THE BODY IN ARCHITECTURE.
DEBORAH HAUPTMANN
Issues surrounding the human body, with its intellectual and sensory capacities are recurring themes in architecture theory. Central to the project of humanism was the organizing of the body, its most spectacular achievement being the creation of a mathematics of seeing for the eye through perspective. Consequently, architectural discourse has dealt with a static concept of the body, an ideal whole, for which sensory and intellectual capacities do not correspond to present-day research in the sciences and aesthetic theories. Departing from these traditional notions, the theoretical disposition of the collection posits that in a contemporary reading on the very notion of body it is necessary to understand that there are many bodies: individual, collective, mystical, corporate, institutional, animal, even the prosthetic body and the ethological body made up of movements of slowness and speed.
The Body in Architecture presents a collection of both theoretical essays and architecture, urban & film based projects. Contributors include M. Christine Boyer, Karsten Harries, Anthony Vidler, Arie Graafland, Stefano Boeri, the video artist Dryden Goodwin and Rem Koolhaas.
