This theme of structures altered by perception is not uniquely observed in The Navidson Record. Almost thirty years ago, Giinter Nitschke described what he termed "experienced or concrete space":

It has a centre which is perceiving man, and it therefore has an excellent system of directions which changes with the movements of the human body; it is limited and in no sense neutral, in other words it is finite, heterogeneous, subjectively defined and perceived; distances and directions are fixed relative to man.. , [83]

Christian Norberg-Schulz objects; condemning subjective architectural experiences for the seemingly absurd conclusion it suggests, mainly that "architecture comes into being only when experienced." [84]

Norberg-Schulz asserts: "Architectural space certainly exists independently of the casual perceiver, and has centres and directions of its own." Focusing on the constructions of any civilization, whether ancient or modem, it is hard to disagree with him. It is only when focusing on Navidson's house that these assertions begin to blur.

Can Navidson's house exist without the experience of itself?

Is it possible to think of that place as "unshaped" by human perceptions?

Especially since everyone entering there finds a vision almost completely—though pointedly not completely—different from anyone else's?

Even Michael Leonard, who had never heard of Navidson's house, professed a belief in the "psychological dimensions of space." Leonard claimed people create a " sensation of space" where the final result "in the perceptual process is a single sensation—a 'feeling' about that particular place . . ," [85]

In his book The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch suggested emotional cognition of all environment was rooted in history, or at least personal history:

[Environmental image, a generalized mental picture of the exterior physical world] is the product both of immediate sensation and of the memory of past experience, and it is used to interpret information and to guide action. [86]

[Italics added for emphasis]

Or as Jean Piaget insisted: "It is quite obvious that the perception of space involves a gradual construction and certainly does not exist ready-made at the outset of mental development." [87] Like Leonard's attention to sensation and Piaget's emphasis on constructed perception, Lynch's emphasis on the importance of the past allows him to introduce a certain degree of subjectivity to the question of space and more precisely architecture.

Where Navidson's house is concerned, subjectivity seems more a matter of degree. The Infinite Corridor, the Anteroom, the Great Hall, and the Spiral Staircase, exist for all, though their respective size and even layout sometimes changes. Other areas of that place, however, never seem to replicate the same pattern twice, or so the film repeatedly demonstrates.