Architectural Space and The Human Scale -HTC

Of all the articles I managed to get through this semester, Schwarzer's Emeergence of Architectural Space was one that I felt at ease with and understood instinctively.   Maybe it's because I usually operate in similar instinctive fashion.

 

While I usually don't consciously analyze, or speak logically about any connection between the human body and spatial relationship being a primordial one, but my body understood it subconsciously.  I never realized that I feel safer and protected in a house with 8-ft. ceiling vs. feel like a guest in a place with 14-ft ceiling, but I do.

 

If you think about it, Schwarzer is quite brilliant to recognize all these fundamental understandings of spatial awareness and their relationship in regards to building sizes and room dimensions with the human body and put them into words.

While our homes and regular houses are human scale because the nature of human inclinations to be closer to the ground and with feet on the floor, what about spiritual spaces?  How do those spaces relate to human scale?

 

Take the La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain for example; a church that has been in construction for over 100 years.  While it’s not unusual to take hundreds of years to build such a church, the scale of the church is what I called “a church on testosterone.”  While it’s got all the bells and whistles of a usual grand church, this one is other worldly.  Modernist sculptures vs. classical, and its appearance is usually tall and ornate in a modern way.

When it’s all said and done in 2026, the tallest tower of that church will be at 558ft, which will be taller than the current tallest church, Ulm Minster in Cologne Germany.  The religious scales reflect height, depth and space of the human faith.

 

 

I suppose, the taller and larger the scale of the building, the bigger the root cause for the building, in this case, religion.  Skyscrapers have many floors each dedicated to some function or purpose, but churches, serve only one main purpose, and usually have one main floor, plus lots of big empty spaces in between the building.  I thought that was fascinating.  The scale of Stonehenge with the tallest stone at about 30 ft. in comparison felt much more relatable to human size.  Even though Stonehenge was not an actual enclosed building, and served multiple purposes, the task of building it 5000 years ago was monumental and probably compatible in human ingenuity as well as labor as the La Sagrada Familia of today.