Architecture is a Verb

Description

Architecture is a Verb outlines an approach that shifts the fundamental premises of architectural design and practice in several important ways. First, it acknowledges the centrality of the human organism as an active participant interdependent in its environment. Second, it understands human action in terms of radical embodiment—grounding the range of human activities traditionally attributed to mind and cognition: imagining, thinking, remembering—in the body. Third, it asks what a building does—that is, extends the performative functional interpretation of design to interrogate how buildings move and in turn move us, how they shape thought and action. Finally, it is committed to articulating concrete situations by developing a taxonomy of human/building interactions. Written in engaging prose for students of architecture, interiors and urban design, as well as practicing professionals, Sarah Robinson offers richly illustrated practical examples for a new generation of designers. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents Foreword Preface Acknowledgements 1 Situated Poetics Architecture’s Resistance The Possibility of an Integrated Approach Architecture Is a Verb Radical Embodiment Situated Poetics 2 From Vitruvius to the Resonant Body From Source to Subject Qualitative Measure Le Modulor No Such Thing as Average Situated Bodies Space as Medium Resonant Bodies Sphere Activitatis 3 Extended Organisms—Surrogate Bodies Philosophy of the Organism The Biological and the Physical: Where Do We Draw the Line? Extended Organisms The Primacy of Movement Primordial Techne Inhabiting—The Matrix of Habitual Action 4 Questioning Perception Umwelt and Affordances Niche Construction Neural Plasticity and Epigenetic Change Knowledge Is External Reprogramming Sensory Life Architectural Affordances 5 Constructing Consciousness Consciousness Is Rhythmic The Natural History of Consciousness Art Structures Consciousness The Future Enters Through the Work of Art Laminated Consciousness 6 Taxonomy of Interactions Structures of Consciousness Archaic Consciousness Magic Consciousness Mythical Consciousness Mental-Rational Consciousness Integral Consciousness 7 The Primacy of Breathing Affirming the Breath Empathy and Entrainment The Epistemology of the Skin Cultures of Breathing A Brief Study of Desert Thermal-Cultural Devices Resisting Touching Haptic Perception 8 Homo Faber Resonating Music: A Technology of Bonding Buildings as Musical Instruments Sound as a Building Material Dancing Kinesthetic Awareness Mechanisms of Mutuality Making 9 Collective Dreaming Imagining Complementarity Suspension Metaphor: Patterning Fields Remembering Storytelling Narrative and Self Empathy and Story 10 This Lesser, Rebellious Field Abstracting From Panoptics to Peripheral Vision Learning From the Japanese Garden Framing Thinking Improvisation Nature of the Medium The Bottom-Up/Top-Down Dialectic 11 The Soil of the Sensible Integration Inhabiting Eating Sleeping Being Bored Walking An Architecture of Moments Playing Counterforms Visceral Urbanism Healing 12 Fields of Care: Concluding Thoughts Taxonomy of Interactions Appendix Index