- This essay was intended to answer this following question: “were there architects who chose an architecture that acknowledged the primacy of living experience over one that put painterly images on display?” David argued that there was a distinction between the image and the “appearance” of an architectural work, that the first requires but intensifies the second, concentrating within it indications of conditions that are presently inapparent or not-yet-seen, either because they are occluded or remote. I see this paper as another opportunity that the author seized to promote the “topographical order.” In this case, “not-yet-seen,” “inapparent,” or what was called in this essay “horizontal transcendence,” are notions refer to the “appearance” that buildings offer through the motion of the spectator, a self-exceeding phenomena of given experience. This kind of architectural tradition featuring “lived experience” was heralded by the “return” to the prehistory of the linear perspective tradition (premodern or pre-perspective sense of architecture), which means the polarity between “an architecture that accommodates life-practical purposes and one that puts visible images on display” loses its force as that tradition comes to an end.
LIYANG DING 