Space and Body :
Architectural Envelopment
Architectural structures provide a space, and the human body is the volume of the space. There is a subtle relationship in which one space is covered by different layers of space. It is like our form is enveloped by clothes, the objects surrounding us, and we are coated by extensive space. I felt the perception of spacial engagement within my body when I entered the center of New York, Manhattan. I was surrounded by skyscrapers, I could not help but to wonder and think that we were all enveloped by the space. These city mountains masked by concrete and steel. I hiked on the roads and I felt the air was choking, compressed. That reminded me of an interesting description of the interaction between architecture and the human body from Heinrich Wolffin. He said: “at length how bodies breathed unevenly in Baroque churches, stretched upward in Gothic cathedral, and relaxed in front of Greek temples.” The other empathized depiction of experience in architecture is that "the body that entered architecture's field of influence was shaken to its bones and stimulated throughout its muscles. Penetrating deep into the inner organs, architectonic irregularity could disrupt blood circulation, and asymmetry could inflict pain as severe as amputation21."What a vivid illustration of the space where we were involved in. The sense of body movement, kinaesthesia, spread out our internal experience and the expansion of actual surroundings when we enter the space. The moving sense of the body will be active according to space and the construction of buildings it is in. At the moment, kinaesthesia leads the body to merge with the whole space; we become the one, sharing the perception and feeling, even the emotions of the space we inhabit together.
21.Edited by Caroline A.Jones, Zeynep Celik, “Kinaesthesia, Sensorium : embodied experience, technology and contemporary art “, 2006
Architectural Envelopment
Architectural structures provide a space, and the human body is the volume of the space. There is a subtle relationship in which one space is covered by different layers of space. It is like our form is enveloped by clothes, the objects surrounding us, and we are coated by extensive space. I felt the perception of spacial engagement within my body when I entered the center of New York, Manhattan. I was surrounded by skyscrapers, I could not help but to wonder and think that we were all enveloped by the space. These city mountains masked by concrete and steel. I hiked on the roads and I felt the air was choking, compressed. That reminded me of an interesting description of the interaction between architecture and the human body from Heinrich Wolffin. He said: “at length how bodies breathed unevenly in Baroque churches, stretched upward in Gothic cathedral, and relaxed in front of Greek temples.” The other empathized depiction of experience in architecture is that "the body that entered architecture's field of influence was shaken to its bones and stimulated throughout its muscles. Penetrating deep into the inner organs, architectonic irregularity could disrupt blood circulation, and asymmetry could inflict pain as severe as amputation21."What a vivid illustration of the space where we were involved in. The sense of body movement, kinaesthesia, spread out our internal experience and the expansion of actual surroundings when we enter the space. The moving sense of the body will be active according to space and the construction of buildings it is in. At the moment, kinaesthesia leads the body to merge with the whole space; we become the one, sharing the perception and feeling, even the emotions of the space we inhabit together.
21.Edited by Caroline A.Jones, Zeynep Celik, “Kinaesthesia, Sensorium : embodied experience, technology and contemporary art “, 2006