ABSTRACT
The very scale of many of these constructions itself argues for a degree of intentionality. Particularly in Germany proper, this series includes a goodly number of the largest public façades erected. Façades of this scale speak regardless, as clients and architects know. The decision to employ repeatedly a cryptically self-effacing and neutralizing manner on massive works seems an intentional message. Urban placement also seems an indicator of shared attitudes. Germany, broadly speaking, is less enamored than Italy of the spatial sculpting of large urban plazas and less enamored than France of profoundly lengthy axial approaches. Over one decade in Germany's two largest cities, the essentials of a system were effectively devised and unveiled. The experiencing of the façades themselves builds from phenomena and perceptions gradually toward an intuition about an 'empirical concept' — the screen as a recurrent 'system,' a perceivable formatting that may underlie these sensations.
