Those architectural systems evolve into body architecture and are spatial devices to extend the body´s capacities and desires. My thesis is that specifically in solely digital design processes there is a risk of eliminating the human body both from an active design process and from the importance for architectural space.

FROM SOFT STRUCTURES TO ARCHITECTURAL TECTONICS
The relationship between design and making requires a certain body of knowledge that resides in the space and time of the working process. Spatial techniques and their established relations may be based upon a beautiful way of ordering elements by defining an open, but clearly defined, system that is able to transform. At the same time the system´s behaviour is very much related to its constitutent elements, their materiality and their spatial organisation. It is fascinating that even flexible elements have the potential to collectively rigidify, when brought together in a certain geometrical order and hierarchy - to be found, for instance, in spatial formations of textile techniques. These relations brought together generate form and spatial organisation. In Semperian terms, it is a textile, soft element that in cooperation with others ridigifies and becomes tectonic.

The plan in architecture is typically thought of as the surface of action and the wall as the surface of perception. Rather than accept this distinction between these building elements and between action and perception we should define a method in designing space to connect them. Referring to Lars Spuybroek „the link between action and perception, movement and image, is the act of construction; it is the vector of tectonics, the art of architectural construction“. He argues for a definition of relationship between the making and the made through different modelling strategies. I am convinced that specifically operative physical models provide a potential playground for those strategies, where the design process, thorugh ist specific system, is open-ended. This open system is susceptible for appropiation and adaption by the human body, leaving space for own interpretations and meanings.

That idea of abandoning the two-dimensional frame is based upon the act of making and leaves space for constructing one´s own cosmos. Where the design process is based upon the act of making, space can be touched, thoughts are transferred to one´s hands – sensorial and tactile objects come into existance. The bodily experience of touch, movement and sensual fruition of materials let us confront with the world of consciousness. The architectural model becomes a mediator between the human body and its constant movement of and in space. This rebirth of the tactile leads to a geometry that is modulated by both movement and structure. In body architecture, surfaces and lines transform with the movement of the body – the process of action, becoming structure. We have to move away from the static and autonomous object towards a practice that moves out of the computer into the real world, incorporating wide ranging experiments in all media, scales and materialities.

OPEN SYSTEMS AND RELATIONAL OBJECTS
There are close conceptual connections to be drawn between those operative methodologies of generating space and the work of some of the artists of the Brazilian Constructivist movement. The artist Lygia Clark investigated notions of participation, the body, performance and particularly geometric abstraction. Lygia Clark (1920-1988) studied painting in Rio de Janeiro and Paris before working solely with objects since the early 60s. There are two aspects that draw a continuous line in her work: the changeability of the object through inclusion of the observer and the temporainess of her work. Amongst others, Lygia Clark established distinctive and unexplored links with architecture and other media. What is particularly interesting here are the open-ended possibilities for experimentation and the production of an immediacy of experience.

One of her first objects were the Bichos (machine animals, 1960-63) which she built from triangular metalplates which were interconnected and joined by hinges. Therefore the open form of objects, which don´t possess neither a fixed inside nor outside, could be transformed arbitrarily by its observer and user. The essential idea of those objects, but also of others (Borrachas - Rubber Grub, 1964; Repantes - Climbing Grubs), is more or less the same: The sculpture, though completely abtract, is conceived of as a small beast, a quasi-independent being. „The Bicho,“ Clark said „has his own-well defined cluster of movements which react to the promptings of the spectator. He is not made of isolated static forms which can be manipulated at random, but his parts a functionally related to each other., as if he were a living organism; and the movement of these parts are interlinked.“

Clark manifested her conception in 1966: „We reject representative spaces and the work that solely serves passive contemplation. We reject any myth outside the human being. We reject the work of art as such and emphasise the act of realisation of a proposal.“ Lygia Clark´s sensorial and relational objects require interaction, a communion between the object and the viewer achieved through the dissolution of space that separates them. All these objects abandon passive contemplation, becoming attracted to an action that lies beyond its conventional considerations.

ARCHITECTURAL SPACE – THE SPACE OF THE HUMAN BODY
The aim so far was to analyse the dynamics and performative potential of open spatial systems in relation to the animated human body both being used as a site of implementation and in the process of spatial creation. The term performance is typically used in architecture to describe a building´s performance in terms of structural and functional capabilities. Recently it has begun to be used describing computational processes in architecture that use performance as procedural within design processes. A great risk and a missed chance of digital design processes is the loss of the living body. The presence of the human body in the constructed world is of great importance to the development of architectural form and tectonic structures – initially on the level of production of design models using the senses of the body in acting and making, in order to produce architecture that is not based on rarefied aesthetics but through which we define ourselves as sensate and politicized beings.

Open spatial systems that are generated physically and on a material level, hold a great potential to explore unexpected links of those relations. Those tectonic structures possess the ability to adapt, are open for appropiation, at the same time interact with the environment and enable a constant change of bodies and spaces. This design model stands against a loss of the living body and its senses in the design process and looks beyond humanist practices to consider the body as fixed and static. The rebirth of the tactile, the transformative potential of space and matter determine that action and perception become one.

Architects should identify systems of temporal control to help to liberate architecture and its relation to the human body – to make space for the living body and allow for multifaceted measures of meaning.

notes

1 From the essay Textile Tectonics by Lars Spuybroek in: Cheng, Irene / Tschumi, Bernard: The State of Architecture at the Beginning of the 21st Century, Monacelli Press, 2004
2 nümph by Natalie Denner and Melissa Kiesel / q`qoon by Philipp Goreth and Birgit Schubart – these spatial objects were developed during the design studio “body extensions” at the University of Applied Sciences Coburg / Innovationszentrum für Flechthandwerk Lichtenfels; studio led by Gabi Schillig and Anja Bramkamp, 2008
3 in Lucie-Smith, Edward: Latin American Art of the 20th Century; Thames and Hudson London, 1993
4 in Ramirez, Mari Carmen: Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America; Yale University Press, 2004
5 in Breitwieser Sabine: vivências/Lebenserfahrung/life experience; Lygia Clark:Nòs Recusamos...; Ausst. Katalog, Wien 2000
6 see also: Spurr, Sam: Performative Architecture – Design Strategies for Living Bodies; School of English, Media and Performance Arts, University of New South Wales, 2007
7 Raum(Zeit)Kleider employs the human body as a site where through performance, architecture dismantles barriers and becomes an opportunity for communication. The object is a spatial system that can be folded and transformed from a two-dimensional element into a three-dimensional module, incorporating different functions from clothing to urban furniture and shelter. This approach seeks to produce transformations through intimate, often physical contact and participation. The use of soft materials, such as woolen felt, makes us deal with alterable materials as a membrane or a second skin around our bodies, which forms the walls of our own architecture and furthermore makes statements about identity, desire and intent. The garment itself becomes an interface between its users and the (built) environment, and participation becomes an important active instrument in controlling (public) space. The project merges insights from architecture, fashion design and body performance. Individuals are required to participate, eliminating both the role of the spectator and that of the author. A project by Gabi Schillig, 2008 / supported by Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart