by S ALAÇAM — ITU A|Z • Vol 13 No 3 • November 2016 • S. Alaçam, G. Çağdaş. 2. 1. Introduction. The evolution of technology and hu- man beings are at asymmetric speeds.
89 KB – 12 Pages
PAGE – 1 ============
Spatial dimensions of bodily experience in architectural modeling: A case study Abstract We argue that the aesthetic dimension of bodily experience is one of the key concepts in the e˜ort towards a deeper understanding of today™s crisis in archi -tecture design and is needed to gain insights into the future of digital design en -vironments. Our aim is to explore if there are repetitive gestural patterns among di˜erent students during the externalization of design ideas. In order to study the crucial focal points and changes in the way of making in architecture and their relations with the fibodyfl from a historical perspective, we designed a half an hour structured modeling exercise as an experimental study. We repeated the same exercise two times in di˜erent institutions with two participants each, all master™s level architecture students. In this study we introduce our ˚ndings and outcomes in the analysis and comparison of the two modeling exercises based on McNeill™s classi˚cation of gestures and Lako˜ and Johnson™s theory of image schema. Keywords Bodily experience, Spatial thinking, Gestures in design, Architectural modeling. Sema ALAÇAM 1, Gülen ÇA˜DA˚ 21 Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey 2 Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey Final Acceptance: August 2016 do˜: 10.5505/˜tujfa.2016.65002
PAGE – 2 ============
21. Introduction ˛e evolution of technology and hu -man beings are at asymmetric speeds. Because the pace of the evolution, hu -man beings lags beyond the speed of the changes in technology, there is a constant gap between these two pro -cesses. Concerning the relation be -tween human beings and technology, the perceptual and the biological lim -itations of human beings have not been taken into consideration; instead, it has been focused on the speed of tech -nology and its limitations. Within the process of technological progress, the experiential dimensions of the fibodyfl has been neglected. ˛is neglectance occurs at both the literal and the theo -retical/conceptual levels. As a result of approaching the human body and the mind, the experience and the thought, the making and the thinking; as two di˜erent entities and the re˝ection of this approach in scienti˚c studies; in the areas of the researches of architec -tural design, cognitive sciences and the human-computer interaction (HCI) from a methodological and ontological perspective, a certain extent of reduc -tionism occurs. In a broader sense, this reductionist and disembodied approaches have become insu˙cient to understand the contemporary dy -namics and the essence of digital trans -formation. We argue that the aesthetic dimensions of bodily experience is one of the key concepts in the e˜ort to get a deeper understanding of today™s cri -sis and gain insight about future direc -tions of digital design environments. Experience is embedded in time, space and body. ˛e two dimensions of experience, space and time are folded with/in body. Time makes the space spatial. In other words, space, time and embodied experience are the comple -mentary dimensions of each other. In the context of architectural design, not only the design representations and their locations in the space but also the bodily dimensions of experience be -come important. Here the term bodily experience refers to both sensory and cognitive dimensions of experience. However, beyond the real-time sensed experience, there is also a non reducta -ble whole. ˛is nonreductable holistic experience includes the collection of experiences since the early childhood. To mention but not to extend, bodily experience has also cultural, social and biological roots. Bodily experience acquired through sensory perception by hand gestures has multidimensional/multilayered in˝uence on the thinking process of the designers. ˛e short-term memo -ry of the human beings is limited. ˛e bodily experience acquired through sensory perception causes tacit knowl -edge. ˛erefore, body itself becomes an extension of human memory, which spares a tacit knowledge beyond the explicit knowledge. ˛e current digital interfaces and digital design environ -ments do not enhance designer™s bodily schemas and multisensory perception adequately. ˛is might be the reason why there is a huge gap between the promised potentials of the digital me -dia and its current inadequate re˝ec -tions on architectural design curricula. In the most generalized terms, the main motivation for this study is to in -vestigate how and why the digital envi -ronment interfaces used in early stages of architectural design are insu˙cient in the designers™ process of creating abstract and conceptual thinking, and to come across ˚ndings that will serve as the basis for digital environment de – structured modeling exercise was cre -ated that allows the empirical obser -vation of the process which was con -ducted in a digital environment. ˛e modeling exercise was repeated two times with di˜erent participants from di˜erent universities. In each experi -ment two graduate-level students from the ˚eld of architecture participated, one of the participants was asked to describe to the other participant four architectural models that they had ini -tially observed. ˛e study was designed in a way to help the participants ex -plain and understand geometrical and spatial relations, and the hand gestures and verbal expressions used in their dialogues were studied. ˛erefore, the role of the bodily experience, which consists of hand gestures conveying ideas not represented in words, in ex -pressing or creating spatial ideas was examined.
