Architecture as Experience

From Architecture as Experience, D. Arnold and A. Ballantyne:

Michel de Certeau has suggested drawing a distinction between the use of the words ‘place’ and ’space’ such that the ‘place’ would be the unmediated fabric (e.g. the stones of Stonehenge) but the ’space’ that visitors experience would be a ‘practised space’ – the place refracted through the visitor’s culture, experience and use of the place (M. de Certeau, ‘Spatial Stories’, in A. Ballantyne, What is Architecture?, London, Routledge, 2002, pp. 72-87).

Heterotopia a place that is different from itself, on account of the plurality of readings of its events (Michel Foucault, ‘Of other spaces’, in Diacritics, Spring 1986). In the light of such readings, it is necessary to draw a distinction between a building as an object and the various experiences of the building (the ‘misprisions’ of the place) which can properly be called ‘architecture’ – which is to say that architecture is our experience of buildings.

The architecure which is produced will depend partly on the kind of stimuli and sensations that are caused by the building (as an inert object) and partly by the cultural apparatus in the mind of the person – the instincts, concept and habits through which the stimuli are refracted. Both the buildings and the person’s mind are necessary to architecture, and different minds might produce different architectures when brought into contact with the same building – as in the heterotopias mentioned above.