, Architektur = Aesthetik, vol. 1 of Theorieder Baukunst (Munich: Pilothy and Loehle, 1918), 46. 43. Schmarsow, Das Wesen, 22. 44. August Schmarsow, Unser Verhiltnis zu den Bildenden Kunsten: Sechs Vortrdgeiiber Kunst und Erziehung (Leipzig:B. G. Teubner, 1903), 79. 45. Ibid., 103. 46. August Schmarsow,Grundbegriffe der Kunstwissenschaft (Leipzig:B. G. Teubner, 1905), 12. 47. Ibid., 34. 48. Ibid., 41.

49. Oscar Wulff, "AugustSchmarZeitsow zum 80. Geburtstag," 2 schriftfir Kunstgeschichte (1936): 208. 50. Ibid., 104. 51. Schmarsowwas influenced by his contemporaryAdolf von Hildebrand, whose book The Problemof Form in Painting and Sculpture (New York:G. E. Stechert, 1907) exercised a decisive impact on art historicalstudies of the period. Hildebrand'sconcept of spatial perception through motion - kinesthetic ideas - became a basis for reading the creative potential of artworks: "Our relation to the world of vision consists chiefly in our perception of its spatial attributes" 17). (p. 52. Sorgel, Architektur= Aesthetik, 47. See also Oscar Wulff's essay "Zu August Schmarsow's Kunstchronik31 (1919Riicktritt," 20), for a discussion of Schmarsow's attachmentto the formativelaws of body rhythms as a substitutefor features. extra-aesthetic 53. Schmarsow, Unser Verhdltnis, 107. 54. Schmarsow, Das Wesen, 19. 55. Ibid., 14. 56. Schmarsow,Grundbegriffe, 183. 57. Roberto Salvini, La critica d'arte modera (Florence: L'Arco, 1949), wrote:"Specialmentenella critica dell'architettura egli ha saputo porre l'acento su valori inediti di ritmo e di movimento che non potevano trovarposto negli schemi del Riegl e che pure formano tanta parte- se non cosi esclusiva come appareall'autore - del linguaggio architettonico" (p. 27). 58. Schmarsowwas not overly concerned with boundariesbetween venacular and high architecture,

and his definition of architecture lay not in the typological oppositions of sacred and profane or monumental and merely useful but in historical realizationsof spatial creation. All spatial enclosures whether palaces, warehouses, or city squares- are instances of Raumbildung:"the nature of the Wohnbau, in contrastwith the Monumentbau, is always concerned with growth, it remains entwicklungsfdhigto a certain degree like a Lebewesenor even a collectivity of such, seen in the family and the essence of home that it develops and shelters"(Schmarsow, Grundbegriffe, 184, 190). 59. Alois Riegl, Spdtromische WissenKunstindustrie(Darmstadt: schaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973), 24. 60. Schmarsow, Grundbegriffe, 192. 61. Ibid., 184. 62. Ibid., 188. 63. Paul Frankl, Principlesof ArchitecturalHistory, ed. and trans. James F. O'Gorman (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968). In his introductionto Principles, James Ackermanechoed the popular belief that "Brinckmann,Riegl, and, especially, Schmarsow established the foundations for which Frankl's analysis is based"(p. vii). 64. Sorgel, Architektur= Aesthetik, 164. 65. Paul Zucker, "The Aesthetics of Space in Architecture, Sculpture, and City Planning," Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism 4, no. 1 (September 1945): 12-19. 66. I omit reference to Camillo Sitte because the ideological development of Sitte's thinking does not stem from the optical sources common to Schmarsow'sperceptually based spatial understanding.

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67. For an overview of this unfolding, see Giulio Roisecco, Spazio: Evoluzione del concetto in architettura (Rome: M. Bulzoni, 1970). 68. Gustav Platz, Die Baukunst der neuesten Zeit (Berlin: Propylan, 1930), 80. 69. Rudolph M. Schindler, "Space Architecture,"Dune Forum (February 1934): 44-46; cited in Tim and Charlotte Benton with Dennis Sharp, eds., Form and Function: A Source Book for the History of Architecture and Design, 18901939 (London: Open University Press, 1975), 185. 70. SokratisGeorgiadiswrites that Giedion took the development of space as "die Verwandlungder Erkenntnistheoriedes sichtbar Raumes um ein Ontologie des gemachtbarRaumes durch August Schmarsow"(SokratisGeorgiadis, SiegfriedGiedion: Ein Intellektuelle Biographie[Zurich: Institut fur Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur, 1989], 209). 71. StanfordAnderson writes:"The shift in theoretical dominance from the tectonic conception of architecture to a spatial conception was fixed with August Schmarsow's inaugural lecture at Leipzig in 1896 in which he characterizedarchitecture as, essentially, the forming of space (Raumgestalterin)" (Stanford Anderson, "PeterBehrens and the AEG," Oppositions 23 [Winter 1981]: 56). 72. Schmarsow, Das Wesen, 29. 73. Ibid., 5-6. 74. Wulff, "AugustSchmarsow zum 80. Geburtstag,"208. 75. Ibid., 28. 76. See Richard Streiter,Ausgewdhlte Schriften(Munich: Delphin, 1913). Streiterrejected the preeminent role that Schmarsow gave to

space for this reason:"In the great majorityof cases Raumbildung alone is not enough to arriveat a characterizationof artistic inspiration, that which can be describedas the style of an epoch" (p. 117).

Figure Credits
1. Courtesy of StanfordAnderson. 2. Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Oeuvre complete 1910-1929 (Zurich: Editions Girsberger,1964). 2. Le Corbusier, sketch from "The Five Points of a New Architecture," 1929

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