PAGE – 3 ============
2. ˛e disappearance of bodily experience in digital epoch: a historical perspective One of the ˚rst separations between making and thinking in conceptual level can be traced back the terms that were introduced by Aristotle such as ‚technê™ and ‚epistêmê. ˛e Greek word ‚‚technê™ is translated as ficraˆs or artfl (Url-1). ˛e term ‚epistêmê™ is general -ly used in terms of knowledge, howev -er the notion of knowledge it represent is di˜erent than what we understand from the contemporary version of the word which consists of experimenta – Plato the word techné is linked with the word epistémé. Both words are names for knowing in the widest sensefl Heidegger (1954) unfolds the meaning of techné through the word fialtheueinfl (Heidegger, 1954). ˛erefore techné in -volves the a˜ordance, however it fidoes not yet lie here before usfl says Heide -gger (Heidegger 1954:5). ˛e activities or the skill of the craˆsman bring the potentials and the a˜ordances of the techné into forth (Heidegger 1954:5). ˛is interpretation of Heidegger is important not only for the mechanical technologies but also the digital tech -nologies. Here, Heidegger recovers the detached / isolated / disembodied as -sumption of fitechnologyfl, giving ref -erence to the Aristotelian meanings. ˛ence, fiexperiencefl and fipraxisfl are needed to bring up the a˜ordances and reveal the fipoiésisfl of the instruments, in Greek word fialetheiafl. ˛e disem -bodied interpretation of techné also caused the detachment between the craˆsmen™s body and the instrument. As a re˝ection, both the body and the bodily experience neglected. In terms of the thresholds for the detachment of way of making and way of thinking relationship between body and architecture, there are important theoretical contributions by Pallasmaa occurred in verbal, visual, cognitive levels. In architectural discourse and practice, re˝ections of the separation of body and architecture can be traced. -ity between the ficonstruction in tradi -tional cultures guided by the bodyfl and fia bird shapes its nest by movements -itation of practice and manual works are the way to transmit the knowledge -sanal guilds, their rituals, apprentice -ship training, and written techniques constituted the means by which arti -sanal knowledge was producedfl Pa – this experience of craˆsmanship was ‚nontextual™ and ‚nonverbal™ (Smith, in the way of making in architecture is Apart from these detachment in conceptual and theoretical levels in the fourth century BC, we can assume that another detachment emerged in the 1st century BC by fi˛e Ten Books on -vius in terms of verbal description of making in architecture (Pollio, 1914). However, the distance between the body and the way of making in archi -tecture was relatively slight. Still, body and bodily experience were required in order to describe some concepts such as symmetry and proportion between the elements of the body. In the third fiOn Symmetry: In the Temples and in Another important departure from the body emerges during Renaissance period. fiOne of the most striking changes that occurred in the Renais -sance was the development of visual perspectivefl Smith points out (Smith, Leon Battista Alberti and his perspec -tive as a beginning of a crucial turn F˜gure 1. ˚resholds for the detachment of way of mak˜ng and way of th˜nk˜ng.
