Introduction: Bodies and Buildings in Motion

Abstract

Since antiquity, motion had been a key means of designing and describing the physical environment. During the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, however, individuals across Europe increasingly designed, experienced, and discussed a new world of motion – one characterized by continuous, rather than segmented, movement. This chapter examines the shift from segmented to continuous motion in order to establish the architectural and cultural historical context for the following eight essays. It considers how architects and other authors stressed ever more putting individuals in motion through new types of built spaces and through new approaches to architectural treatises and guidebooks, while writers in other discourses encompassing science, medicine, and philosophy debated movements at all scales from the heliocentric universe to vibrating atoms.