The Architectonic Experience of Body and Space in Augmented Interiors.

Isabella Pasqualini,Maria Laura Blefari,Andrea Serino,Tej Tadi,Olaf Blanke

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00375

Abstract

The environment shapes our experience of space in constant interaction with the body. Architectonic interiors amplify the perception of space through the bodily senses; an effect also known as embodiment. The interaction of the bodily senses with the space surrounding the body can be tested experimentally through the manipulation of multisensory stimulation and measured via a range of behaviors related to bodily self-consciousness. Many studies have used Virtual Reality to show that visuotactile conflicts mediated via a virtual body or avatar can disrupt the unified subjective experience of the body and self. In the full-body illusion paradigm, participants feel as if the avatar was their body (ownership, self-identification) and they shift their center of awareness toward the position of the avatar (self-location). However, the influence of non-bodily spatial cues around the body on embodiment remains unclear, and data about the impact of architectonic space on human perception and self-conscious states are sparse. We placed participants into a Virtual Reality arena, where large and narrow virtual interiors were displayed with and without an avatar. We then applied synchronous or asynchronous visuotactile strokes to the back of the participants and avatar, or, to the front wall of the void interiors. During conditions of illusory self-identification with the avatar, participants reported sensations of containment, drift, and touch with the architectonic environment. The absence of the avatar suppressed such feelings, yet, in the large space, we found an effect of continuity between the physical and the virtual interior depending on the full-body illusion. We discuss subjective feelings evoked by architecture and compare the full-body illusion in augmented interiors to architectonic embodiment. A relevant outcome of this study is the potential to dissociate the egocentric, first-person view from the physical point of view through augmented architectonic space.

Highlights

Architecture shelters and constrains the daily experience of our body in space
Instead of the perception of artworks, we focus on the perception of architectonic spaces, the embodiment effect extends to the subjective sense to own a body at a precise location, based on multisensory representations
The results of this study prove that the full-body illusion stimulates embodiment in virtual interiors and affects depth perception

Summary

Introduction

Architecture shelters and constrains the daily experience of our body in space. It is not surprising that the adaptation of architectonic forms to the bodily senses evolved as a central architectonic theme over centuries. Several scholars proposed that beyond the architectonic composition with modules, that is, walls, columns, vaults and so on, visual cues were introduced to augment the experience of continuity in physical space (see Box 1). Embodiment theories in architecture have widely claimed that a figurative or abstract representation of the BOX 1 | Linear perspective and the ideal of continuity. The gradual evolution of perspective and its application to the classical module has been seemingly motivated by the ideal of a continuous or infinite space, as the central concern of Renaissance art (Burckhardt, 1868; Argan, 1946; Wittkower, 1953). Two famous examples by the architect Donato Bramante illustrate the double purpose of linear perspective to augment and shape the classic module. A first example is the pictorial augmentation of the chancel at Santa Maria presso San Satiro (Figure 1); a second one, the Belvedere courtyards at the Vatican, where only from one window of the “Stanze” (pope’s apartment) the top view is complemented geometrically by the design of the gardens, intended to evoke a feeling of association between the worldly and the divine (Vasari, 1550/1986)

Results

Discussion

Conclusion