Images of the body in architecture : anthropology and built space / edited by Kirsten Wagner and Jasper Cepl.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Wagner, Kirsten.

Cepl, Jasper.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human figure in art.

Architecture.

Anthropology.

Physical Description:

394 pages : illustrations, plans ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Tübingen : Wasmuth, [2014]

Summary:

The essays collected in this volume are intended to stimulate research in the anthropology of architecture on the basis of a critical history of the body and its cultural constructions. The analogy between architecture and the human body is rooted in the fundamental impact the latter has on ordering, symbolising, and interpreting the world. Correspondingly, the metaphorical conceptualisation of the built environment in terms of the human body was already practiced in early cultures and has determined architectural theory since antiquity. While the architectural treatises of early modern times vividly imagine anthropomorphic and anthropometric figures, they seem to be overcome by an architectural theory that is based on purely rational as well as mechanical laws. However, these figures were never totally abandoned, and Le Corbusier's Modulor is only one, if not the most prominent example, for their ongoing reception and transformation in modern times. The human sciences of the 19th century played a significant role in this process. Physiology and psychology brought about not only new experimental devices for analysing the human body and its physiological functions, but also new images of the body that directly went into aesthetics, art history, and architectural theory. This new understanding of the body had a large impact on the production and reception of modern architecture. Book jacket.

Contents:

Images of the Body in Architecture: Anthropology and Built Space / Kirsten Wagner Wagner, Kirsten, Jasper Cepl Cepl, Jasper 7

Whose Body? / Indra Kagis McEwen McEwen, Indra Kagis 25

Anthropomorphism: From Vitruvius to Neufert, from Human Measurement to the Module of Fascism / Frank Zöllner Zöllner, Frank 47

Measuring Beauty: Ideal Proportions and the Human Figure ca. 1930 / Eckhard Leuschner Leuschner, Eckhard 76

Space and the Body: Concepts of the Corporeal in Le Corbusier's Work / Christoph Schnoor Schnoor, Christoph 99

Kurokawa's Metabolic Space / Tobias Cheung Cheung, Tobias 131

Camillo Sitte: Optically Constructed Space and Artistic City Building / Heleni Porfyriou Porfyriou, Heleni 166

Architecture as Enclosure of Man: August Schmarsow's Attempt at a Scientific Grounding of the Hegelian Principle / Beatrix Zug-Rosenblatt Zug-Rosenblatt, Beatrix 189

New Hellerau: Design in the Biological Age / Harry Francis Mallgrave Mallgrave, Harry Francis 207

The Building as a Living Work of Art in the Time of Cosimo Fanzago / Paolo Sanvito Sanvito, Paolo 227

The Relief and the Body: Relationships between Sculpture and Architecture around 1900 / Claire Barbillon Barbillon, Claire 263

The Transitoriness of Matter: Reflections on the Architecture of Sir John Soane / Tanja Jankowiak Jankowiak, Tanja 281

Foucault and the Body as a Site of Resistance / Sven-Olov Wallenstein Wallenstein, Sven-Olov 301

Architecture for Patients: Medicine and City Planning in Berlin, 1860-1960 / Phillpp Osten Osten, Phillpp 319

Body, Order, and Border: Ein-Richtungas Biopolitical Procedure in Residential Building after 1945, and its Critique in the Visual Media of the 1960s / Irene Nierhaus Nierhaus, Irene 345

My Home is My Body / Günther Feuerstein Feuerstein, Günther 367.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9783803007315

3803007313

OCLC:

898459506