Issues of Perception and the Body

Buildings that create an environment for the senses. Design that explores light, visual phenomena, sound, or an analogy with other senses such as taste or smell. Design that creates cinematic views such as quick cuts and tracking shots in three dimensions. Design that engages the body in architectural choreography or composes space like music. Full scale experimental projects that engage the body.

Architects who focus on this issue: Jean Nouvel, Carlo Scarpa, Richard Meier, Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando, Peter Zumthor, Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, Sverre Fehn, Robert Venturi, Mark Hammond (Miami architect), Luis Barrigan, Alvar Aalto, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Edwin Lutyens, Gunnar Asplund, Charles Renee Mackintosh, Guarino Guarini.

Books and Articles:

Ando, Tadao. Seven Interviews with Tadao Ando. Fort Worth, TX: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2002.

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Translated by Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.

Caldwell, Michael. Strange Details. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007.

Campany, David, ed. The Cinematic. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2007.

Gruenelsen, Peter. Soundspace: Architecture for Sound and Vision. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2003.

Holl, Steven. Idea and Phenomena: Exhibition Catalogue Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller, 2002.

———. Steven Holl: Original Writings. Zurich: Artemis, 1993.

Holl, Steven, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto Perez-Gomez. Questions of Perception. San Francisco: William Stout, 2006.

Horwitz, Jamie, and Paulette Singley, eds. Eating Architecture. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2004.

Illich, Ivan. H2o and the Waters of Forgetfulness. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1985.

Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1993.

Jones, Caroline, ed. Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology and Contemporary Art. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2006.

Kahn, Douglas. Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999.

Martin, Elizabeth. Architecture as a Translation of Music. NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Primacy of Perception. Edited by John Wild, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy. Chicago,Ill: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1964.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005.

Ray, Mary-Ann. Seven Partly Underground Rooms and Buildings for Water, Ice and Midgets, Pamphlet Architecture. NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997.

Tavernor, Robert. Smoot's Ear: The Measure of Humanity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.

Treib, Mark. Space Calculated in Seconds: The Philips Pavilion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Zizek, Slavoj. The Parallax View. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2006.

Zumthor, Peter. Atmospheres: Architectural Environments - Surrounding Objects. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006.

———. Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006.