Phenomenology and Architecture: Examining Embodied Experience and Graphic Representations of the Built Environment

Abstract

AbstractHow do we reconcile the way we represent architectural designs with a real, embodied, experience of a built space? Merleau-Ponty suggests that “The Umwelt marks the difference between the world such as it exists in itself, and the world of a living being. It is an intermediary reality between the world as it exists for an absolute observer and a purely subjective domain.” Yet there is a third condition: the anticipation of the world as it might exist, as visualized in drawings. Architectural drawings are understood as referential and non-autonomous; they are representations of architectural space and form. Yet all modalities of two-dimensional spatial representation are abstractions of physical space and form, and are therefore subject to interpretation. This chapter investigates the relationship between physiological responses in the embodied experience of a built space with the responses evoked when looking at various modes of architectural representation.