THE UNDERSTANDING THAT BEGINNING IS SCARY -- at first.
At first, the idea of doing a literature review was haunting. Not because of the basic needs required, but because of the start. For some reason, the start always brings out the stress in me. I will never understand this about myself. It is possibly because I cannot control what follows the start… yeah, that is probably the reason. But! As it turns out, when you find something that pulls in your attention, gets you interested, AND helps you learn new things, the scary part of the start drifts away. Undergraduate Research in Architecture's chapter on literature review gave helpful reminders. Chapter two gave me the tools to begin the search. It feels good to move from the start to the search, so with that being said, the time to understand the "interesting" part begins with an exploration of Evelyn Gavrilou Inscribing structures of dance into architecture 1.
ARTICLE #1
INSCRIBING STRUCTURE OF DANCE INTO ARCHITECTURE 1
"Thus, a heuristic comparison between dance and built space has been used to suggest that our understanding of space involves an exploration of how generative forces interact with constraints, how patterns of movement reveal underlying patterns of order within everyday spatial experience."
The title should have given it away for me, but as I began the process of this read, I was captivated. My head began to swim with questions. Is the beginning of the dance architecture search I need to develop my own question? Can these thoughts benefit the lives of architects, dancers, and everyone alike? Literature reviews are to be read so that we, as designers and researchers, can understand our place in a type of conversation. There is no guarantee that the question is found, and it should not be, but this article enabled me to break the barrier of the starting point.
The author takes the stances of understanding two well-renown choreographers: Balanchine and Cunningham. They describe the two choreographers as two opposites of the same spectrum. With the background knowledge I have of the two, I could grasp ahold of this concept quickly. Balanchine is described as a choreographer who creates pictures with dancers' sequences. On the other hand, Cunningham is described as choreographing through space in time. Yet they both create spatial patterns, as the author describes them. We, as designers, walk into a space and question the space because we understand it. Dancers watch a dance and question it because they understand it. Is there a way to do the same for dance and architecture, for people who understand neither? Can dance be the gateway to that question?
The article moves to an example of a space. It considers a partition in the space to separate two purposes without completely dividing the two spaces off one another. A solid partition will block the natural movement of the space. In my mind, this is the same as throwing a random person into the turn sequence of a dancer. Both instances create a "hit a brick wall" impact. Solidity stops the natural flow. The author considers the idea and how it can be used to create an alive rather than static partition. They suggest ripple glazing or broke up wood panels. This brings the reader back to the choreography styles of Balanchine and Cunningham, a flow of pictures and an image of time and space. Is there a way to understand natural movement in a space to aid in the design solution?
As stated in the article, these ideations are the collection of micro-scale spatial experiences, so there is a question of what the macro-scale may look like. This leaves me with a narrowed down question for Inscribing structures of dance into architecture 1:
Can understanding dance spatial patterns help us learn how to create effective architectural spatial patterns that our bodies and minds grasp without confusion?
ARTICLE #2
A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF ARCHITECTURE
The title of this article threw me off. It confused me as I began to move through its paragraphs. In all honesty, this article could summarize one question: Is paper architecture actual architecture or fine art? My thoughts on this are, who is to say? My thoughts were correct. Paper architecture is a process to get into the design. Archigram, a "polemical broadsheet producing unpublished paper architecture, makes the author question paper architecture in three ways:
1. Paper architecture, as a whole.
2. How can we judge something we don't understand?
3. If paper architecture is deemed inhabitable, how can we judge it based on whether
it is habitable, when that is not how it is created?
The three questions make one think, as they should. The author gives the example of an architecture student to help start the path to the answers. A design student spends their education learning how to create spaces, yet in most instances, never sees them built to scale. Their design solutions and concepts win awards. Are they deemed habitable? The work put into the idea is worth the award, and rightfully so. Why can't paper architecture be considered architecture? Neither is physically habitable, so why is one architecture and the other...not?
"Archigram considered the received idea of architecture as a means of rationally structuring the environment to optimize the users' pursuits and found its response too constrained."