PAGE – 4 ============
4through the primacy of visual percep -tion, harmony and proportion (Pallas – Architecturefl book, Bloomer and – a precise date as a beginning of the paradigm of mechanisation and ratio -nalization. Instead, there had occurred a lot of complex causalities in the con -stitution of the idea of the disembod – mention the relation between how the body was conceived and how the sci -enti˚c paradigms evolved at that times: ˛e transition from the presence of the body as a ‚divine™ organising prin -ciple in architecture to a more mechan -ical organisation gained momentum from Galileo™s arguments in favour of mathematical measurement and exper -iment as the criteria for physical truth that: fi˛e manual and the theoretical spheres of architecture were fused into – between theory and practice; thought and making; designer and the laborer had increased. fiAt the same time the laborer was exemplted from any the -oretical activitiesfl write Tzonis and constitution of Royal Academy and formal methods of teaching (Tzonis the divison of labor changed, so did the training of the architectfl (Tzonis and the scienti˚c studies continued, like the specialization in the professions. Instead of embodiment, various meth -ods emerged not only in architecture but also in other ˚elds. ˛e di˜eren -tiation between the art and the engi -neering schools can be traced back at F˜gure 2. Detachment of body from the way of making in architecture .
PAGE – 5 ============
5this century. ˛erefore, the distinction between the Cartesian rationalism and relatively holistic experience of art had ˛e guild type organization gradually had lost its importance as Tzonis and the conceptualization of the architec -tural design with regards to the body in two periods, the fiarchaic periodfl and the fimechanical agefl (Tzonis and the fibuilding as a bodyfl and the fidi -vine bodyfl of the archaic period are changed into fibody as a machinefl and fibodies of the users of the build -ing as machinesfl (Tzonis and Lefaivre, marks the period when the work of the craˆsman is fragmented into piec -es, whereas before the craˆsman had complete control over the decisions made throughout the process, from the Taking these points to the 21th cen – aspects of digital architecture can only be understood from an expanded his – Similarly, to comprehend the rela -tionship between architectural design and the body, the changes that have occurred in the creative process in ar -chitecture as well as the representation of architectural knowledge, needs to craˆsman built a brick wall without any prior representation of it, using his body and hands, to the period of modern architecture, which uses com – and the fibodily experiencefl have gone through many breaking points in the practice, theory and discourse of archi – In respect to the relation of the body and the tools, and the conceptualisa -tion of the body, in the digital era the visual representation become much more dominated. Apart from the dis -tinction of the hand and the mind of mechanic era, the fragmentation of the senses emerged. Approaching the senses separately became the common attitude in scienti˚c research. ˛ere had been limited number of people who criticized the reductionist growth of the computational approaches. To and Johnson™s embodiment theory, and Gallagher can be listed. As a key point of the critics of Pallasmaa, suppression of hapticity among the other senses be -came a problematic for the architects de˚nes this detachment and alienation of the technical world as ficertain pa -thology of the sensesfl. Today for archi -tects, visual perception still keeps its dominance in terms of interaction be -tween the design tools and designers. In brief, there had been a common tendency of dominating the vision in the theories, approaches, and assump – gained acceleration by the impact of development in the information and communication technologies. ˛e dis -embodied assumptions of knowledge, neglected the aesthetic qualities of ex -perience and the spatial dimensions of the experience. ˛e encounter of the architecture with the digital could not become fruitful enough because of the reductionist and disembodied approaching. ˛e communication and interaction between the architect and the digital media remained insu˙cient, without utilizing both the potentials of the digital media and the potentials of multisensory experience. ˛e theories of knowledge neglected the tacit di -mensions of the experience. Moreover, similar with the previous mechanic era, the specialization brought degre -gation in the architectural practice. ˛e draˆsman of the mechanic era, slightly had been transformed into the render operator of the digital era. ˛is is also because, the technological develop -ment did not and still is not provides architect friendly interfaces which sup -port the spatial abilities of the archi -tects. 3. ˛eories and concepts on bodily experience -cept of ‚choreutics™ to underline the relationship between movement and fiSpace is a hidden feature of movement and movement is a visible aspect of space. We must not look at the locality
PAGE – 6 ============
