(First presented at the 1997 Northeast Regional Conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture in Buffalo, New York.)

Copyright, 1997: Christopher K. Egan

"...even when I am in a strange city and am struck by the oddity of the dress of the people or the strangeness of the architecture of their houses, there is nonetheless the aspect of familiarity. These are still people; those are still houses; I am still an embodied being, with a conscious sense of my own weight, a sense of the forces of gravity acting on me and other objects; I have an inner sense of my bodily parts and their positions."¹

John Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind

The scholar’s twin tasks are to identify principles while exposing false assumptions. We burrow into the dense terrain of architecture in search of material for constructing theoretical frameworks; and yet the closer we get to fundamental principles, the more elusive they appear. At times it seems there is nothing true in architecture, that any element which claims the status of principle is simply a cleverly disguised assumption or delusion. And yet there may be at least one principle which can be used with some certainty in the construction of a working theory. This paper suggests that the human body provides a sound foundation for architectural thought and practice. First it will examine the status of the body in contemporary thought. Next it will explore insights from theatrical design. Finally it will consider the body as a determinant of architectural form, using design studio work.

"...The body is a transducer, a device that converts energy of one sort to energy of another sort, and that is its genius. Our bodies take mechanical energy and convert it to electrical energy....When Walt Whitman said: ‘I sing the body electric,’ he didn't know how prescient he was. The body does indeed sing with electricity, which the mind deftly analyzes and considers."²

Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

To build in consciousness requires detours into other disciplines, and to construct sound theory requires journeys into philosophy. The body, its nature and its relation to the mind, has preoccupied philosophers since the origins of curiosity and consciousness. If, as Democritus observed, all knowledge arrives through the body’s sensory system, then mind is ensnared by the body and is incapable of thought outside the body’s limitations. Bertrand Russell reviewed the question in his 1948 book Human Knowledge:

"The distinction between mind and matter, which was not drawn sharply by the pre-Socratics, became emphatic in Plato, in whom it was connected to religion. Christianity took over this aspect of Platonism, and made it the basis of much theological dogma. Soul and body were different substances; the soul was immortal, while the body decayed at death.....The Cartesians increased the absoluteness of the distinction, by denying all interaction between mind and matter. But their dualism was succeeded by Leibniz’s monadology, according to which all substance are souls and what we call ‘matter’ is only a confused perception of many souls."³

Much of the philosophical discourse has taken place within the battleground of the "mind-body problem," articulated by Rene Descartes. Psychologist Peter Gray describes Descartes’ view: "The body is a purely physical ‘machine’, which operates according to natural laws and can be understood through the means of science. The soul, on the other hand, is a spiritual entity, characterized by free will rather than obedience to natural laws, and it cannot be understood through the means of science."⁴ Having clarified Descartes’ formulation, Gray explains the major flaw: "As a philosophy it stumbles on the question of how a nonmaterial entity (the soul) can have a material effect (move the body), or how the body can follow natural laws and at the same time be moved by a soul that does not follow natural laws."⁵ One issue within the mind-body problem is the tension between objectivity and subjectivity. Theory aspires to a discourse with meaning beyond the individual, but the data for our discourse is acquired through hopelessly subjective perception. Bertrand Russell discussed the nature of objective fact:

"There are well-known methods of strengthening or weakening the force of individual testimony; certain methods are used in the law courts, somewhat different ones are used in science. But all depend upon the principle that some weight is to be attached to every piece of testimony, for it is only in virtue of this principle that a number of concordant testimonies are held to give a high probability. Individual precepts are the basis of all our knowledge, and no method exists by which we can begin with data which are public to many observers."⁶

This is particularly troublesome for psychology, which attempts to apply the presumably objective tools of scientific method to an inherently subjective topic: our own consciousness and behavior. The scientific method, which depends on verifiable experiment, studies complex systems by examining component parts; but human consciousness does not present itself at the laboratory door in convenient parcels. Philosopher and psychologist William James understood the futility of studying consciousness in finite fragments of objective fact; he realized that consciousness is deeply layered and interwoven within our entire being. Instead, he chose to study broad functions, even if they crossed the boundaries of bodily systems. Unlike his 19th century contemporaries, James embraced introspection as a tool, despite its subjective nature. By accepting the interiority of consciousness, James accepted the central status of the body-bound mind.⁷

One of the most precise discussions of the mind-body relationship is the 1992 book The Rediscovery of the Mind by Berkeley philosopher John Searle. Searle refutes the quest for external objectivity, and legitimizes the body-centered nature of consciousness, echoing William James' introspective method. His introduction frames the question: "One of the hardest - and most important - tasks of philosophy is to make clear the distinction between those features of the world that are intrinsic, in the sense that they exist independent of any observer, and those features that are observer relative, in the sense that they only exist relative to some outside observer or user."⁸ To clarify this distinction he contrasts the physical fact of an object with its culturally determined use:

