ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines some of the central issues that will be developed in the subsequent sections of the work. The description of an architectural or urban space we inhabit usually starts from the objects it contains: nevertheless, the subject’s common experience is that of an environment that is rich in acting forces that are not directly bound to physical objects, but vary and produce changing situations. Furthermore, our experience of space is not something we relate only to objects, but primarily to our own response to whatever we encounter in the environment. The description of a space could thus not be only based on the objects that are located within our perceptual horizon, but to the way these affect us subjectively. In this sense, the meaning of the term “subjective” must be shifted from “arbitrary, unreliable” to a more neutral understanding of “pertaining to the subject”.
The chapter is theoretical with a few examples from the visual arts. It introduces some key issues from the so-called affective turn and from Hermann Schmitz’s New Phenomenology.
