Inside and Outside in Architecture: A Symposium

Abstract

THE WORDS inside and outside reflect a dichotomy in direct experience. Inside and outside cannot be seen at the same time. This dichotomy reminds the psychologist of the corresponding one in his own field. The behaviorist, ignoring the inside of the mind, dwells in a world of external objects, animate or inanimate. These objects defined by what they look like and what they do. Their appearance, complete in itself, points to no inside but leaves room for inferences on the nature of a hidden core. Inversely, the introspectionist, dwelling within the mind, can conjecture on the observer's own outer appearance only from what is sensed inside. One cannot see one's own face. The world as perceived from the introspectionist's station point is never truly outside; it is rather an extension of the inside -a collection of obstacles and opportunities, as Freud has described the totality of the non-self. In psychology as well as in architecture, the two approaches, although exclusive of each other, require each other, and in both fields the need to integrate the two may be described as the principal challenge. Henri Focillon, in La Vie des formes, asserts that man's practical experience is limited to the approach from the outside. Human movement and action, he says, are exterior to everything; man is always on the outside, and in order to penetrate beyond surfaces, he must break them