scholarly journals Fragments: A Poetic Approach To Place-Making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Lishak
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Architectural Design ◽  
The Body ◽  
Rational Approach ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Critical Regionalism ◽  
A Site ◽  
Contemporary Architecture

The notion of regional particularity and sensitivity to place remains in constant struggle with the persistent autonomous approach evident in most contemporary architecture, which under the pressures of globalization has paved the path toward commodification and the creation of universal non-places. Meanwhile the decline of craftsmanship within architecture and the perpetual emphasis on visual images and iconic forms continues to undermine human connection to the built environment. The use of Fragments in architectural design involves a distinct understanding of perception of space that takes its theoretical basis in the communicative and situational character of Synthetic Cubism and Picturesque Landscape theory. Brought into an architectural context, these theories work in contrast to the rational approach based on proportion and perspectival imagery, bringing focus towards the experience of the body moving through space with emphasis on the poetics of construction, materiality, corporeal experience, and details that express craftsmanship, meaning, and emotion. Guided by Kenneth Frampton’s theory of Critical Regionalism with the aim of resisting placelessness, the nature of such tectonic articulation is informed by the context and specificity of a site.

scholarly journals Fragments: A Poetic Approach To Place-Making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Lishak
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Architectural Design ◽  
The Body ◽  
Rational Approach ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Critical Regionalism ◽  
A Site ◽  
Contemporary Architecture

The notion of regional particularity and sensitivity to place remains in constant struggle with the persistent autonomous approach evident in most contemporary architecture, which under the pressures of globalization has paved the path toward commodification and the creation of universal non-places. Meanwhile the decline of craftsmanship within architecture and the perpetual emphasis on visual images and iconic forms continues to undermine human connection to the built environment. The use of Fragments in architectural design involves a distinct understanding of perception of space that takes its theoretical basis in the communicative and situational character of Synthetic Cubism and Picturesque Landscape theory. Brought into an architectural context, these theories work in contrast to the rational approach based on proportion and perspectival imagery, bringing focus towards the experience of the body moving through space with emphasis on the poetics of construction, materiality, corporeal experience, and details that express craftsmanship, meaning, and emotion. Guided by Kenneth Frampton’s theory of Critical Regionalism with the aim of resisting placelessness, the nature of such tectonic articulation is informed by the context and specificity of a site.

scholarly journals Skin to Skin: A Provocative Expression of the Dynamic Relationship Between the Surface of the Body and the Surface of Architecture

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Thomas Ibbotson
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Horizontal Plane ◽  
Ground Plane ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
The Body ◽  
Dynamic Force ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Building Typology ◽  
Skin To Skin ◽  
Contemporary Architecture

<p>It can be argued that modern architecture has expelled the building’s relationship to the ground. Raised on pilotis, modern buildings constructed the platform as an artificial ground plane. Ultimately, the platform was a two-dimensional plane, flattened to aid our transition across the built environment. This horizontal plane merely tolerated inhabitation. Unfortunately the language synonymous with this plane has been extended into contemporary architecture. It is proposed that the rigidity and stability expressed by the surface of the horizontal plane has failed to reflect the body, stimulate interaction, or challenge the inhabitant of architecture. To free the horizontal plane from its rigid axis this thesis aims to break away from the conventional building typology inflicted by modern architecture. As the force of gravity restricts our inhabitation of the built environment to the horizontal plane we directly engage with this surface of architecture. It provokes the question, how can the design of the horizontal plane engage the body and challenge the inhabitant to intensify the experience of architecture? An exploration of the skin-to-skin relationship between the surface of the body and the surface of architecture directs this thesis toward a provocative design exploration and evokes an expressive horizontal plane. To challenge the restrictive conception of architecture’s horizontal plane the program of inhabitation for this design project explores the practice of yoga. Now conceived as a dynamic force, the body can be activated by architecture’s horizontal plane. This surface provides an expressive canvas with the capacity to embody the dynamic movements of yoga. It aids, activates and challenges the participant’s body and amplifies the experience of yoga. An expressive horizontal plane, central to the inhabitation of a yoga centre, generates a dynamic space that provokes a dialogue of interaction between the inhabitant and the surface of architecture. A dynamic plane has emerged.</p>

scholarly journals Where can I cry?: Providing for Emotionality in the Built Environment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Claire Ford
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Architectural Design ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Body ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Emotional Wellbeing ◽  
Design Experiments

