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LEONARDO, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 197–198, 1999 197© 1999 ISAST

We face as our surroundings a world of ob- jects populated and employed by humans and animals. I will call this world the “reality system.” This world is viewed from a standpoint that varies with the viewer’s location. I will call this viewed world the “apprehension system,” by which I mean the mental activity of comprehension and representation.

The two systems interact in two principal ways. Either the viewers are part of the population in the physical world or, more indirectly, viewers look from the outside at a reality set- ting. Humans function in both settings, as viewers and as viewed.

In the physical world, to which the reality system refers, the size and location of the human figure determines what is seen as above and as below it. By its very function, any building is larger than the human figure. Built structures reaching above eye level dominate and protect or threaten their human us- ers. Within certain limits of height, humans and buildings are in a dialogic intercourse, which gives a community of low houses a more humane intimacy. City buildings transcend the human scale into a foreign and even awe-inspiring realm.

A similar distance scale distinguishes in horizontal space between what is close, intimate or even obsessive. When the distance is greater, the in-between space looks empty, and what lies beyond it seems lost. Buildings ask for just the right amount of breathing space around them. This should deter- mine, for example, the parvis in front of a cathedral or palace.

Buildings are containers and therefore are subject to a scale of closedness to openness. Windows provide visual openness from the inside out and from the outside in. Doors make for mobile communication, and together the openings determine the degree of social intercourse in the community. Glass walls reduce privacy and promote a unitary coming and going, in contrast to the walls and fortresses of feudal societies.

In addition to what I said about the effect of the size of buildings on their inhabitants one should also refer to the opposite cases. Size is commonly neglected when shape alone is considered. Architects make ample use of scale models for studying or demonstrating the shape of their buildings.

As long as we are dealing with the world of the reality sys- tem, its physical conditions need to be respected. This is less the case in pictorial representations of the inhabited world. In fact, in the development of cultures or individuals, picto- rial representation begins with the very elements. Since the viewer looks at the scene from a particular standpoint, the scene he sees is a projection. In its most elementary represen- tation the scene appears as a flat surface. What I have called the apprehension system has now the upper hand. Its most radical examples are found in the art of early cultures and

that of children. As a medieval example, I mention an eleventh- century fresco showing the con- tents of Noah’s ark as three hori- zontal rows of humans and animals on the flat sur face sur- rounded by a contour indicating the boat. For my present purpose the most suitable period is the time of Giotto, in which the paintings combine the features of early representation with the be- ginning emphasis on more realis- tic depiction. I am referring to ex amples from Giotto’s paintings in the Cappell a degli Scrovegni in Padua, done in about 1305.

Most striking is Giotto’s freedom in dealing with the size of buildings quite independently of what would be required by realistic space. When Enrico Scrovegni in paradise donates his Cappella to the Virgin Mar y, the small size of the chapel was not apprehended by the viewers as a model. The donor was offering the building itself, regardless of the smallness of the depiction.

In Giotto’s narrative scenes, the sizes of the buildings and rooms are strictly limited to their function. This is partly ne- cessitated by the task of making space for a large number of scenes on the walls of a small chapel, but it holds also more generally for this style of representation, so little bound by the demands of naturalism. When in Giotto’s exterior scenes the human figures are shown outside, the buildings are kept as small as their relations to the figures permit. For example, the house belonging to a single figure is shown as a mere booth and even the size of ampler buildings is kept to a minimum. This economy is particularly striking in the representation of interiors. When the scene calls for two rooms, for example, in the picture of the Annunciation, we see the anteroom with the spinning maid in a narrow space, roofed just above her head. Under a higher roof we see the adjoining, larger room with the kneeling woman surrounded by the furniture.

This example also shows that when a scene represents a container its frontal sur face must be left out, to open the scene to the eyes of all viewers. The stable where the Christ child is born and adored can be limited to a mere scaffold of planks, open to the visitors. Or when a more solid setting is

Rudolf Arnheim (perceptual psychologist), 1200 Earhart Rd., #537, Ann Arbor, MI 48105-2768, U.S.A .

G E N E R A L N O T E

Buildings and Human Figures Aware of Each Other

Rudolf Arnheim

A B S T R A C T

The visual relationship be- tween buildings and human beings is treated as the interaction be- tween two systems: the reality system, dealing with the physical world in and of itself, and the ap- prehension system, dealing with the world looked at and repre- sented by viewers. The two sys- tems interact in a unitary physical world and can also be depicted in the visual arts.

198 Arnheim, Buildings and Human Figures Aware of Each Other

called for, such as for the Last Supper, the room is reduced to a mere back- ground, extending parallel to the fron- tal plane. The side walls can be made vis- ible by tilting, but they must be sliced through—a radical concession to the re-

quirements of apprehension, familiar to us from its use on the theater stage.

This ends our brief excursion into a period of art histor y in which the de- mands of physical reality and those of vi- sual apprehension are both satisfied.

These examples may ser ve to sharpen our attention to the relations between buildings and their inhabitants.

Manuscript received 24 April 1998.