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BUILDING FUNCTION 93▲ 5.26 Centraal Beheer Office Building, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, HermanHertzberber with Lucas & Niemeijer Architects, 1972. Columns subdivide the cafeteriainto more intimate spaces.years old, according to one staff member, office workers really enjoyworking in it.ARTICULATING CIRCULATIONStructure has a long tradition of articulating circulation. Arcades andcolonnades have defined circulation for thousands of years. Due to itsability to provide order to a plan, structure often functions as the spinethat inevitably defines the primary circulation route. As Cook writes:‘Where ceremony is not involved, a central row of columns or a spinewall is a highly satisfactory way of generating built form. This spine canbe formed by a corridor and we then have a brilliantly forceful generator,the spine being the route, the operational generator and also thefocus of the structure from which all other parts of the system develop.Stretch the diagram and you have the Gothic nave.’ 6By virtue of their physical presence, columns, walls or other structuralmembers can literally and virtually restrict movement to along a singleaxis. The way the walls within the Contemporary Art Wing, Hamburg,confine and direct movement has already been discussed (see pages 87–8).Structure can also play less directive roles by merely suggesting a circulationroute. Often these more subtle roles are played by horizontalstructure, such as beams, that exhibit a directional quality. Both of thesecontributions of structure to circulation are examined, beginning withexamples where structure defines circulation.The first floor of Colegio Teresiano, a Barcelona convent school, providesa most memorable example of structure defining a corridor. The