<p>Increasingly, research suggests that urban life is characterised by rising levels of distress (Söderström, 2017). We exist in a melee of social, political, cultural and environmental constructs, many of which require individuals to repress emotional expression and experiences. Without consciously doing so, we take cues from the designed environment as to what behaviours should be acted out in that space, and this has a direct impact on our well-being. This thesis explores how the built environment can be designed to support the emotional wellbeing of its occupants.  Current practice addressing well-being predominantly looks at cases of severe mental dysfunction (Söderström, 2017) or designing spaces that privilege physical concerns (Jencks & Heathcote, 2010). The research in this thesis is not directed towards such extreme instances of distress; it focuses on the capacity of designed environments to emotionally enable and empower all building users, taking into account a broad spectrum of emotional expression and responses to space. To accomplish this, existing literary research on emotional well-being is traversed and used to inform a series of design explorations. These aim to discover how the design of space can enable occupants to feel supported; to live their emotional lives with complete agency. A conceptual framework is developed, drawing on philosophy, psychology, sociology, neurology and geography, which informs architectural design experiments that test relationships between the body, the mind, and the architecture we engaged with.  This thesis involves a speculative approach to design research. Using design experiments at multiple scales, this thesis explores the potential of moments in the built environment where people have strong emotional connections to space, in order that a consciously compassionate design approach may be developed. Four architectural briefs are explored at three scales - installation, domestic and public scale - allowing design to inform the research. Each investigation is successive and becomes a testing ground to evaluate and critique the design outcomes prior to it. The design tests also involve progressively more architectural and interactive complexity. This sequence of design tests explores the potential of spaces to empower an inhabitant in architectural space to experience joy and sadness; to directly associate architecture with emotional well-ness.</p>

scholarly journals Enriching Our Understanding of Architecture Through Disability Experience

2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-19
Author(s):  
Ann Heylighen ◽  
Caroline Van Doren ◽  
Peter-Willem Vermeersch
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Disabled Persons ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Museum Design ◽  
The One ◽  
Contemporary Architecture ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between the built environment and the human body is rarely considered explicitly in contemporary architecture. In case architects do take the body into account, they tend to derive mathematical proportions or functional dimensions from it, without explicit attention for the bodily experience of a building. In this article, we analyse the built environment in a way less common in architecture, by attending to how a particular person experiences it. Instead of relating the human body to architecture in a mathematical way, we establish a new relationship between architecture and the body—or a body—by demonstrating that our bodies are more involved in the experience of the built environment than we presume. The article focuses on persons with a sensory or physical impairment as they are able to detect building qualities architects may not be attuned to. By accompanying them during a visit to a museum building, we examine how their experiences relate to the architect's intentions. In attending to the bodily experiences of these disabled persons, we provide evidence that architecture is not only seen, but experienced by all senses, and that aesthetics may acquire a broader meaning. Senses can be disconnected or reinforced by nature. Sensory experiences can be consciously or unconsciously eliminated or emphasized by the museum design and use. Architects can have specific intentions in mind, but users (with an impairment) may not experience them. Attending to the experiences of disabled persons, and combining these with the architect's objectives, provides an interesting view of a building. Our analysis does not intend to criticize the one using the other; rather the combination of both views, each present in the building, makes for a richer understanding of what architecture is.

