- In this essay Schwarzer investigated the intellectual background of August Schmarsow’s writings on architecture, to describe the salient features of his theory of Raumgestaltung, or spatial forming, and evaluate its influence on subsequent thinking on architecture and space. State briefly, Schmarsow was the first to formulate a comprehensive theory of architecture as a spatial creation at the frontiers of the paradigm of perceptual empiricism. He differed most from other theorists in his insistence that bodily movement through space rather than the stationary perception of form was the essence of architecture. He obviously wanted to rebut Wölfflin’s theory of the essential role of bodily masses. Schmarsow’s theories, then, posed a challenge to the hitherto dominant notion of form in architecture.
LIYANG DING 