Approach
At Spacious we explore artistic and design techniques which enable a direct collaboration with the environment. Through sensorial fieldwork and procedural intervention, we activate empathic and animistic engagement with the world. In the lecture Somersaulting Horizons and Making Sense of Sensorial Journeys Renske Maria van Dam reflects on our approach in the context of the project Sensing Shipyard.
In the recent past, we have come to understand that ‘we can no longer view the built environment through the Cartesian lens of a mind interpreting meanings found in objects or buildings’[1]. In The Embodied Mind Chilean biologist and neuroscientist Francisco Varela, American philosopher Evan Thompson, and American psychologist Eleanor Rosch redefine the Cartesian mind-body split pervading major cognitive theories by arguing for the ‘circulation between cognitive science and human experience’[2]. This ‘call for epistemic change’ sparked a new field of research known as the enactive-embodied, embedded-extended and affective (4EA) approach to cognition[3]. In architecture this resonates with the experiential and multi-sensory turn that foregrounds organism-environment reciprocity and the moving body as central concerns of design. Following the implications of the 4EA approach to cognition, to further study the spatiotemporal experience what is required is the creation of a practice that offers the opportunity to examine (and ideally experiment upon) organism-environment reciprocity within an embodied, cultural context as it happens in the immediacy of the lived, moment to moment, experience [4]. Therefore, at Spacious each new project is organized around a sited experiment. From a shipyard, to the beach, to the rooftop of the academy building, in the past years we have visited extraordinary places to study the sensorial diversity of the landscapes and built environments. In times of COVID-19, we took our own homes as laboratory for daily research.
Through sited experimentation, we study the realm of subtle realities that emerges from the reciprocity between organism and (built) environment. Our experiments start with sensorial fieldwork, based on a listening, moving and breathing with the environment. In a playful process, we continue the exploration by making spatial and performative interventions which alternate the situated norm. This allows one to move beyond stereotypical knowledge and preconceived ideas. In that sense, sited experimentation becomes a tool for discovery and growth, for development and emancipation in the architectural studio.
[1] Mallgrave, H. (2018). From object to experience: The new culture of architectural design. London, England: Bloomsbury, p: 2.
[2] Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p: viii.
[3] Ward, D., & Stapleton, M. (2012). Es are good: Cognition as enacted, embodied, embedded, affective and extended. In F. Paglieri (Eds.), Consciousness in interaction: The role of the natural and social context in shaping consciousness (89-106). doi:10.1075/aicr.86.06war
[4] Hughes, R.W. (2011). Do it yourself future construction: The deregulated self. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://researchrepository.rmit.edu.au/discovery/delivery?vid=61RMIT_INS T:ResearchRepository&repId=12248317460001341#13248353480001341, p: 110.