Skrzypczak / Systemising Spatial Affects

Systemising Spatial Affects In the Search of the Ontolotical Class Encompassing the Experiences of Movement and Architectural Space

Author: Wiktor Skrzypczak, HCU Hamburg

Supervisor: Matthias Ballestrem, Prof. Dr., HCU Hamburg

Research stage: Final doctoral stage

Category: Extended abstract

DDR Statement

The starting point of this doctoral research was a specific problem that I have encountered in my practice of residential architecture design. I have noticed that the design process becomes more and more optimised in terms of bureaucratic efficiency but becomes less and less immersive regarding the moments of imaginary inhabitation of the conceived spaces. For that reason, not the design result but rather the design process itself and in particular its phenomenological aspect is the subject of the research. Because it is grounded in phenomenology of the body the research uses the interdisciplinary methods of dance improvisation and of architectural ideation and representation—such as verbal scores for the facilitation of the bodily and attentional movement; formats of spoken and written experience protocol; and transmedia formats of spatial representation (text into drawing or text into movement or text into mental imagination). These methods set the frame for iterative trials which aim at the facilitation of an immersive spatial experience or imagination. The results of such short trials (5-45 minutes) are then weaved back into architectural theory (such as Empathy Theory and Bachelard’s Phenomenology of Imagination) and into my own theorisation of the design process. This process of translation from architectural theory to movement theory and from movement practice into design practice aims at allowing diverse applications of these experimental practices—as an embodied design tool or as an embodied design interface.