As practicing architects, we are trained to design through images, plans, sections, and references – yet the actual experience of architecture unfolds through the body. How can we bridge the gap between visualized design and lived spatial experience? How can we design spaces that not only look right, but truly feel right and speak to all our senses?

Architecture is the human mode of making ourselves at home in the world. Beyond the skin, we surround our bodies with multiple layers: clothing, furniture, interior spaces, urban environments, and landscapes. To create spaces that resonate with our embodied being, we must start from what the body knows, feels, senses, and remembers.

Your body serves as an archive of embodied spatial memories – memories of movement through thresholds, light on skin, the rhythm of steps, moments of compression and expansion. These somatic memories shape perception, and perception forms the basis for conception. Only by understanding how spaces are felt and lived through all senses can we deliberately design atmospheres and spatial experiences.

This seminar is dedicated to integrating embodied knowledge directly into the architectural design process. Through practical exercises, you will learn to access your embodied archive and use bodily perception and memory as a resource, repertoire, and decision-making tool in design. You will develop methods to anticipate the sensory and atmospheric impact of spaces before they are built and to design beyond the visual.

By becoming aware of how architectural spaces are experienced and how they affect our somatic sensations, you will gain tools to create architectures that engage all senses, support wellbeing, and resonate with the human body – across scales, from landscape and urban space to architecture and interior design.

You will learn how embodied and somatically experienced spaces can inform your design decisions and help you anticipate how future spaces will affect the sensory experience of the body.

Based on extensive research on the reciprocal relationship between body and space, this seminar presents key aspects and explores their application in practice.

Introduction
Spaces That Speak to the Body

Modes of Relating
Thematic Introduction, Practical Exercises, and Reflections

Body as Model: Shape, Proportion, and Resemblance
Body as Measure: Scale, Dimension, and Outreach of the Senses
Body as Agent: Agency, Action, and Functionality
Body as Medium: Impression, Expression, and Anticipation

Integration and Embodied Practice
Exploring Somatic Impressions and Bodliy Memory
Translating Them into Corporeal Expression, Creativity, and Embodied Anticipation.

Reflection and Discussion
Creating Spaces that Speak to the Body