Scale as an Architectural Means
For a moment we take our focus off the ground and return to the training routine established in Week One. We identify body positions and derive the spatial demands for each exercise of the routine. While articulating the spatial characteristics of the exercises we introduce scale as an architectural means, starting with 1/4" = 1'-0". Ultimately we form an understanding of scale in relation to the human figure.
The Movements - of crowds, dancers, fighters - recall the inevitable intrusion of bodies into architectural spaces, the intrusion of one order into another. The need to record accurately such confrontations, without falling into functionalist formulas suggested precise forms of movement notation. An extension of the drawn conventions or choreography, this notation attempts to eliminate the preconceived meaning given to particular actions in order to concentrate on their spatial effects: the movement of bodies in space. Rather than merely indicating directional arrows on a neutral surface, the logic of movement notation ultimately suggests real corridors of space, as if the dancer has been carving space out of a pliable substance': or the reverse, shaping continuous volumes, as if a whole movement has been literally solidified, 'frozen' into a permanent and massive vector. (Bernard Tschumi)
We also want to show some appreciation for the phenomenological conditions specific to each exercise. Performing each activity, how does the body experience space? Is your routine designed to build endurance, strength or speed; how does that affect the experience? Privileged Wordset: Develop a matrix of terms that relates the Exercise (noun) of your routine and its Activity (verb) to a Spatial quality (adj.) Example:
warm-up / to crouch / compressed
warm-up / to stretch / expansive
warm-up / to jump rope / continuous
sparring / to jab / measured
sparring / to swerve / dented
sparring / to duck / depressed
The authenticity of Architectural experience is grounded in the tectonic language of building and the comprehensibility of the act of construction to the senses. We behold, touch, listen, and measure the world with our entire bodily existence and the experiential world is organized and articulated around the center of the body. Our domicile is the refuge of our body, memory and identity. We are in constant dialogue and interaction with the environment, to the degree that it is impossible to detach the image of the self from its spatial and situational existence. "I am the space, where I am," as the poet Noel Arnaud established. (Juhani Pallasmaa)
In addition to the individual moments of perception we map the procedural character of the routine. From the bodily procession emerges an infrastructural, navigational system, which currently comes in the form of an abstract notation - a circulation diagram. It defines the sequence of spaces and spatial potential of an overlapping and loosely knotted path.













