simply as an empty room. Continuous ˝ux within the locality itselffl (Laban, and dynamic foundations of experi -ence through the etymological inves -tigation of the concept of ‚kinesthesia™, which covers the sensation mechanism of moving body, and he proposes the idea of blind preverbal, implicit and immanent knowledge of daily expe – -cept as an awareness of ‚qualitatively felt kinetic ˝ow™ (Sheets-Johnstone, the phenomenological approach to ex -hibits the felt qualities and patterns of body movement, and aˆer analyzing kinesthetic consciousness, she suggests that ‚tension™, ‚linearity‚, ‚amplitude‚, and ‚projection™ are the four primary qual -ities of body movement (Sheets-John – Lako˜ and Johnson investigate how the bodily experience a˜ects the con -stitution of language, by criticizing dominant thinking about meaning in Western philosophy (Lako˜ and John – constitution of abstract concepts is re -lated to bodily experienced spatial ori -entation concepts (Lako˜ and Johnson, experience and experiencing the world physically and culturally using the body lies at the roots of spatial orien -tation concepts, such as up / down, in / out, front / back, open / closed or cen -ter / periphery. Based on this premise, they state that, although it could show cultural variations, abstract terms such as good / bad or happy / unhappy can be paired with orientation terms such as up/down. ˛ey add, for example, fia lotfl would suggest a higher ground, or filittlefl would suggest a lower ground. ˛ey also have shown how the future events are fiahead of usfl, whereas the past is fibehind usfl (Lako˜ and John – that ‚movement™ is one of the principal ways by which people learn the mean -ing of things and acquire an ever-grow – ˛e ˚rst source in architecture to re -fer to the body-image theory is consid -ered to be Bloomer and Moore™s fiBody, Memory, Architecturefl published in ˛e body image is informed funda -mentally from haptic and orienting ex -perience early in life. Our visual images are developed later on and depend for their meaning on primal experiences that were acquired haptically™fl (Bloom – Bloomer and Moore state that the term body-image, or the term imag -ery in its extended meaning, already include the concepts of body-percep -tion and body-schema (Bloomer and our purpose we mean to accept the body-image as the complete feeling, or three dimensional Gestalt-sense of form- that an individual carries at any one moment in time – his spatial inten -tions, values, and his knowledge of a personal, experienced bodyfl (Bloom – body-image schemas, they list schemas such as fiup/downfl, fifront/backfl, firight/ leˆfl and fihere-in-the-centerfl (Bloom – Gallagher has investigated the di˜erence between the terms body schema and body image using a phe -nomenological analysis, going all the -mological and historical roots, and he has shown that these terms have oˆen been used incorrectly in the literature described as fisensory-motor capacities that function without the awareness or the necessity of perceptual monitor – Johnson highlights that in addition to this, the body schemas govern the tacit performances that operate below the level of self-refential intentionality, at ˛erefore, fiour perception, bodily movement and kinesthetic sensibilityfl can operate at the preconscious level, in an integrated and spontaneous way Merleau-Ponty gives the example of reaching over to something using ges – Body image, on the other hand, is de -scribed as fia person™s perception, be -havior and belief system about one™s
PAGE – 8 ============
conducted speci˚cally for Turkish lan -guage which was held at Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen is available in McNeill™s book fiGesture and ˛oughtfl 4. Case study: Structured modeling exercise ˛e case study designed focuses on the following questions: 1. How is the role of hand gestures di˜erent than verbal expressions in expressing spatial thoughts in the pro -cesses of examining, remembering and describing a physical model, as well as in recreating it in the digital medium? 2. Can we ˚nd common and recur -rent patterns that people use while ex -plaining a scaled model to another per -son aˆer having sensorily observed it with hand gestures and touch? and understanding of the role of bodily experience in the designing process by making a connection between Lako˜ and Johnson™s image schemas and Mc -Neill™s gesture categories? 4.1. Scope and constraints experiment was conducted with two graduate level architecture students. ˛e ˚rst step consisted of one of the students observing the physical mod -els, and the second step consisted of the other student, who has not seen of these physical models on the com -puter based on the verbal and gestural directions of the ˚rst student. In the with a scale of 1:1 were used. ˛e mod -els were made with a laser cutter and the participant was given the physical printouts. ˛e methods of production and geometrical designs of the physical models were di˜erent from each oth -er. One of them was created by adding parallel cardboards to each other with -out leaving any space in between. ˛e second model was made of cardboards that crossed each other perpendicular -ly, leaving spaces in between. ˛e third model was created using non-identical polygonal frames and contained rela -tively more detailed information, i.e. points of intersection, surface lengths and number of components. ˛e fourth model was constructed in a telescopic way, could expand three times its orig -inal size and had a dynamic quality In this ˚rst step, the participant was asked to observe the models for 5 min -utes. While doing this, touching, tak -ing notes and sketching was allowed. In the second step, the models were removed and the ˚rst participant was asked to describe the physical model™s geometrical relationships in words and gestures. None of the participants were informed about the purpose and meth -ods of the study so as to prevent any in˝uence of this information on their gestures. In the second step, a laptop modeling medium. ˛is two-step experiment was re -peated two times by di˜erent partic -ipants at di˜erent universities. ˛e entire experiments were videotaped. Using the recordings, verbal analyses were conducted on the second steps of the experiments. Experiment 1 eye movements were ignored and only hand gestures were studied. ˛e sen -sory feedback obtained through press -ing keys on the laptop keyboard or by using the mouse was also ignored. In addition, it should be noted that at the time of the experiments, all the partic -ipants had already completed their ar -chitectural education. F˜gure 3. Explor˜ng by touch˜ng on the le˛; D˜g˜tal model˜ng exerc˜se on the r˜ght. F˜gure 4. Phys˜cal models wh˜ch have been used ˜n the model˜ng exerc˜se.
