Seeking Experience in Architecture: Corporeal Attempts at Perception and Conception

Abstract

This contribution presents the proceedings from a series of transversal university projects, addressing bodily forms of knowledge concerning the perception, inquiry, and conception of architecture. It retraces the phases of different manners of investigation over a threesemester teaching cycle, addressing perceptions and experiences of architectural spaces. The proceedings of, and results from the seminar cycle are documented and framed with an introduction to the applied methods and ways of working as well as their reflection and evaluation. These varying approaches all center around the questions of how to bring body-based and incorporated knowledge concerning architectural space to awareness and how attention to sensual and corporeal ways of perception can be increased. Thus, it investigates how the spectrum of design methods in architecture can be extended in order to actively include bodily forms of knowledge in the anticipation of spatial experience in the design process. The article introduces a concept of »Architecture Imagery« as a way to include bodily ways of knowing and body-based practices in the perception and memory of lived experience and the process of architectural design.