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2 PDF
2 PDF
Dana Julean
Senior lecturer PhD architect
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Abstract
Space is all around us, we experience it as shaped into buildings,
rooms, tiny enclosures, as well as shaped into public spaces, squares, streets,
and as natural landscapes. However, when we look at it, interact with it, walk
through it, we all experience it differently. Psychology teaches us that the
perceptual process is a very complex mechanism, which is essentially made
up of two aspects: “one of which is essentially figurative, related to the
percepts or images of successive states or momentary configurations of the
world by direct and immediate contact, and a second which is essentially
operative, related to the operations which intervene between successive
states and by which the subject transforms parts of the world into
reconstructable patterns or schemas.” (Hart & Moore, 1973, p. 249). Thus,
when looking at space, although we all “see” the same thing, we operate and
understand things differently mainly because of our different social, cultural,
religious, and geographical backgrounds (Downs & Stea, 1973). Therefore,
the present study would like to focus precisely on this aspect, namely why do
architects perceive space differently than the ordinary passerby?
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European Scientific Journal April 2016 /SPECIAL/ edition ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431
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European Scientific Journal April 2016 /SPECIAL/ edition ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431
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European Scientific Journal April 2016 /SPECIAL/ edition ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431
order and the reference system which are established between the subject and
the space surrounding them - an affective bond, labeled by Tuan as
topophilia (Tuan, 1974).
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European Scientific Journal April 2016 /SPECIAL/ edition ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431
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European Scientific Journal April 2016 /SPECIAL/ edition ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431
happens, who is there, what her role is in the experience, and the feelings she
has at the time. Her brain disaggregates elements of these perceptions
allocating each to a different part of the brain. The mood of the event goes
one place, the colors of clothing another, and the size of the space a third.
Faces of participants, action terms (verbs), nouns, and objects all go into
different areas of the brain, and the way she traveled to or from the place (her
cognitive map) into still another.” (Zeisel, 2006, p.146)
The students responded rather well to this approach and several of
them have been quite interactive during the discussion sessions following
each course. Some of them even reported taking into account the principles
studied during the course when designing their own projects for the Design
Studio.
Conclusion
A rather elementary conclusion is that when one judges architecture,
one actually speaks about perceiving architecture and not about architecture
per se. After describing and analyzing the complexity of the perceptual
process, it becomes quite obvious that, before an evaluation or a discussion
of architectural aesthetic principles, the student must understand that the
success or failure in architecture is a matter of perception. Such a discussion
on perception, form an architectural point of view, is meaningful for several
reasons.
One of these is simply the way in which one perceives the
architectural object in front of them. Namely, what the user perceives when
they try to identify the manner in which a space should be navigated, the
attitude they should have towards the physical environment, whether they
identify or not the meaning of the space. It is an intimate, personal and
immediate relationship with architecture - in which, of course, the aesthetic
factor plays an important part -, but which depends mostly on one’s
knowledge, system of decoding and interpreting meanings, preconceptions or
rituals.
Architecture is more than just a spatial or volumetric composition,
architecture can design spatial perceptions and, at the same time, it can be
judged as being a success or failure when the object - the product of
architecture - is perceived in its context. Thus, we have reached the fragile
relationship between designing and dwelling space, between imagining and
creating space perception and practicing perception in the real, immediate
space.
The complexity of the architectural theoretical analysis resides in this
two-way relationship: theory is, on one hand, critical - analyzing and
interrogating the physical reality, the immediate space or architectural
product - and, on the other, it tries to come up with solutions - methodologies
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