Thirteenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

This research asks how architecture could facilitate psychosomatic wellbeing through affective attunement between the physical environment and bodily action. It questions the notion of architecture as a conceptually objectified form isolated from its perceptual relationship with bodily behaviours, and it challenges the conventional design practice that generates formally dazzling but emotionally unfulfilling results. It aims to develop a theoretical framework for an embodied design practice to advance the knowledge between the advocation of atmospheric architecture and a detailed methodology to practice affective relations in architectural design. By advocating the neuro-psychological responsibility architecture has on our physio-psychological sensitivities, and the psychological impact architecture emanates to our body pre-reflectively, a phenomenological approach is taken to examine embodied cognition in neuroscience and perceptual analysis in movement psychology. The practice of states-shifting in Polyvagal Theory and the affective vocabulary summarized in the Kestenberg Movement Profile are integrated to form the common ground between perceptual phenomena and their autonomic implications. KMP’s granularized description of affective states and its spatially related movement analysis affords the hypothesis of an intentionally designed architecture that affects neurological states. This enabled the theorization of an embodied architectural design practice, using affective language to describe architectural phenomena and their psychological, cognitive, and emotional correspondences. This embodied design framework offers an alternative to the conventional objectified design practice. It enables architecture to communicate non-verbal meanings consciously and opens up a therapeutic potential for architecture to take on the role of a co-regulator, enhancing the resilience of our autonomic nervous system.