Architecture and the body

Abstract

The Vitruvian Man, the Golden Section and the Modular Man were once seen as idealised, iconic representations of the relationship of the human body to architecture. But the widespread practice of psychoanalysis, the development of genetic engineering and the raised consciousness of the female body have altered not only the traditional idea of body but also of how we inhabit the body, and hence make and inhabit space. This dissertation discusses also what the idea of body might mean other than the literal body. For example, today all manner of internal and external prostheses make it possible to alter the bodies we are born with, thus changing not only the architecture of the body, but, by extrapolation, what form architecture might take in response to such a body. When the body is no longer a given physical, social, or political measure, or a measure of psychological content, the relationship of subject to place changes, as does the relationship of body to building.