Building |Body
“Proportion is a correspondence among the measures of members of an entire work,”—Marcus Vitruvius. He believed that human body is designed by nature, each every part of it should consist of its meaning. In architecture, as such, to design is to establish the anthropometric distance between the human body and tactile objects, to orientate the interactions between one body and another, and to articulate something of the Divine Proportion of the human body.
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The relationship between building and the human body obviously has a long history. The questions that arise when exploring this relationship are more than simply about finding the proper dimensions and placements within architectural space to “accommodate” a person and their behaviors within it. The relationship between architecture and the human body delves deep into why those behaviors manifest in the first place, as it calls upon the experiential characteristics and qualities that spark when the two unite — impacting not only occupant behaviors through the body, but also impacting occupants intellectually, emotionally, physiologically and even spiritually through the body as well.
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In my opinion, I’ll consider architecture/building as an abstractions and metaphor of the body. Since Le Corbusier proposed to that both aesthetics and efficiency, referring to the human figure as “divine proportion” and as a “machine.” They metaphor object and abstracting the essence of them into architectural way, which is more adaptable, more approachable to human anthropometric. If we are talking about buildings and bodies in a metaphorical sense, a building should resemble a human being in general. Having a skeletal support system to prop ourselves up, lungs to breathe, a circulatory system that keeps us alive and a nervous system that transfers and triggers response.
”Architecture must be a thing of the body, a thing of substance as well as of the spirit and of the brain.” – Le Corbusier.
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Case Study
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Sou Fujimoto, within his designs, uses layering to establish greater variation and in-between situations to better connect architecture with the human body. I think that with greater variation and layering, and by making strategic use of “surface” and “skin”, designer can creatively expand the way architecture relates to the human body — pushing boundaries that make a positive difference in occupant’s lives.
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House NA / Sou Fujimoto
In this case, Sou Fujimoto metaphor a tree and abstracting the connections between branches and trunk into a house. Described as “a unity of separation and coherence”, the house acts as both a single room and a collection of rooms. The loosely defined program and the individual floor plates create a setting for a range of activities that can take place at different scales. The house provides spaces of intimacy if two individuals choose to be close, while also accommodating for a group of guests by distributing people across the house, akin to a tree. He has created a translucent architecture, a terrain that encourages people to explore the building in new and diverse ways. The house can be considered a large single-room, and, if each floor is understood as rooms, it can equally be said that the house is a mansion of multifarious rooms.
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The intriguing point of a tree is that these places are not hermetically isolated but are connected to one another in its unique relativity. To hear one's voice from across and above, hopping over to another branch, a discussion taking place across branches by members from separate branches. These are some of the moments of richness encountered through such spatially dense living.
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K.A.I.T WORKSHOP / Junya Ishigami
The workshop uses the concentrated columns to define (zone) space,but it is flexible due to its openness where there is no obstructions or boundaries. As the number of people increases for the particular class, they shift the activity to the zones with larger area. Although the zones may appear to be random, but the architect stated that they run through intensively to study the spaces required for human to perform a certain activities in a group. All the 'random' columns placed are articulated to certain number of people to do do certain kind of activities, including to define corridors' width and the boundaries of each classes however, are defined by the furniture and plants.
In short, the idea of building should be on the human scale. It is to our proportion,harmony and comfortable with people, as buildings not only speaks to occupant, but communicates with them in a two-way dialogue. In order to achieve that, building should be a direct response to human body. With the right height, width and length, then only the quality of space can be achieved and comes good architecture. I am stating that this opinion should be the basis in planing the size of a space and the vision of Le Corbusier had achieved, as today's architecture are mostly based on the Le Modular guidelines and if not, it is a response to the human figure (scale).