ABSTRACT
Artworks can more easily express the dialectics of the social context than architecture. Artworks also inspire architects. This chapter describes sculptures and spatial art installations by Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, and Dan Graham that are experienced as threshold spaces by mediating the relation between the space of the viewer and their physical context.
Performance pieces by Franz Erhard Walther intertwine the individual and collective space of the performers and suggest hypotheses on what could be a collective body that perceives architecture as a common spatial language.
Some architectures can be described as “dispositive” or “sociosculptural” architecture, as they have the “mediating” potential of the above-mentioned sculptures. One example is the Hoenheim-Nord tram terminus by Zaha Hadid.
Some architectures are dispositives because they frame views of the exterior. Frank Lloyd Wright’s practice is a classic reference, while the Dutch Embassy in Berlin by Rem Koolhaas is a contemporary example.
