- Joedicke, in his book, distinguished two kinds of spatial treatments (configuration): spatial container, space as an enclosed continuum (Goethe’s garden house), and spatial field, space as a field between volume (Mies’s Pavilion) The spatial field is dependent on the perceptive, rather than measurable, relationship between the observer and, instead of a single object, a group of objects. The measurable relationship is independent of the position of the observer, whereas the perceptible relationship is dependent on the ever-changing perception according to the changing position of the observer. Only with a group of objects, there would emerge the concealing-revealing relationship and thus the “surplus of views.” In this sense, the “spatial field” is analogous to what is known as “topographical” field. Therefore, even though Joedicke excluded the notion of space that Bollnow has attempted to distill, he nonetheless alluded to a larger definition of space beyond architectonic space. For him, space in architecture includes architectonic, urban, and natural space. As Joedicke asserted, “the creation of space therefore always implies dividing off a smaller space from a larger one.” (14) Nevertheless, this book came to a somehow strange conclusion – the creation of architecture should learn from the past, not only what they have done, but how they did it.
LIYANG DING 