"For example, that an object has a certain mass is an intrinsic feature of the object. If we all died, it would still have that mass. But that the same object is a bathtub is not an intrinsic feature; it exists only relative to users and observers who assign the function of bathtub to it. Having mass is intrinsic, but being a bathtub is observer relative, even though the object both has mass and is a bathtub. That is why there is a natural science that includes mass in its domain, but there is no natural science of bathtubs."⁹

Searle reverses the usual supposition that mechanisms like consciousness can be ignored as observer-relative, while mechanisms like computation are more trustworthy. Instead, Searle argues that, because mind is a function of body, consciousness is intrinsic to the mind, and subjectivity is an objective fact.¹⁰

Without minimizing consciousness, Searle returns the body to its central role, writing: "The famous mind-body problem, the source of so much controversy over the past two millennia, has a simple solution....Mental phenomena are caused by neurophysiologic processes in the brain and are themselves features of the brain."¹¹ It is absurd to discuss human thought outside the context of the body and its systems. However the body is not a static armature for thought; the process of enculturation through language and experience modifies and completes the body’s systems. Developmental psychology reveals that the brain’s neural networks are only finalized by use within the cultural experiences of chilhood.¹² Anthropologist Clifford Geertz observed that, "...culture, rather than being added on, so to speak, to a finished or virtually finished animal, was ingredient, and centrally ingredient, in the production of the animal itself."¹³ He concluded that, "We are, in sum, incomplete or unfinished animals who complete or finish ourselves through culture."¹⁴ And yet, culture is itself one of the body’s evolutionary tools, so that perception, language, thought, beliefs, are all shaped by their origins in the body and its capacity for adaptation. The body is the ground for all human phenomena, even those most transcendent.

"I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged."¹⁵

Peter Brook, The Empty Space

In the first of his ten books on architecture, Vitruvius listed subjects which the architect must study, including among them medicine, music, and philosophy. I suggest we add choreography to his list. From the performing arts we learn the centrality of the human body.¹⁶ All theatre artists focus their work on creating a moment when the actor and audience interact in theatrical space. The theatre’s tools and spectacle are at the service of the moment when one human, the performer, produces an effect in another human, the audience, while both are bodily present in one highly charged space and time. The literary view of drama is backwards: "Drama begins with action and spectacle; the deed comes before the word, the dance before the dialogue, the play of body before the play of mind."¹⁷ The scene designer's work is not an independent work of art; instead its purpose is collaborative, to provide a spatial context for the embodied dramatic action. Peter Brook, former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, described the theatrical designer’s task in words equally applicable to architecture:

"I have often found that the set is the geometry of the eventual play, so that a wrong set makes many scenes impossible to play, and even destroys many possibilities for the actors.... What is necessary...is an incomplete design; a design that has clarity without rigidity; one that could be called ‘open’ as against ‘shut’. This is the essence of theatrical thinking: a true theatre designer will think of his designs as being all the time in motion, in action, in relation to what the actor brings to a scene as it unfolds. In other words, unlike the easel painter, in two dimensions, or the sculptor in three, the designer thinks in terms of the fourth dimension, the passage of time - not the stage picture, but the stage moving picture."¹⁸

The theatrical designer often begins, not with physical form, but with the occupiable void: the initial gesture is to design the arrangements and patterns of human movement, to choreograph the actors’ movements and spatial relationship. Platforms, ramps, and scenery are then designed to enable those movements and spatial relationships to unfold in theatrical space. I suggest that in the same way, the first gesture of architecture is to choreograph human action in space. Architectural form, organization, and construction are simply the armature for the body’s actions, a setting for the human drama.

"...the choice of the units of measure, as defined by successive civilizations on earth, is not in the least arbitrary....Man needed a unit of measure not only to allow him to size up his own creative work, but also to allow him to size up nature’s creation around him in comparison with his own size, and in relation with his own strength....It was only natural that he should find the answer in the dimensions of his own body..."¹⁹

Paul Grillo, Form Function and Design

The making of architecture begins when the human body "takes place." Before there is a drawing, there is the need for one or more humans to articulate and occupy space, whether the space is intended as the setting for actions, as storage for belongings, or as the locus of symbols and aspirations. For this reason, architecture belongs more properly among body-centered theatrical arts than in its traditional setting among the visual arts. Visual perception assumes distance between viewer and object; it is the body’s best tool for examining the world beyond our hand. With architecture, however, distance typically disappears. Our relationship to architecture is the reverse of our relationship to visual art: instead of looking at the work from outside, we physically go into the work, touching its inner surfaces and occupying its void. Architecture encloses us; it changes the temperature of the air on our skin; it modifies the sounds we hear; it establishes the character of interpersonal discourse. We sit on low walls, lean against columns, or read a book in a window's embrace. Although the architect's drawing may resemble that of the visual artist, the genesis of architecture is found in the body’s need for space. I suggest that the architect's initial act is to choreograph the movements of the human body, and only then to demarcate the spaces need to accommodate these movements.

