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Conclusion If Vitruvius were a Dancer

Chapter March 2016

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Maria Da Piedade Ferreira

Technische Universitt Kaiserslautern
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Conclusion
If Vitruvius were a Dancer

This chapter presents the final conclusions and identifies paths for
further research. It is shown that it is possible to design objects and
architectural spaces to trigger specific emotions in the users. It also is
demonstrated the effectiveness of such artefacts to influence users
emotions can be verified by quantifiable means and therefore the
hypothesis is confirmed.

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Summary and Conclusions

This thesis was dedicated to the topic of the relationship between

Body and Architecture, in particular taking in consideration the
contemporary scientific view of the body and mind as a whole, what is
generally addressed as the embodied mind theory. The thesis made a
theoretical review on the topic of the human Body based on the study
of the different ways Architecture has accompanied the
transformations that the views on the Body went through, following
the evolution and influence of different disciplines, such as philosophy,
technology, science, religion and art throughout Western history. This
thesis proposed that contemporary challenges brought by the digital
age have had direct influence in many areas of knowledge, particularly
through the advances in fields related to study of the brain, such as
neurosciences and neurobiology. This thesis shows, I would argue, that
such advances shouldnt be ignored by architects, since architecture as
a discipline is presented with an opportunity to re-think itself and its
approaches to design and teaching. Methodologies of emotion
measurement have demonstrated to be helpful in evaluating the
effectiveness of design objects and architectural settings to influence
the human body emotionally or, in other words, in touching or
moving it, as experimental results described in the previous chapter
suggest.

Contemporary studies in the social and political sciences fields

relate the extreme use of digital technologies to a collective sense of
dissatisfaction with the built environment and the incapacity of
architecture today to gather people and offer them a meaningful
experience of individual and collective spaces.

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Alberto Prez Gmez states in his last article, Architecture: a performing
art, that the origins of architecture are profoundly related to ritual
and refers to the role of the architect in ancient Greece and Rome as
the director of performances, not only in the theatrical sense, but in
the sense that it is through his actions, by directing others to use the
best of their skills and creativity towards the common good. Prez-
Gmez is concerned with the ethical role of the architect, especially
in a culture in which many times the value of a building or an idea is
communicated mostly through an image. Prez-Gmez blames 19th
centurys legacy, when representation of Architecture began to be
valued almost as much as the constructed work.
This poses an interesting paradox, since we now know from
neurosciences that what is communicated to us through visual images
triggers in our brain almost the same sensations as if we experienced
the event directly. At the same time, it is also now known that
multisensory experiences play a very important part in the learning
and creative process and that the lack of direct sensory stimuli is
responsible for illness. The author of this thesis was aware of the
complexity of such topics and the research process became even
more challenging, as the economic crisis in Portugal limited
considerably the means to conduct the research and prompted a
change in approach to the topic.
In the beginning of the research process there was a clear
interest in experimenting with advanced technology, especially with
the promise of getting data such as emotions into quantifiable means.
As the experimental work had to be developed with many restrictions
and reduced means, one could realize that it is possible conduct
research on emotion measurement of architectural spaces or design
objects, using only analogical means such as the SAM chart, the

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Presence Questionnaire, and real-life models instead of virtual reality
simulations.

Within this context, the thesis proposed a methodology based on

performance arts, which explores the use of embodied practices in
design education with the active creative participation of students in
the design and fabrication of objects, architectural models, and 1:1 scale
architectural settings. Such a methodology aimed to test how it is
possible to influence users emotions through architectural space, as the
thesis argued that this can be achieved through a process of empathy
between the users body and the surrounding space. To demonstrate
this claim, a set of experiments were undertaken in the context of
architectural teaching and the results of such experiments were
evaluated through the analysis of quantitative data collected by emotion
measurement tools and qualitative data gathered using questionnaires.

One of the conclusions regarding the experiments described in this

thesis is that contemporary science still accepts that the human body is
the most fine and precise evaluation tool of an object, a model, or an
architectural or urban space. It is for this reason that it is important to
include it in any experiments that aim to analyze the emotional
experience of architectural space methodologies. These include the
Presence Questionnaire and the SAM chart, which address directly the
subjective, emotional experience of each subject through precise and
well-established parameters. Also, as any certified physician would
probably agree, biometric technologies do not replace a talk and direct
observation of a patient to establish a comprehensive diagnosis, despite
being increasingly accurate.

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What an electrocardiogram may express as a strongly beating heart
does not necessarily refer to a malfunction of a body, but to its
current state which might be induced by internal or external factors,
or be chronic or temporary in nature. Human interaction is still
fundamental for a comprehensive diagnosis, especially regarding
psychological issues. As Mallgrave tells us, new knowledge is brought
up everyday in areas of research, such as neurosciences, but there still
is a lot of uncertainty about the workings of the brain, especially
regarding the field of emotional experience of architectural space.

Experimental results were effective in demonstrating that it is

possible to consciously induce certain emotional states in a user or to
analyze how specific environments affect their users. Understanding
this mechanism, I believe, is a useful way for becoming a better
designer, especially nowadays that the understanding of human mind
promises to be almost at hands-reach. Nonetheless, only through
constant research and especially design practice, one can actively
work to improve the quality of the built environment. Most
importantly, I firmly believe that it is not the architects role to dictate
how a dweller should feel, by leading her/his actions through designs
that follow a specific ideological program, as discussed in Chapter 7,
and as was the case with the architecture of both the National-
Socialists and the Soviets.