scholarly journals Our Third Skin

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Charlotte Corbett Hughes-Hallett
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Sensory Deprivation ◽  
Human Action ◽  
The Body ◽  
Interior Architecture ◽  
Fundamental Parameters ◽  
A Site ◽  
Contemporary Architecture ◽  
The Relationship

<p>It can be argued that there is an absence of reverence between contemporary architecture that governs our urban environment and the human body. Current architectural forms are unwittingly unresponsive to the dynamic flow of human action thus realising a denaturalisation of the human body’s transformations. The natural body deliberately expresses itself through reactive and interactive dynamic fluctuations whilst planar verticality and horizontality are qualities that commonly delineate the revered contemporary architecture of our lived realities. This thesis explored the human body as both a metaphorical and literal site. Provoking an investigation into how the body responds to the surface of architecture in an attempt to redefine how the design of architecture can better respond to the body as an active controller for defining space and generating form. This notion elicits the exploration of the relationship between; body and space, body and surface, body and form. By actively trying to understand the fundamental parameters of interior architecture that enhance our experience of being, this thesis is a commentary on how principles of interior architecture can be extracted and adapted to thrive within the ubiquitous realities of the urban environment. This is an effort to return form back to something more intimately attuned to the body’s stature. The motivation of this thesis was to create a design methodology that transitions from concept, to design and reach its realisation – where material enables the abstract intellect of form to be thought. With each phase propelled by the aspiration to better understand the relationship between the biological body and architecture. Following the framework of body space, interaction, and form, the methodology of the thesis has been developed at three scales of immediacy, maturing from the wearable to the inhabitable. The first level of immediacy considered and intuitively explores the body as a ‘site’. By using the biological body and the scale of the body to understand the body as a vessel that both contains and occupies space. The second level of immediacy and scale increased and responded to the intimate expressions of the self upon the surface of architecture. An investigation into how the anatomy of the body responds to the planar and static nature of surface. Actualising an experiential surface that departs from being a flat rigid surface and becomes suppler like an epidermis. Such an architecture that excites and transforms the body that is subject to it. As the methodology manifests the possibility of using the body as a design generative, the third and last level of immediacy is an amalgamation and development upon the previous analyses. The existential dialect between the surface of the body and the surface of architecture generates the contours of a ‘vertical somatic topography’. Site and material are introduced to shift the ephemeral form to reach physical conception through a series of scale models. The chosen site’s organisation and behaviour of material(s) directed and balanced the variations of form. The form creates a new immersive spatial condition that entices passer-byers to rediscover an omitted space in the city. The antithetical form of the installation deconstructs and disturbs the space in which it is presented imposing an affective reaction between body and surface - counteracting the sensory deprivation and suggests a space to slow, ingest, interact, and confer yourself in a moment of realisation of the surrounding architecture’s immobility and insensitivity to the ever dynamic natural body.</p>

scholarly journals Our Third Skin

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Charlotte Corbett Hughes-Hallett
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Sensory Deprivation ◽  
Human Action ◽  
The Body ◽  
Interior Architecture ◽  
Fundamental Parameters ◽  
A Site ◽  
Contemporary Architecture ◽  
The Relationship

