Of Physical Windows

This week, I would like to focus on the interesting discussion of architecture by Keenan in "Windows: of vulnerability." Specifically, this passage:

"Humans, because they are essentially upright, first of all are seeing beings, seeing ahead...Human knowledge stems from this gaze, and the window perhaps even more than the mirror gives form to this tenacious ideologeme. Evidently, we learn from Colomina and Reichlin, the length and horizontality of Le Corbusier's window band cuts across the human form and disfigures it, mutilates the upright installation of the one who stands," (126).

To me, at first glance this analysis seems overworked and farfetched. However, after a little thought experiment I began to relate to how my understanding of self and place could shift given architectural variables like Le Corbusier windows. Have you ever had the experience described in this passage? Do you think it is feasible? 

Moreover, this example asks a broader question, especially when in team with others like it (i.e. "The more light, the less sight, and the less there is in the interior that allows 'man' to find comfort and protection, to find a ground from which to look," (127).). That question seems to be: How much of human experience is defined by environment? Think of it in semiological terms-- life as a collection of external signifiers, either reinforcing or constructing experience. Furthermore, when those external signifiers become deliberate rather than arbitrary, as in the case of architecture, are we not living as subjects of a physical mythology?