ABSTRACT
Architecture has always been about levels, in relation to the ground and the sky. Up and down have connotations that are symbolic, poetic and emotional. The experience of being high, on top, above is different from being low, underground, beneath. And both are different from being on the ground. Architects tend to accept and sometimes even celebrate this emphasis by designing buildings in which movement and places are organised between horizontal planes of platform and roof. But most architecture, from the simplest to the most sophisticated, involves organising space in the vertical dimension as well as the horizontal. Le Corbusier recognised the freedom in the manipulation of space and light that an architect has on the top floor of a building. The usual stratification seems to be inverted in a house by Robert Venturi which may be interpreted as something of a playful counter to Le Corbusier’s precepts for sectional design.
