Corporeal Architecture

Abstract

This chapter describes a teaching method, corporeal architecture, which uses performance art and neuroscience to teach interior design and architecture with a focus on embodiment and experience. The method sets new approaches to teach design, as it integrates design, neuroscience, and performance art and brings awareness to the importance of multi-sensory experience. The interaction with design objects at different scales is taken as an opportunity to investigate how the human body relates to space and allow the exploration of affordances through movement. Students are instructed with physical exercises and encouraged to design, build, and perform with objects such as chairs, cabinets and tables, installations, existing buildings, and public spaces. The performances explore narratives which reveal or subvert expectations we have around design objects. The methodology has a background in phenomenology, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Juhani Pallasmaa; Antonio Damásio in neuroscience; and Oskar Schlemmer, Marina Abramovic, and Stelarc in Performance Art.