(no subject)
"Mere volume of space is no more aesthetic than mere bounding line or surface; in order to become beautiful, it must become alive. But how can space-the most abstract thing in the world-become alive? By having the activities which it incloses felt into it. Just as our bodies are felt to be alive because our activities express themselves there, so our rooms, because we live and move within them. As we enter a cathedral and look down the long aisle, the movement of our eyes inevitably suggests the movement of our bodies; or, as we look up and our eyes follow the ribs of the vaulting, it is as if we ourselves were borne aloft; in the imagination we move through the open spaces; and since we do not actually move, we locate our impulses to movement, not in our bodies, but in the space through which we take our imagined flight. Every object suggests movement to it, and we fill the intervening space with this imagined movement, provided only we stay our activities and give time for the imagination to work its will. Thus all space may become alive with the possibilities of movement which it offers."