Streets and routes, corridors and staircases are not only systems of access but also keys to the communal lives of occupants. Because they provide information concerning the distribution of spaces and the patterns of movement that connect them, access systems and the gestalts of access spaces condition and express social structures. The structure and development of urban districts and entire cities is recognizable through the development of transport infrastructure; neighbourly relations are mirrored in the types of vertical accesses found in multistorey buildings; forms of residency are displayed in the accesses of apartment layouts. All types of accesses simultaneously reflect and influence living conditions: playing a role in everyday life is the question of whether a family lives in direct proximity to open space or in an upper storey, whether they live alone or together with several neighbours in a two-family house, or with many neighbours in a balcony access building. Everyday working conditions are also affected by whether a workplace is set in an office cell along a corridor or in a large open-plan office.