Architectonics of embodiment

When we see the title of the study we imediately think of embodiment as an essential part of the research. Focusing on "The Architectonics of Embodiment" by Vesely. Since the very beginning is stated that the relation of the body to architecture and the complex phenomenon of corporeality have always had a privileged position within the history of European culture. Supporting this statement we have examples of authors regarding Vitruvius period,who compare the human body directly to the body of a building, and all the other authors which have focused and referred to the human body and propotions.

The most critical aspect of the role of the body in understanding reality is the relation between the body and that which truly exists.Thereafter, the body is used to designate not only conceptual but also material reality. Referring to Plato we saw that he considered the body not as a given or something that can be isolated or defined as an entity; rather, than a part of a process of ordering within the domain of necessity.As a result, the body appears as a relatively stable structure ordered in the context of reality as a whole (cosmos).The purpose of the human being is to live a happy and just life, which Plato understands as a life guided by the fully developed rational part of the soul. Our rational soul is fully developed when revolutions of the Same and the Different that constitute it are made as orderly and smooth as our nature permits, which enables us to grasp Forms and have true opinions. In that orderliness and smoothness, our rational soul imitates revolutions of the world-soul. The openness of the ordering process speaks not only about the contingency of the world but also about the contingent nature of the body. Contingency in this case stems from the tension between the conditions and possibilities of what is perceived as the cosmological process itself.

Aristotle has given his contribution to this feild too .Aristotle’s efforts to connect erect posture of human beings with their unique cognitive abilities, although hopelessly antiquated in detail, were not at all peculiar to their time. Aristotle insists that there can be no action without contact and that everything that either acts or is acted upon is a body; in other words, the only things that truly exist are material bodies. However, Aristotle himself had feared that if the existence of immaterial substances ever came to be doubted, physics, and not metaphysics, would be considered the first science. Aristotelian understanding of corporeality led the Vitruvian doctrine of the body came into existence, but in the Vitruvian understanding of corporeality we see that the relation of body and soul is no longer clear.

Another important thing mentioned by Aristotle and later on by Plato was that of microcosms (the relation that human body had with the rest of reality).To appreciate the real meaning of microcosm and its contemporary relevance, we should look more closely at the deep reciprocity that exists between the human body and the world and, by implication, between the human body and architecture. It is a serious mistake to see the human body as isolated from the soul and to discuss the problem of order and harmony as a direct manifestation of the invisible principles in the visible appearance of bodies. Such a simplified and distorted understanding can be found in many Renaissance architectural treatises and modern commentaries. When he talks about the body and human soul Aristotle mentions the symmetry of the two body parts and wanted to find where the soulstands so he put it in the middle.

The system of proportion is anicent and starts with the Pythagorean and Platonic times.The foundations of proportion reveals its equivalence to embodiment, as an analogy of visible and invisible, sensible and intelligent level of reality. Numerical proportions share the advantages but also the limits of mathematical disciplines, which, like geometry and the studies which accompany it are, as we see, dreaming about being, but the clear, waking vision of it is not possible for them as long as they leave the assumptions which they employ undisturbed and cannot give any account of them.

During Renaissance architecture we hear about basic harmonies of the universe, universally valid ratios and proportions, about the parallelism of musical and visual harmonies, but it is far from clear how these ambitious statements relate to reality or under what conditions they can be sustained or justified. Palladio goes one step further than most other architect-theorists when he writes, “The proportions of the voices are harmonies for the ears; those of the measurements are harmonies for the eyes. Such harmonies usually please very much without anyone knowing why, excepting the student of the causality of things.” The audible musical consonants accepted to have a relation with the universal harmony became a foundation of architectural thinking in the early fifteenth century, and their role was not seriously questioned for almost three hundred years. The primary consonances and their legitimacy were derived from the description of the structure of the soul in Plato’s Timaeus, which has nothing directly to do with music.

The ontological meaning of embodiment is closely linked with the phenomena of proportion, in the sense that one speaks for the other. In the primary tradition in which proportion is understood dialectically, the relationship between different levels of reality coincides with the degree of their embodiment. This was most clearly expressed in the late medieval philosophy of light: “It is clear that light through the infinite multiplication of itself extends matter into finite dimensions that are smaller and larger according to certain proportions that they have to one another and thus light proceeds according to numerical and non-numerical proportions.” The philosophy of light was incorporated into architectural thinking and found its expression in the overall vertical organization of the architectural body. Here the  philosophy of light was incorporated into architectural thinking and found its expression in the overall vertical organisation of the architectural body. The paradigm of such an organisation was the structure of the spire or pinnacle that can be seen as a pyramid of light articulated by a continuous proportion.

Not only embodiment is an important aspect of architecture , but also it is through our embodiment that we inhabit the world and through our body that we act within it. Embodiment is not about the body, but about the culture.