<p>It can be argued that there is an absence of reverence between contemporary architecture that governs our urban environment and the human body. Current architectural forms are unwittingly unresponsive to the dynamic flow of human action thus realising a denaturalisation of the human body’s transformations. The natural body deliberately expresses itself through reactive and interactive dynamic fluctuations whilst planar verticality and horizontality are qualities that commonly delineate the revered contemporary architecture of our lived realities. This thesis explored the human body as both a metaphorical and literal site. Provoking an investigation into how the body responds to the surface of architecture in an attempt to redefine how the design of architecture can better respond to the body as an active controller for defining space and generating form. This notion elicits the exploration of the relationship between; body and space, body and surface, body and form. By actively trying to understand the fundamental parameters of interior architecture that enhance our experience of being, this thesis is a commentary on how principles of interior architecture can be extracted and adapted to thrive within the ubiquitous realities of the urban environment. This is an effort to return form back to something more intimately attuned to the body’s stature. The motivation of this thesis was to create a design methodology that transitions from concept, to design and reach its realisation – where material enables the abstract intellect of form to be thought. With each phase propelled by the aspiration to better understand the relationship between the biological body and architecture. Following the framework of body space, interaction, and form, the methodology of the thesis has been developed at three scales of immediacy, maturing from the wearable to the inhabitable. The first level of immediacy considered and intuitively explores the body as a ‘site’. By using the biological body and the scale of the body to understand the body as a vessel that both contains and occupies space. The second level of immediacy and scale increased and responded to the intimate expressions of the self upon the surface of architecture. An investigation into how the anatomy of the body responds to the planar and static nature of surface. Actualising an experiential surface that departs from being a flat rigid surface and becomes suppler like an epidermis. Such an architecture that excites and transforms the body that is subject to it. As the methodology manifests the possibility of using the body as a design generative, the third and last level of immediacy is an amalgamation and development upon the previous analyses. The existential dialect between the surface of the body and the surface of architecture generates the contours of a ‘vertical somatic topography’. Site and material are introduced to shift the ephemeral form to reach physical conception through a series of scale models. The chosen site’s organisation and behaviour of material(s) directed and balanced the variations of form. The form creates a new immersive spatial condition that entices passer-byers to rediscover an omitted space in the city. The antithetical form of the installation deconstructs and disturbs the space in which it is presented imposing an affective reaction between body and surface - counteracting the sensory deprivation and suggests a space to slow, ingest, interact, and confer yourself in a moment of realisation of the surrounding architecture’s immobility and insensitivity to the ever dynamic natural body.</p>

scholarly journals The impact of water in architectural thinking

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-144
Author(s):  
Gábor Heckenast ◽  
Marcel Ferencz ◽  
András Tibor Kertész
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Architectural Design ◽  
Design Method ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Complex Design ◽  
The Future ◽  
Natural Element ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe focus of this research is the connection between architecture and water, how this natural element has formed the way of thinking. To give a complex answer, it is required to observe this complex topic from different aspects: time, space (with macro and micro space typology), meaning, technology, art and architectural design method, which all together can create a network of ideas. This outlined network could provide a theoretical basis for a new complex design method – from the building scale to the urban scale – for the upcoming challenges of built environment in connection with water in the future.

scholarly journals Skin to Skin: A Provocative Expression of the Dynamic Relationship Between the Surface of the Body and the Surface of Architecture

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Thomas Ibbotson
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Horizontal Plane ◽  
Ground Plane ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
The Body ◽  
Dynamic Force ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Building Typology ◽  
Skin To Skin ◽  
Contemporary Architecture

<p>It can be argued that modern architecture has expelled the building’s relationship to the ground. Raised on pilotis, modern buildings constructed the platform as an artificial ground plane. Ultimately, the platform was a two-dimensional plane, flattened to aid our transition across the built environment. This horizontal plane merely tolerated inhabitation. Unfortunately the language synonymous with this plane has been extended into contemporary architecture. It is proposed that the rigidity and stability expressed by the surface of the horizontal plane has failed to reflect the body, stimulate interaction, or challenge the inhabitant of architecture. To free the horizontal plane from its rigid axis this thesis aims to break away from the conventional building typology inflicted by modern architecture. As the force of gravity restricts our inhabitation of the built environment to the horizontal plane we directly engage with this surface of architecture. It provokes the question, how can the design of the horizontal plane engage the body and challenge the inhabitant to intensify the experience of architecture? An exploration of the skin-to-skin relationship between the surface of the body and the surface of architecture directs this thesis toward a provocative design exploration and evokes an expressive horizontal plane. To challenge the restrictive conception of architecture’s horizontal plane the program of inhabitation for this design project explores the practice of yoga. Now conceived as a dynamic force, the body can be activated by architecture’s horizontal plane. This surface provides an expressive canvas with the capacity to embody the dynamic movements of yoga. It aids, activates and challenges the participant’s body and amplifies the experience of yoga. An expressive horizontal plane, central to the inhabitation of a yoga centre, generates a dynamic space that provokes a dialogue of interaction between the inhabitant and the surface of architecture. A dynamic plane has emerged.</p>

scholarly journals Where can I cry?: Providing for Emotionality in the Built Environment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Claire Ford
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Architectural Design ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Body ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Emotional Wellbeing ◽  
Design Experiments

