Movement is the measure: views on your body in space

Speaker: Dr Fiona Zisch Video of her talk here

The modern architect Le Corbusier described the experience of space and architecture as “appreciated while on the move, with one’s feet…; while walking, moving from one place to another. … A true architectural promenade [offers] constantly changing views, unexpected, at times surprising” . Walking, moving in time in space, is foundational to spatial experience and, indeed, spatial design. The postmodern choreographer Steve Paxton, interested in the potency of pedestrian movement, relatedly suggested that “dance explores some of the physical possibilities; dance refocuses our focusing mind […] time, space, gravity open up to creativity” . In this talk, I will use a cognitive lens to examine architectural and choreographic views on movement and suggest how concepts from cognitive science, architecture, and choreography relate and can mutually inform one another. Drawing on the experimental performance ‘An Allocentric View’ (2019), I will examine how movement underlies connections formed between space and body; dynamic, continuous, and reciprocal, movement allows us to experience space. In turn, understanding this connection movement allows architects and choreographers to compose in and for space and cognitive science to explore foundations of spatial navigation.

Biography
Dr Fiona Zisch works across architecture, cognitive science, and choreography. Her research explores cognitive ecologies with a focus on intuition and embodiment and how ‘neuroarchitecture’ as transdisciplinary threshold might develop more radical, critical, and progressive thinking. Fiona gained her PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture and the Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, UCL. She lectures on the Bartlett MArch Design for Performance and Interaction where she runs the Research Pathway ‘Radical Realities’ and leads History and Theory. She is a collaborator in the UCL research group Spierslab and also lectures at the School of Architecture at the University of Innsbruck.