'experiencing architecture'
rasmussen (1959) is a gentle introduction to buildings which contains the information that the fundamental unit length of corbusier's 'le modulor' is arbitrary guesswork with post hoc adjustments being made to building dimensions when the system failed to match reality. i do not believe this is general knowledge and that's a shame.
"The Germans speak of Raum-Gefuhl, meaning the sense or conception of the defined space. In English there is no equivalent".
this interested me as it raises the possibility of examining the changes in this sense that may have occured as a result of the rise of both individualism and of industrial commodification
at one point he states "But the man has not yet been found who can pass judgement, logically substantiated, on a building's architectural value". this is simply wrong but he can be forgiven as he was writing before the work of christopher alexander. there are now ways to look at the structural order of a building and to objectively decide if it is good or bad. this is not a comfortable idea for those who support the blind and willfull abstractions of modern architecture having given up on the idea of universal truths for want of a coherent cosmology