The role of the architect is to provide, as best as possible,

places where comfort, health, imagination and happiness might
happen and to make such spaces come to reality through cooperation
with users, craftsmen and builders.

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Vitruvius states that architectural space is a clearing in the forest that
makes possible language and culture, one that will eventually become the political
space of the city 1.

Contributions

As originally intended in the PhD proposal, the research carried out

for this thesis resulted in a diverse set of contributions, which emerged
from the exploration of solutions for the research problem. The
paragraphs below list and describe the main and complementary
contributions of this thesis and the possibilities for further
development, which the author is already working on and plans to
continue exploring in the near future.
On a primary level, the main contributions are the following:

- Within the scientific realm, a qualified assessment of users emotional

response to simulated architectural spaces and design objects, based on
the analysis of psycho-physiological data collected by emotion
measurement and biometric tools (quantitative), as well as in
questionnaires (qualitative) in the course of experiments done in a
multidisciplinary architectural education context.;

- an overview of the topic of the human body based on the current

paradigm of the embodied mind, which can be of interest to raise
awareness on the need to include such knowledge in design guidelines
and building regulations;

1 M.P. Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, trans. I.D. Rowland and T.N. Howe
(Cambridge UK, 2001), p. 34.

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- a historical review of works of architecture that explored
corporeality as a way of connecting both physically and emotionally,
with the user while moving through space and which can still be used
today as examples offering important possibilities for exploration
through design;
- the description, illustration and evaluation of a set of experiments
involving the use of biometric and emotion measurement data with
the goal of evaluating the users engagement and psycho-
physiological reaction to design objects and architectural spaces;

- a reflection on the role of corporeal extensions and restrictions,

such as design objects, tools, clothing, vehicles or architectural
spaces, as instruments for conditioning the human body and,
therefore, as active participants in the users assessment and shaping
of reality.

On a secondary level, the research work developed for this thesis

brought about other complementary contributions, namely:

- Within the architectural realm, the discovery and suggestion of new

possibilities for architects to use a classical topic, such as the
human body, to address their design interests, taking advantage of
the new knowledge brought by the study of the human brain;

- the demonstration that the use of somaesthetics and, more

specifically, of practices from performance art, in the teaching of
architecture can be of interest to raise awareness on the importance
of designing from an embodied perspective and thinking about the
well-being of users;
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- Within the artistic realm, the creation of a shape grammar that
permits composing and notating the movement of the human body
and relating it to space, opening up the possibility of its use also for
choreographic purposes, but also for implementing practices from
performance art in the teaching of architecture and design;

- Within the academic realm, the proposal of strategies to implement a

corporeal approach to the use of both analogic and digital tools, such
as drawing, model making, and CAD/CAM technologies, expanding
their potential to support a holistic approach to design, overcoming
current design limitations and matching contemporary society
concerns;

Outlook on Further Research

The research developed in the course of this thesis left behind

some possibilities for further work. For instance, there were no
experiments undertaken in virtual settings. The author considers that it
would be scientifically useful to apply the same methodology to
experiments in virtual settings, specifically to compare the emotional
response of users in virtual simulations of existing architectural spaces
with their responses in the real versions of such spaces. Within the
immersive approach to the experience of architecture and urban spaces,
some possibilities for further research are listed below:

- Creating virtual immersive spaces by 3D-laser-scanning physical

architectural models;
- Creating virtual immersive spaces by 3D-laser-scanning existing
architectural spaces;
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- Analysis of movement in architectural spaces and users interaction
with design objects;
- Psycho-physiological evaluation of simulated motion in space and
cinematic experience;
- Incorporation of psycho-physiological equipment in an educational
design context;
- Developing building design guidelines based on psycho
physiological data collected in experiments.

Ending Note

According to Prez-Gmez, Vitruvius speaks of the

architecture of the theatre, where performance takes place, as a
cathartic event, not merely as a building or a construction of an
object. He continues this ideas saying that Drama in Greek and Roman
theatre was experienced as a tight weaving of temporality and spatiality that
aligned human action with the purposeful movements of the cosmos ()
participating in the emotionally charged direction of the plot, the spectators grasped
answers to fundamental human questions and attained a heighted self-
understanding.2
In what architectural education is concerned, I believe that
this is the time to re-think the importance that corporeal training and
performance art had in the avant-garde, such as in the pedagogy of
the Bauhaus, and the tradition that involved architects

2 PREZ-GMEZ, Alberto (2012). Architecture, a performing Art: two

analogical reflections. In Online Review of Architecture, Architektur N in
http://www.architecturenorway.no/questions/histories/perez-gomez-
performance/ accessed on in 07/11/2013

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with craftsmen, which allowed them learning how to value their work
not as mechanical manual work but as embodied knowledge. I agree
with Prez-Gmez and I believe that such embodied knowledge should
not only be learned at university but searched for in practice
continuously.
As Oskar Niemeyer said in an interview few months prior to his
death, it is life that inspires architecture and not architecture that dictates life 3.
I agree with this statement in the sense that it is through the direct
engagement with students, collaborators and clients and their collective
participation as creative individuals that architects can truly perform
their duty or their call to the profession, as ambassadors of culture and
builders of collective knowledge.
But most importantly, it is through constant study of contemporary
possibilities that an architect can understand and integrate in her/his
practice knowledge that leads to a better understanding of human
emotional needs and how architecture can response to them, nowadays
and in the future.

3The author apologises but it was not possible to trace back the reference of Oskar
Niemeyers interview.

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