PAGE – 9 ============
94.2. Segmentation of the verbal and gestural content ˛e analyzed video recordings were segmented into pieces, consisting of gestures. In this step, McNeill™s (1992) gesture de˚nitions, which consist of four categories: iconic, metaphorical, deictic and beat, were used. Experi – – ˛e participants were observed to be focusing on the computer screen or conveying the model™s geometrical information by sketching or engaging in a face-to-face dialogue, in no par -ticular order. Based on these di˜erent types of engagement, three categories were determined where gestures were executed: computer screen, paper and none. If the computer screen became the main focus of the communication between two participants, we tagged the medium of the gesture as ficom -puter screenfl. In the case of touching to the computer screen, and/or the case of pointing the screen by the hand were evaluated under this category. If one of the participants make sketching by using a pen or a pencil; or if one of the participants points out a detail on the sketching paper whether touching or not; we evaluated these situations under the category of fipaperfl. A third item, finonefl refers to the usage of hand gestures in the air without a supporting media. 4.3. Evaluation and comparison of the two modeling exercises In this part, the distribution of the gestures, the spatial quality of them which we call fiaugmented gesturesfl and gesture-medium relationship are examined and discussed. ˛e distri -bution of these gestures in the verbal analysis can be seen in Table 1. Seven of the deictic gestures in Ex – -tures in Experiment-2 carried iconic and spatial qualities. ˛ese fiiconic/ deicticfl gestures did not only point to the geometric object as a singular ob -ject in the environment, but also gave information on its direction, angle, its sphere-like quality and its representa -tion of an area as a circle. ˛ese fiicon -ic/deicticfl gestures that contain spatial qualities are evaluated under the cate – -ictic gestures). ˛e following spatial qualities are seen both in Experiment 1 and Ex -periment 2: verticality, horizontality, sequentiality, expansion of the piece of the model, direction, orientation, angle, spatial relations, circular move -ment, connections, frames, simulation convey spatial qualities. More than half of the metaphoric gestures convey spa – verbal content is ficolumn like treesfl, the participant simulated the growth of the brunches of a tree by two hands in the air. ˛is metaphoric gesture has motion quality and it also shows the di -F˜gure 5. D˜str˜but˜on of the gestures as a percentage ˜n two model˜ng exerc˜ses. F˜gure 6. Occurrence of spat˜al qual˜t˜es w˜th/˜n the gestures. Table 1. D˜str˜but˜on of the gestures ˜n two model˜ng exerc˜se.
