Relationship Between Architecture And The Human Body

Architecture is often mistaken as purely an art form, when in actually it is where art and engineering or art and practicality meet. For example, painting is an art, when preformed well it yields a beautiful picture that evokes a deep human reaction and brings pleasure to its viewer, however this painting provides no function, it cannot shield us from the rain or protect us from the wind or snow, it is purely form. An insulated aluminum shed provides shelter and protection from Mother Nature; however, it is a purely functional building, it was drawn by an engineer, not conceived by an artist to have form. The culmination of form and function is Architecture, the Greeks and Romans fathered this idea and Palladio’s study of roman architecture taught him his valuable truth.

The body has been a key focus in the design world across all history according to Ellen Lupton as people like to build and make things that look like them. It’s also prevalent as objects made come into contact with the skin and at times, act as extensions for the body allowing it to do things it cannot. In her essay Second Skin: new design organics (2006), Lupton discusses the surfaces of objects; from lights, to chairs, and to building materials, acting like skin which allow for a fluctuating understanding of the objects meaning and function. Representing the body in architecture has been a common practice for almost all of architectural history dating back to Vitruvius however Anthony Vidler believes that the practice of architecture is distancing itself further from the body. Sigmund Freud describes this a tradition of body projection which leads to the creation of object-surrogates where one thing represents the other. For example, the telescope as an eye, electrical circuits as a nervous system and a dwelling as the womb . This section of the paper will show how Vidler’s statement is untrue through an analysis of work from the likes of Le Corbusier and Filaret, then, see how it can be extended to FOA’s design of the terminal

Vitruvius also stresses on order, arrangement, eurhythmy, symmetry, propriety and economy and how architecture depends on these demands. This is not the case in today’s society. With advances in physics and construction sciences which allow buildings to be of asymmetrical shape and attain an abstract form directly places it in conflict with his stated ‘Eurhythmy’. To Vitruvius, all facets of architecture were to be in a state of complete harmony, as his views were so constrained towards the perfection of the human body. He described the various proportions of limbs and other body parts to be so accurately symmetrical and coordinated to meticulous detail. This perfection of the human body inspired architectural designs. In contemporary society, mainstream architecture has little to no correlation with the human body. It has been kept completely separate. Architectural inspiration today, more or less stems from everything outside the human, and looks towards a futuristic simplicity and sleek aesthetic that demands a different approach to the art of a building altogether. This commercial mindset has been influential since the engineering breakthroughs of the second millennium.

In the first talk, I remember the point that art and architecture have a direct and important relationship with each other. In order to help understand architecture, I’ve decided to learn more about art itself. So, this essay will analyze and focus on one piece of art in an attempt to really break it down to its core.

Silence is another element that can be married strongly with solitude and time. Tranquility is known to be the most vital auditory experience that is created by architecture. Architecture is known for the presentation of construction drama silenced into matter and space besides gaining definition as the art of terrifying silence . External noise is known to be silenced by architectural experience as it centers interest on an individual’s very own existence. Like any other existing form of art, architecture ensures that an individual is enlightened about fundamental solitude. At one fell swoop, architecture plays the role of isolating individuals from the present situation and permits the individual in this particular scenario to the firm and slow flow of tradition and time. Cities and buildings can also be museums and instruments of time. They also aid us in the observation and comprehension of history’s transition. Architecture also plays the role of linking individuals to the dead; via the built environment individuals are able to picture the somber procession a moving towards a church and the activities within the medieval street. Architectural time is usually detained more so in great buildings where time seems to be on a standstill or pause. So as to experience a

Under the title, Images of Muscle and Bone, Pallasmaa proposes, that there is “an inherent suggestion of action in the images of architecture, the moment of active encounter or a promise of use and purpose.” French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty writes about this active exchange between the human body and the space it occupies by understanding the body as subject and object at once –a mutual engagement between the body as the perceiving subject and the body as the perceived object. Merleau-Ponty uses this dyadic reasoning of body and spatiality to characterize the existential nature of the human-body as “being in the world,” a phrase borrowed from Heidegger –the phenomenological aspect of the phrase comes, not from the world understood as a fixed, unchanging ‘space’ but rather how our bodies correlate with spatial consequence through sensory motility. It is also interesting to note how French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, in his book, The Poetics of Space, describes a human being as a spiraled being who, “from outside, appears to be a well-invested center, will never reach his center. The being of man is an unsettled being which all expression unsettles.” Therefore, we can say that while we measure a building through our kinesthetic senses, architecture has the ability to organize itself around our bodily

The book consists of twelve chapters that propose this idea that designers should explore the nature of our senses’ response to the spatial built forms that people invest their time in. It tries to cover a specific topic in each chapter that in order to deconstruct the book, it is necessary to cover each chapter individually.

As writer, interior designer, educator, and American architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization” (BrainyQuote). The purpose of this paper will deal with the description of...

As suggested by the title, this piece of literature attempts to highlight the importance of sensory experience in architecture. It is indeed a response to what the author terms as ‘ocularcentrism’ of Modern Architecture. Ocularcentrism is the act of prioritizing visual stimuli to all other sensory stimuli available to a human perception. He quotes famous German poet, Goethe, in his defense, “the hands want to see, the

The famous American architect by the name of Frank Lloyd Wright based his designs on what he called “organic architecture”. His philosophy of what modern architecture should be is one as unique as his buildings, but nevertheless he was a pivotal figure in the

(Wickman, 2006) A study has shown that architectural experiences are reviewed as an aesthetic experience due to its layered complexity. The aesthetic experience is always multi-dimensional. Aesthetic experiences are important opportunities for understanding the complex and often ambiguous world in which we live. It can be examined as an embodied or encapsulated experience. Priori experiences color the perception of the aesthetic experience. It is observed that variables of "forms, scale, decor, ruins, music, sounds, scents, qualities of light, gestures, connections with history or literature known to the speaker" greatly affect the aesthetic experience. (Duke,

“ Architecture organizes and structures space for us, and its interiors and the objects enclosing and inhabiting its rooms can facilitate or inhibit our activities by the way they use this language”(Lawson pg.6).

Architecture can be viewed with two different types of properties. Properties that can be seen like shapes, their composition, the spaces they create and, the colours and textures that make up their appearance. These properties are considered to be visual while other properties are considered to be abstract. These properties can only be described using words; the meanings behind the architecture and the stories that can be told about it. The context, its cultural background and its function also affects how we view architecture. The question is, what

The purpose of architecture itself is to improve human life. Due to its extreme environments, living in space or on

Architecture is the physical construct of humanity’s creative processes. Through architecture, one can derive many facts about the society’s values and goals. Furthermore, architecture is art physically anchored to the geographic location it was created in; architecture directly represents the aspirations, socioeconomic status, and technological advances accessible to the creator in their respected time and location (Serageldin, “Architecture and Society”). The communicative abilities of architecture are evident in Gesche Würfel’s collection of art Oppressive Architecture. In this collection, Würfel explores the connection between architecture and oppression during both the periods of American slavery and Germany Nazism (Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh, “Gesche Würfel: Oppressive Architecture”). The two photographs show how the architecture reflected the social constructs present during American Slavery and Nazi Germany. Wüfrfel accomplishes this by using the complexity of design, the layout of the properties, and the use of color in the photographs.