Recent projects by my students at UTSA and at Catholic University’s Summer Institute of Architecture establish the body as the origin of architectural space. First, students measure their own bodies. One purpose of this study is to search for systems of proportion within the body, in a tradition at least as old as Vitruvius. Another purpose is to develop a set of regulating lines, in plan and section, which might be used as the armature for developing occupiable space. The emphasis is less on dimensions within the body and more on the dimension of useful planes and edges. When this study is complete, the students have model, plan, and section of a spatial latticework whose lines trace the edges of potentially occupiable space.

The next phase is to introduce action. Students design a personal ritual, based on a slice of daily routine. The intent is to focus precise attention on simple bodily actions, much as the Japanese tea ceremony is the sacralization of a simple act. Students develop their rituals both analytically and poetically. At the end of this phase, students have three versions of their ritual: a quantitative numerical program statement, plan and section drawings of the bodily actions required for each component of the ritual, and a short story to evoke the qualitative nature of the ritual and the space.

The studio borrows an analytical tool suggested by calculus, which is essentially a means for studying complex movement by cutting it into finite slices of time. Nineteenth century photographer Edward Muybridge used sequential photographs to analyze the body’s movement in space, in a manner similar to calculus. Like the architect, Muybridge used orthographic projection to maintain a Cartesian analytical grid. One disadvantage of his method, the need to use different images for each fragment of time, was overcome by the Italian futurists Giacomo Balla and Umberto Boccioni. Their work fulfilled Marinetti’s call for, "...the ephemeral and the swift."²⁰ Like Muybridge they sliced time and movement into fragments, but in painting they could combine the multiple slices into one dynamic image. Later in the mid-twentieth century the MIT physicist Thomas Edgerton combined the analytical rigor of Muybridge with the dynamism of the Futurists. His photographs capture, in the analytical format of scaled orthographic projection, the beauty, complexity and richness of the moving human body. We have only begun to utilize this analytical tool in the studio, although we are beginning to incorporate stroboscopic photography and video in order to analyze movement. The studio project culminates with the design of an architectural setting for the body’s ritualized movement.

Before concluding, two points must be clarified. First, although I propose a shift of emphasis away from the visual arts, vision remains an important component of the body’s response to architecture, and is our primary tool for experiencing the world beyond the reach of our hands.

Second, for pedagogical purposes the studio methodology is admittedly biased towards the making of specialized space. In practice we must recall Peter Brook’s admonition to create "unfinished" space in which many kinds of actions might take place. Architects often feel the need to fill their spaces with construction, or gardens, or furniture. They seem to feel that architecture is empty until it is filled with their work. I believe that architects should learn from the theatrical designer: space is not empty, it is filled with the potential for use. Or, as Peter Brook would suggest, the "empty space" is the truly useful space. If a stage designer fills the stage with objects, the dancers have fewer opportunities for movement; and when the architect fills a space with objects, it can no longer be used by people. Architectural space is not a void which must be filled by the architect in order to be meaningful; instead, the space can have deeper meaning when it is left incomplete, because then it is open to completion through human use. When the architect resists the temptation to fill space, when the architect exercises restraint and creates unfinished space, architectural space can become "holy" space, and "wholly" space, filled with unlimited possibilities.

Having made these clarifications, the argument remains that architecture is first and foremost the shaping of spaces which the human body can occupy. The human body is the central fact of architecture. From philosophy we learn that the body is the ground for perception, consciousness, culture, and thought. From the theatre we learn to place the body in space before pursuing enclosure or visual imagery. And from the arts and sciences we derive a tool for generating the body’s space. By shifting our emphasis from the detached world of vision to the engaged world of choreography, the body becomes the foundation for our theoretical construct. We architects are choreographers of space, the space for movement of humans. As long as we use the body as our unit of measure, then our theories and our buildings will be built on solid ground.

Notes:

                    1.     John R. Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind, Cambridge: The MIT Press,                              1992: 134.

2. Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses, New York: Random House, Inc., 1990: 307-308.

3. Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1948: 43.

                    4.     Peter Gray, Psychology, New York: Worth Publishers, Inc., 1991: 4.

                    5.      Ibid.: 5.

                    6.      Russell, op. cit.: 8.

                    7.     Gray, op. cit.: 9-10.

                    8.     Searle, op. cit.: xii-xiii.

                    9.      Ibid.: xiii.

                    10.      Ibid.: xiii-xiv.

                    11.      Ibid.: 1.

12. Richard M. Restak, M.D., "Development," Chapter 2 of The Mind, New York: Bantam Books, 1988: 33-63.

                    13.     Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books,                                1973: 47.

                    14.     Ibid.: 49.

                    15.     Peter Brook, The Empty Space, New York: Avon Books, 1968: 9.

16. Many of the insights shared here are from the author’s educational and work experience in the theatre prior to studying architecture.

                    17.    Mordecai Gorelik, New Theatres for Old, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1962:                               24.

                    18.    Brook, op. cit.: 92.

                    19.    Paul Grillo, Form Function and Design, New York: Dover Publications,                               1960: 146.