PAGE – 10 ============
rection of the growth. In general, deic -tic gestures are expected to point some point in the space. ˛erefore at least the indicated point has a direction. this one dimensional information and counted the deictic gestures as not con -veying spatial quality. ˛e expression of the physical mod -el through hand gestures in the space above the table plane (finonefl) and on the sketches made on paper (fipaperfl) involved more iconic gestures com -pared to those used for the computer screen was the main focus of the par -ticipants, deictic gestures were used ˛e execution of the deictic gestures involved the index ˚nger touching the computer screen to point to the digital deictic gestures where the model was pointed to on the computer screen, 4 of them carried an iconic quality as well. this from here to herefl was accompa -nied by pointing to a starting point, the direction towards which the action was to take place, as well as the destination point on the computer screen. When verbal and gestural content is compared, shiˆing the meaning for -ward or backward has signi˚cance in – physical model using a sketch or using hand gestures while sitting face-to-face, iconic gestures were used in fiforwardfl and fibackwardfl o˜setting. While the focus was on the computer, the o˜sets were encountered less oˆen and in the Considering the relationship between iconic gestures and the image schemas gestures can be said to o˜er stronger support of the source-path-goal sche -ma during communication in a physi -cal environment. Both in the two exercise it seen that, participants might utilize di˜er -ent gestures for the same verbal data. geometry of the model in detail by using iconic gestures, for the second or third time they tend to use deictic gestures and only point the location in the space. ˛is location can be both a detail on the drawing/sketch or an ar -bitrary space in the air. ˛is situation is 5. Concluding remarks In a broader sense this study sought to answer the question, fiWhat is?fl. ˛is might be the reason why there is a huge gap between the promised potentials of the digital media and its current inad -equate re˝ections on architectural de – – in the last two decades, today conven -tional methodologies such as sketching and model making are still crucial in architecture education. ˛is research should be considered as a preliminary step in understanding why and how the digital interfaces are insu˙cient in designers™ creation of abstract and con -ceptual thinking in the early stages of architectural design. We argue that the aesthetic dimensions of bodily experi -ence is one of the key concepts in the F˜gure 7. Compar˜son of two model˜ng exerc˜ses ˜n terms of the type of med˜um. F˜gure 8. Iterat˜ons and trans˜t˜ons.
PAGE – 11 ============
11e˜ort to get a deeper understanding of today™s crisis and gain insight about future directions of digital design envi -ronments. In this study, where a modelling ap -plication was used, the role of bodily experience, which was complement -ed by hand gestures and conveyed information that was not verbally ex -pressed, was investigated in the process of expression and creation of spatial thoughts. In the modelling process in a digital environment, the repetitions, patterns and relations in the hand ges -tures of a participant asked to describe a physical model, were observed. Icon -ic gestures complement the verbal di -alogue when the relationship between the components of a physical model and the spatial information is being conveyed. In some situations, the ges -tures, particularly the iconic gestures, were observed to support the source- path-goal schema and the movement we have encountered situations where the kinetic qualities of the physical model were expressed only in ges -tures, without any verbal expression. ˛e hand gestures do not only convey geometrical qualities of the model, but also the becoming process of an action. In addition, it is sometimes possible to use the same verb for two consecutive sentences and to connect the two sen -tences to each other through gestures. References Athavankar, U., Bokil, P., Gu -ruprasad, K., Patsute, R. and Sharma, Space, in Gero, J.S. and Goel, A.K. (ed.) Bloomer, K. C. And Moore C. M. -ture. Yale University Press, New Haven and London. the algorithm. MIT Press. the role of the body in the design pro -cess: observations from an experiment, -ture. ˛e Repertoire of Nonverbal Be -haviour: Categories, Origins, Usage, shapes the mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Heidegger, M. (1954). ˛e question concerning technology. Technology mind: ˛e bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. University of Chicago Press. the body: Aesthetics of human under -standing. University of Chicago Press. – Reveal about the Mind Chicago: Uni -versity of Chicago Press Philosophy in the ˝esh: ˛e embod -ied mind and its challenge to western thought. Basic books. Metaphors we live by. University of – publication in 1945). What gestures reveal about thought. University of Chicago Press. gestures are nonverbal? Psychological Gesture and thought , University of Chicago Press. -ceptual representations in language ac – Klein (Eds.), Speech, place and action: Studies in deixis and related topics (pp. skin: Architecture and the Senses. En -gland, WileyAcademy (Originally pub – Neurophenomenologic Approach to Embodiment. In Handbook of Phe -nomenology and Cognitive Science architecture. Birkh user Architecture.
89 KB – 12 Pages