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In the Realm of the Senses: A research Towards

a Corporeal Architecture

Conference Paper June 2009

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Maria Da Piedade Ferreira

Technische Universitt Kaiserslautern
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 In the Realm of the Senses:
A research Towards a Corporeal Architecture

Maria da Piedade Ferreira PhD Student

Lisbons Technical University. Portugal

Keywords

body architecture new media embodied mind virtual reality immersion

corporeal memory generative design artificial life

Abstract

This paper is the summary of an on going PhD thesis, which research focuses on
the relationship between body, architecture and new media, concerning space as the
place for individuation and body as its medium. The main approach is to understand the
mechanisms underlying experience as embodied conscience and emotion as a
fundamental part of cognitive processes.
As virtual reality blurs with real space, its urgent to understand its impact
on contemporary living, in what concerns the body as an adaptive complex system, and
its health as an organism, depending on sensory stimulation, both physically and
mentally. Architecture could incorporate this technology to its analogical processes,
developing a more intelligent, adaptive and responsive design,Corporeal Architecture.
A corporeal experience of space would be achieved by users sensory
stimulation, triggering brain and memory processes intentionally, and so conditioning
space interpretation at a physical and conscious level but also at a subliminal or
subconscious level, just as kinematic or computer gamming experiences, so developing
dwelling to a realm of immersion, surpassing the disembodied existence provided by
the abuse of new media, like the internet. In design, one could unfocus on visual stimuli
as the main perceptive mechanism, as kinaesthesia and kinetics are acknowledged to
function as very powerful sensory stimulators.
The current investigation has been trying to develop a tool that incorporates an
algorithmic synthesis of the human body, transferring biomechanical processes such as
movement into digital information, similarly as the method used in artificial life
studies and robotics. The hypothesis to be tested further is that if this kind of approach
to architectural design could be useful as interpretative and generative of design tools,
as a way of exploring new geometries and thus testing a new type of users cognitive
response while virtually experiencing space, housing his body, imagination and
dreams1.

1
PALLASMAA, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Academy Press. 2005.

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