<p>Increasingly, research suggests that urban life is characterised by rising levels of distress (Söderström, 2017). We exist in a melee of social, political, cultural and environmental constructs, many of which require individuals to repress emotional expression and experiences. Without consciously doing so, we take cues from the designed environment as to what behaviours should be acted out in that space, and this has a direct impact on our well-being. This thesis explores how the built environment can be designed to support the emotional wellbeing of its occupants.  Current practice addressing well-being predominantly looks at cases of severe mental dysfunction (Söderström, 2017) or designing spaces that privilege physical concerns (Jencks & Heathcote, 2010). The research in this thesis is not directed towards such extreme instances of distress; it focuses on the capacity of designed environments to emotionally enable and empower all building users, taking into account a broad spectrum of emotional expression and responses to space. To accomplish this, existing literary research on emotional well-being is traversed and used to inform a series of design explorations. These aim to discover how the design of space can enable occupants to feel supported; to live their emotional lives with complete agency. A conceptual framework is developed, drawing on philosophy, psychology, sociology, neurology and geography, which informs architectural design experiments that test relationships between the body, the mind, and the architecture we engaged with.  This thesis involves a speculative approach to design research. Using design experiments at multiple scales, this thesis explores the potential of moments in the built environment where people have strong emotional connections to space, in order that a consciously compassionate design approach may be developed. Four architectural briefs are explored at three scales - installation, domestic and public scale - allowing design to inform the research. Each investigation is successive and becomes a testing ground to evaluate and critique the design outcomes prior to it. The design tests also involve progressively more architectural and interactive complexity. This sequence of design tests explores the potential of spaces to empower an inhabitant in architectural space to experience joy and sadness; to directly associate architecture with emotional well-ness.</p>

The Space of Difference in Law: Inquests into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody

Somatechnics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherene H. Razack
Keyword(s):  
Aboriginal People ◽  
The Body ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Canadian Society ◽  
Aboriginal Community ◽  
Police Custody ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
Clear Sign ◽  
A Site ◽  
Deaths In Custody

Paul Alphonse, a 67 year-old Aboriginal died in hospital while in police custody. A significant contributing factor to his death was that he was stomped on so hard that there was a boot print on his chest and several ribs were broken. His family alleged police brutality. The inquest into the death of Paul Alphonse offers an opportunity to explore the contemporary relationship between Aboriginal people and Canadian society and, significantly, how law operates as a site for managing that relationship. I suggest that we consider the boot print on Alphonse's chest and its significance at the inquest in these two different ways. First, although it cannot be traced to the boot of the arresting officer, we can examine the boot print as an event around which swirls Aboriginal/police relations in Williams Lake, both the specific relation between the arresting officer and Alphonse, and the wider relations between the Aboriginal community and the police. Second, the response to the boot print at the inquest sheds light on how law is a site for obscuring the violence in Aboriginal people's lives. A boot print on the chest of an Aboriginal man, a clear sign of violence, comes to mean little because Aboriginal bodies are considered violable – both prone to violence, and bodies that can be violated with impunity. Law, in this instance in the form of an inquest, stages Aboriginal abjection, installing Aboriginal bodies as too damaged to be helped and, simultaneously to harm. In this sense, the Aboriginal body is homo sacer, the body that maybe killed but not murdered. I propose that the construction of the Aboriginal body as inherently violable is required in order for settlers to become owners of the land.

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