The art of arriving.
A somatic approach to a critical understanding of the built environment
This is the score for a performance that Emma Hoette and I presented at the EURAU24 conference «In-Presence / The Body in Space. The role of corporeity in the era of virtualization», Politecnico di Milano, 19–21 June 2024. A short paper on the same subject was published in the conference proceedings.
Welcome.
I’m Silvia Sfligiotti. She is Emma Hoette.
You are now here with us in this space.
How did you arrive here?
…
I invite you to take some time to reconnect to the experience. …
Where did this journey start? 🌑
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Can you remember the spaces you went through?
….
Can you still recall what you felt through your senses?
….
Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa often wrote about the multi-sensorial experience of architecture. He once said:
«qualities of space, matter and scale are measured equally by the eye, nose, skin, tongue, skeleton and muscle.»
These ideas are shared by many in the design community, but it’s rare to find a discussion of how we can enhance our ability to design these qualities into spaces.
There’s a gap between the idea of a multi-sensory experience of the built space and the knowledge needed to understand it and design it.
How do we bridge this gap?
While body-based training allows new qualities of spatial knowledge for designers to emerge, it still remains on the fringes of design education..
I propose to use another word: somatic. It has a more specific meaning.
A somatic approach is based on the first-person experience of movement and perception. This means not simply using the body. It’s about being aware of it, of the knowledge it provides. It means learning how to direct our attention and understand our sensory experiences. Many different movement disciplines, from the Feldenkrais method to Body-Mind Centering, share this common approach.
I am convinced that a somatic approach is relevant for a deeper, situated and contextual knowledge of the built environment, and, most importantly, for a critical engagement with it.
***
Going back to where we started.
What does it mean to arrive?
It’s more than simply being physically present and visually orienting oneself in space.
The somatic concept of arriving refers to a full and open sensory engagement with an environment or a situation: our presence, our attention, our perceptions are entirely there. The traditional five senses are not enough to describe the scope of this engagement. We need to use the full capacities of each body as key tools for understanding space in all its dimensions.
Proprioception, for instance, is the ability that allows us to know the position of our body in relation to space.
➕ If you close your eyes and extend an arm above your head, you are always aware of where it is. 🌑
Proprioception enables us to move in space but also to develop spatial awareness. It’s an important part of how we live in the world, but it is rarely considered as a design tool.
Touch is more complex than we usually consider. First of all, it engages the whole surface of our body. And it interacts with other body systems: by touching something while applying pressure we can better perceive if a surface is smooth or if there’s some kind of friction.
I invite you to try it now, by pressing a finger on the surface of your seat, or your notebook, or wherever you like. What does it feel like? 🌑
When it comes to vision, we should remember that seeing is a deeply embodied experience.
Seeing cannot be separated from nerves, muscles, tissues, brain and previous experiences of the person who is seeing.
There are several ways of seeing, ranging from focused vision to peripheral vision, each one providing different information about space.
It is essential to remind ourselves that only constant training can develop our awareness of all the different forms of knowledge coming from our bodies, and transform the way we design.
Including somatic movement education in design curricula would be a step towards acknowledging how important this body knowledge is.
***
We can use such approaches to become more sensitive in our design practice — but also as a ground for developing a critical perspective on the built environment.
Critical thinking is rooted in the conscious body.
Somatic movement practices are based on developing the capacity to discern and compare, and building our understanding of the world from this: it’s not a mere physical experience, it is a practice of knowledge generation.
By training our capacity to fully engage with built spaces, we can learn to ask ourselves a wider range of questions about them.
Whom was this place imagined for? 🌑
Which bodies can have access to it, and feel welcome in it,
and which don’t?
Could this place be different?
How would a different space invite different uses?
Arriving, in the somatic sense, can open up to new ways of questioning and imagining a space, and support a critical interpretation of its meanings and possibilities.
This perspective is not new to people who face obstacles and discrimination in the built environment — and some important criticisms of architectural and urban space come, for instance, from disabled and feminist authors. All marginalized groups have a direct embodied experience of what it means to be excluded, threatened or not taken into consideration in the design of a place.
Their perspective as critical explorers of the built environment shows that re-thinking spatial design should not simply focus on expanding physical access, but should include totally new approaches, which in turn could change and amplify the experiences of all users.
What can a space look like, when it incorporates, as David Giessen suggests «qualities associated with impairment — frailty, weakness, immobility.» ? Or, as Leslie Kern proposes, when it overcomes many different kinds of barriers, including the social and symbolic ones?
If we want to be able to understand other perspectives, we must accept and embrace discomfort and unsettlement and remember that “our bodies are the sites of our lived experiences” — to quote Kern again.
In somatic movement education, the focus is usually on “ease, support and pleasure”.
But Ann Cooper Albright invites us to experience falling and disorientation as part of a series of experiences that can help us in “finding ground in an unstable world”.
By experiencing these uneasy situations and observing our reactions, we can learn to recognize the information we can get from these new points of view on the world, and learn to include it in our design practice.
Introducing somatic movement training as part of design and architecture education could be a way to allow all designers, including those living in privileged bodies, to develop a critical understanding of built spaces, and of the political relevance of all design choices.
In approaching these practices, we should always remember that each experience is different.
Individual perspectives need to be included in an intersubjective one, in order to avoid universalizing the individual.
Design is not about “one” body as a measure of space.
It is about a multiplicity of bodies that should all have the same rights to live in it.
➕That’s why we should practice together.
Practicing together and taking time to share what our experiences felt like facilitates intersubjectivity — a key factor in somatic education and an essential step in the learning process.
An intersubjective approach can help us understand that spatial experiences can be strongly different from one another.
To avoid somatic disciplines to become individualistic practices aimed only at personal well-being, reinforcing existing inequalities, it is essential that their collective and political dimensions remain central.
➕ This collective approach is what Emma Hoette and I, along with 6 other designers and movers, are developing through our work as part of In Figuring Out, a movement for embodied knowledge in design practice and research. Together, we are developing practices and methods to foster new approaches to design.
We invite you all to consider collective somatic movement education as an enrichment to all kinds of design practices — including those which shape the environment we live in — to make space for many other forms of life and ways of living.
Eurau Conference, Milan, 20 june 2024
➕ = synchronization
🌑 = invitation to the audience
italics = movement vocabulary
