Into Architecture

A new teaching concept: Stories about architecture are linked to spatial experiments on a larger scale. The setting is an architecture workshop with room for a large group of participants.

The body is smart: We can experience architecture, but can we experience a structure? All buildings are subjected to powerful forces. These invisible ‘giants’ hold everything together and, regardless of the structure, pressure and tension forces interact in a complicated manner. The students gain experience with structures that they can enter, enabling them to personally experience static tension and pressure forces. They actively participate in the construction of the structure with their own bodies, together with sticks, rope, building blocks and canvas. A body also has its own construction and relationship to architecture in the skeletal and muscular systems. The larger bones absorb the pressure produced – just like the columns and beams in physical structures, while muscles stretch and recoil around the skeletal system to produce a functional position and stabilise the body in active equilibrium.