A professor of architecture, David Greene, is brought in to continue the conversation. In so many words, he believes that architecture follows what the user needs, not what the form itself needs. Greene states we should think imaginatively, outside the means of technology. This brings the idea of the alien spaceship in Independence Day, the movie. No, the alien ship is not accurate, but its concept could be seeing as it came from the ideas of someone real. This creates the question in my head, does the form someone makes from paper architecture attainable through future technology?
The article moves to compare music and dance to architecture. A ball game would not be the same without the national anthem. A ceremony before a war, in some instances, would not be the same without a dance. These two are an accompaniment to the event. The author states that an accompaniment is something mixed into, not set apart in this scenario. "Is architecture the space in which our entire lives are danced?" Are they an accompaniment to one another? The built world is a space that we cannot avoid. The rhythm of space affects us, so we allow it to be a negative impact? Or do we take charge of our well-being and make the rhythm have positive effects? Architecture is something that relies on us to be whole, not the other way around. This leaves me questioning:
How do we integrate natural movement in space as an accompaniment?
ARTICLE #3
MISMATCH OF CLASSROOM FURNITURE AND STUDENT BODY DIMENSIONS
Lastly, it was a goal to begin understanding my interests in the human body and furniture design. Thus I stumbled on to the Mismatch of Classroom Furniture and Student Body Dimensions. The article profoundly looks into comparing mass-produced furniture and middle school-aged children. Statistics of importance to understand the need of understanding between the two were as follows:
8 percent of the United States population seeks help for back pain issues and not just the adult population.
$24 billion costs have been used to aid in the assistance of back pain.
Those are big numbers for a big country. Why are these numbers so high? Ergonomics has become a necessary concern in the built environment, but only in office furniture design.
Kids spend prolonged hours in one place, in one room. They do not get to move around freely in most instances of the classroom. One would think children's health in the classroom would be a large area of study and concern, seeing as public education lasts from five to eighteen. Studies that do connect the two are rare, as the other explains.
A study takes place to understand children's bodies in relation to mass-produced school chairs. To better understand the implications in which they are in, a fact of body weight is stated. Seventy-five percent of our body weight relies on four inches of space in which we sit. Four inches. All the stress of our body goes into those four inches. It is truly fascinating that the weight of our body is distributed this way when sitting in a chair. In my mind, it is comparable to the weight of the structure of a home. If the weight is not distributed correctly in a house, stressors occur and result in an unstable structure. Why can't our bodies positioned on a chair be considered the same way?
The body structure is not easily understandable to most, or maybe it is just me. With that being said, seeing as our body is our home, it is, in my opinion, our job as designers to develop a strong understanding of the human body and its needs to produce pieces of furniture that keep the body healthy. The author suggests that mass-produced school furniture companies adopted a 'one size fits all' ideation. With this in mind, the study utilized mass-produced chairs used at the school.
Many 'mismatch' body and chair combinations led to almost all results showing that no child's body benefits from the chairs they use each day. None accommodate the needs of the body. There is relatively no interest in students' comfort, so how do we expect them to want to come to a place where they can't feel comfortable enough to engage in the learning experience. It is almost impossible to create chairs for schools to complement each body type, but this begs the question:
How do we design furniture to accommodate every person and body type without having exact measurements?
Through this lite-review process, I found myself constantly questioning everything. I believe that is almost key to all learning experiences. There were a hodgepodge of notes taken between each article in the hopes of growing my understanding of the three individually. These are just the few thoughts I thought best to share, so enjoy!
Getting started on this stage of the project may indeed be the hardest place to get the ball rolling. To stand facing the entire breadth of the internet or a library with nothing but a broad question to start researching can indeed be a tough task. I've always found that one reliable source always helps point to another, they contextualize one another, and as you gain more knowledge and background finding quality information becomes easier.
I find your refined question of "How do we design furniture to accommodate every person and body type without having exact measurements?" to be particularly interesting. I have an interest in furniture design myself, and having spent 15 years in uncomfortable plastic chairs at school,…