Abstract:
Questions of empathetic perception of affect have concerned architects for hundreds of years. Can we make spaces that evoke feeling? How does space evoke feeling, and in particular how can architecture create spaces that evoke feeling? The thesis comes from the background of phenomenology, emerging neuroscientific research into the aesthetic response, the emotional response system and empathy theory. From this research, I have concluded that feeling is the primary conscious experience, the beginning of what we constitute as reality, our interpretation of it and the closest thing to truth. Thus I have designed a phenomenological approach to architectural design based on introspective exploration of my response to a phenomenon. This phenomenon is explored in selected art expressions and then investigated for its architectural potential. The significance of art is a belief concluded through readings of Harry Mallgrave, Juhani Pallasmaa, Eduardo Chillida and the expression theory of art. This belief is that art expression is an inherent form of communication and art is an embodiment of feeling. Thus the methodology explores the process of aesthetic creation. This is introspectively evaluated and documented in an attempt to express through architecture the essence of a phenomenon. Central to this is my own subjective interpretation; the how I feel in a particular space in the contemplation of a subjectively significant phenomenon. The thesis documents the exploration of the author’s attempt at expressing the subjective reality evoked in a framed experience. To demonstrate the architectural potential of the methodology, I show how one artistic expression – music – may translate into another – architecture using Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a theme of Corelli.