Body organisation and spatial representation

Abstract

This work falls within the area where psychology, anatomy and architecture meet and overlap. It comes from an interdisciplinary research carried out by professionals from very different, although complementary, backgrounds, as medicine and psychotherapy on one side, and interior design, landscape and urban design, on the other side. Through a brief powerpoint slide show, the results of a research carried out with the students of the Domus Academy of Design, the Landscape School Arte e Messaggio and the Department of Architecture and Planning of the Milan Polytechnic. The objective of the presentation is to show how a change in body organisation can affect the spatial perception, the spatial experience and the spatial representation. In the experiment reported, through a series of small, but specific, body movements the students have entered into different phisical patterns, with their relative “state of mind”, and then led to note how these changes have affected their perception of space. After the students to the research have been lead to experience specific body organisations and neurological patterns, they have been asked to draw a familiar type of space: a room for the interior designers of the Domus Academy, a garden for the landscape designers, a town square for the urban designers of the Politecnico di Milano.The results show recurring and meaningful patterns in the drawings for every type of body organisation. The demonstration, will offer to the participants the opportunity to understand clearly the correlation among neuro-physical patterns and their related spatial perception and representation. A short discussion at the end will adress practical implications of specific spatial choices in determining body and neurological patterns in fields as architecture, urban design, education, psychology and medicine.