The Evolution of Objectifying Body in Architecture: From Anthropomorphism to the Phenomenal Body

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Art University of Tehran

Abstract

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Art University of Tehran
The issue of human body has always been a concern throughout the history, having gone through various interpretations, and manifesting itself in architecture in a variety of ways. Today, we criticise the one-dimensional approach of designers to the body, particularly the emphasis on its objectivity, which seems to be influenced by the anthropomorphic views that attribute the human characteristics including human body to all areas of human thought and action including architecture.
The present study intends to analytically reread the undeniable relationship between body and architecture, as discussed in philosophy, sociology, art, and architecture. An investigation is, therefore, made about various narratives, together with an analysis of prevalent interpretations of the body – from the ‘objective body’ to the ‘phenomenal body’ – and how they are evolved. The results show that the confrontation of architectural thought with the objectifying of the body has led to the phenomenological ‘embodiment’. However, despite shifts in the interpretation of the body through lived experience, the body continues to be viewed anthropomorphically, and translated into the geometric, the formal and the numerical.

Keywords


آرنهایم، رودلف، هنر و ادراک بصری، روان‌شناسی چشم خلاق، ترجمۀ مجید اخگر، تهران: سمت، 1386.
پالاسما، یوهانی، چشمان پوست، معماری و ادراکات حسی، ترجمۀ رامین قدس، تهران: پرهام نقش، 1393.
خبازی کناری، مهدی و صفا سبطی. «بدنمندی در پدیدارشناسی هوسرل، مرلوپونتی و لویناس»، در مجلۀ حکمت و فلسفه، دورۀ ۱۲، ش ۳ (پاییز 1395)، ص 75-98.
رامین، فرح و راضیه شفیعی و حسین حسینی امین. «رابطه نفس و بدن از منظر دکارت و مرلوپونتی»، در فصلنامۀ نقد و نظر، ش ۹۱ (پاییز ۱۳۹۷)، ص ۱۰۸-۱۳۱.
شکری، محمد. «هوسرل، مرلوپونتی و مفهوم تن»، در مجلۀ حکمت و فلسفه، ش ۲ (تابستان 1391)، ص 41-56.
صابری نجف‌آبادی، ملیحه. «بررسی تحلیلی تطوّر مفهوم نفس از افلاطون تا ملاصدرا»، در مجلۀ تأملات فلسفی، ش ۱ (بهار 1388)، ص 1۲۵-1۰۲.
لو‌ بروتون، داوید. جامعه‌شناسی بدن، ترجمۀ ناصر فکوهی، تهران: نشر ثالث، 1396.
کاپلستون، فردریک چارلز. تاریخ فلسفه، جلد ۶، ترجمۀ اسماعیل سعادت و منوچهر بزرگمهر، تهران: علمی و فرهنگی، 1375.
فروتن، منوچهر، و سیامک پناهی و حسن ابراهیمی اصل. «شناخت مؤلفۀ پارالاکس و ریشه‌یابی آن در فلسفۀ استیون هال»، در مجلۀ باغ نظر، ش ۵۰ (مرداد 1396)، ص 65-74.
مالگریو، هری فرانسیس. مغز معمار، علوم اعصاب خلاقیت و معماری، ترجمۀ کریم مردمی و سیما ابراهیمی، تهران: هنر معماری قرن، 1395.
نصر، سیدحسین. دین و نظام طبیعت، ترجمۀ محمدحسن فغفوری، تهران: حکمت، 1384.
نورمحمدی، سوسن. «جایگاه انسان در تحوّل معنای فضای معماری در قرن نوزدهم و بیستم»، در صفه، ش ۵۳ (تابستان ۱۳۹۰)، ص ۲۱۰-۱۹۷.
هیل، جاناتان. مرلوپونتی برای معماران، ترجمۀ، گلناز صالح کریمی، تهران: کتاب فکر نو، 1396
 
Bloomer, K & C. Moore. Body, Memory and Architecture, Newhaven: Yale University Press, 1977.
Bordo, Susan. The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture, New York: Stat university of New York press, 1987.
Buse, Christinab & S.J. Nettleton & D. Martin & J. Twigg. “Imagined Bodies: Architects and Their Constructions of Later Life”, in Ageing & Society, Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp. 1435-1457
De Solà-morales, Ignasi. “Absent Bodies”, in Cynthia C. Davidson (ed.), Anybody, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1997, pp. 18-24.
Dewey, John. Art as Expression, New York: Minton, Balch & Co, 1934.
Feuerstein, Marcia. “Body and Building inside the Bauhaus’s Darker Side, on Oskar Schlemmer”, in Body and Building: Essays on the Changing Relation of Body and Architecture, The MIT Press, 2002, pp. 226-236.
Frampton, Kenneth. Studies in Techtonic Culture, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995.
Franck, Karen A. & R. Bianca Lepori. Architecture from the Inside out: from the Body, the Senses, the Site and the Community, Academy Press, 2007.
Franscari, Marco. “A Tradition of Architectural Figures: A Search for Vita Beata”, in Body and Building, 2002, pp. 258-267.
________ . The Body and Architecture in the Drawings of Carlo Scarpa, Vol 14, Anthropology and Aesthetics, Published in association with the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 1987.
Hajamaideen, Faris. Body, Soul, and Architecture: A Study of the Premodern Islamic and Western Traditions, Doctoral thesis in philosophy, The University of Adelaide, 2014
Hamraie, Aimi. “Universal Design as a New Materialist Research Practice”, in Disability Studies Quarterly, 2012
Hight, Christopher. Architectural Principles in the Age of Cybernetics, Psychology Press, 2008
Himmelblau, Coop. Die Faszination der Stadt, The Power of the City, Georg Büchner, Darmstadt, 1968.
Horn, Marilyn J. & Lois M. Gurel. The Second Skin: An Interdisciplinary Study of Clothing, Boston: Houghton Miffl in Company, 1981
Imrie, Rob. “Architects’ Conception of the Human Body”, in Environment and planning D: Society and Space, Vol. 21, Issue 1, 2003, pp. 47-65.
Lambert, Leopold. “A Subversive Approach to the Ideal Normatized Body”, in The Funambulist, 2015. URL1
________ . “The Modernist Ideology of a Normative Body”, in The Funambulist, 2011. URL2
Le Corbusier. The Modulor, Reprinted, Germany: Birkhäuser, 2004.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space, London: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991.
Mallgrave, Harry Francis. Embodiment and Architecture, Routledge, 2013.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. “The Intertwining – The Chiasm”, in The Visible and the Invisible, translated by Alphonso Lingis, Northwestern University Press,1968, pp. 130-155.
________ . The Visible and the Invisible, Northwestern University Press, 1968.
Morris, David. The Sense of Space, State University of New York Press, 2013.
Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, ‎ Academy Press, 2005.
________ . The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture, ‎Wiley, 2009.
Pérez-Gómez, Alberto & Stephen Parcell. Chora1: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994.
Porter, Tom. The Architect’s Eye: Visualization and Depiction of Space in Architecture, London: E & FN Spon, 1997.
Rakatansky, Mark. “The Gestic Body of Architecture”, in Journal of Philosophy and the Visual Arts, London, 1993, pp.70-79.
Rykwert, Joseph. The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture, The MIT Press, 1998.
Synnott, Anthony. The Body Social, Routledge, 1993.
Teyssot, Georges. Prosthetic Architecture: An Environment for the Techno-body, Unbekannter Einband, 2004.
Tschumi, Bernard. Architecture and Disjunction, Cambridge, 1994.
Van HercK, K. & L. De Cauter. “Het Lichaam van de Architectuur: van Antropomorfisme tot Ergonomie”, in Dat Is Architectuur: Sleutelteksten uit de Twintigste Eeuw, Rotterdam, 2004, pp.736-754
Vesely, Dalibor. “The Architectonics of Embodiment”, in Body and Building, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2002, pp. 28-43.
Vidler, Anthony. “The Building in Pain: The Body and Architecture in Postmodern Culture”, in AA Files, No. 19, 1990, pp. 3-10.
________ . The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1992.
Von Meiss, Pierre. Elements of Architecture, from Form to Place + Tectonics, EPFL Press, 2013.
Von Simson, Otto Georg. The Gothic Cathedral, Princeton University Press, 1988.
Zumthor, Peter & Mari Lending. A Feeling of History, Verlag Scheidegger and Spiess, 2018.
URL1:https://thefunambulist.net/architectural-projects/architectural-theories-a-subversive-approach-to-the-ideal-normatized-body
URL2:https://thefunambulist.net/architectural-projects/architectural-theories-the-modernist-ideology-of-a-normative-body