11th EAEA Envisioning Architecture: Design, Evaluation, Communication Conference in 2013

Track 2 | Experiential Simulation | The sensory perception of the built environment

Designing ‘pre-reflective’ architecture

ABSTRACT

To begin with, the question we should be posing when trying to understand how to proceed and think in terms of designing multi-sensory architecture is: what is the nature of perception and how we experience architecture in the first place? This necessity arises from the important occurrence in contemporary architecture - the primacy of vision and visual perception - which has been a determining influence in development of currently widely used design tools, and has been increasingly favoring the conceptual over existential, perceptually based, experience of architecture. Moreover, it continues to strengthen definition of architectural space based on the physical-mathematical spatial conception, while ignoring its anthropological, multi-sensorial dimension. The possibility to make a shift might be found in neurophenomenological approach to architecture, which advocates that a central issue in architectural design should be human experience – how we perceive and understand the built environment. The particularity of this approach lies in combining well-defined phenomenological method of investigating architectural perceptual experiences with compelling evidence-based models from fields like neuroscience, neuroaesthetics, evolutionary psychology, which aims at capturing the invariant structures of experience. Hence, the value of such conclusions can be described as twofold:
a) Firstly, it unquestionably implies that perception is always embodied and enactive, meaning that it is intrinsically multi-modal and inseparable from movement, and since as Steven Holl claims, the only real test of architecture is the enmeshed experience – the body moving through space – understanding and investigating the relations between architectural space and bodily responses, might provide the architects with a set of essential information which could constitute a database of necessary pre-conditions (but naturally, not sufficient) to be used in designing process;
b) Secondly, it informs the architects that architectural design process as a neurological activity and metaphorical thinking is always concerned with image-making, that are perceptually driven, and inherently material, textural and spatial in nature – that is, it raises awareness to be more attentive to the imperfections of the daily used architectural designing and representational tools, and their crucial discordance with phenomenal world, originating in their differently conceived natures.
It is precisely this architects’ attentiveness that should be a starting point for bridging the sensorial gap in design process – ‘pre-reflective’ architecture assumes acquiring knowledge about the profound interdependence of architectural structures and our inherent perceptual experiences based on the nature of the phenomenal body as the true architectural subject. In turn, it provides a necessary, consistent and lived-reality based foundation upon which we can start approximating sensorial perceptions by developing and/or improving various design tools that can only on such basis be considered as to provide the architects with experiential simulations that match the lived, phenomenal reality perceptual experiences of architecture.

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AUTHOR

Andrea Jelić

DRACO – PhD Program in Architecture and Construction – Space and Society, Department of Architecture and Design, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy

Andrea Jelic is a doctoral student at the Faculty of Architecture at the ''Sapienza'' University of Rome. Her current research focuses mainly on the embodied nature of architectural experience and the possibility of body conscious design by thinking architecture in terms of neurophenomenology. She is also interested in the relationship between architecture, philosophy and neurosciences and the implications of cross-disciplinary knowledge for understanding the issues of architectural representation and meaning in architecture, and in particular, their effects in the design of public spaces.

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