Bauhaus Revisited: The Human Body as a Tool in Architectural Education

The current paper intends to reveal the importance of the human body as a tool for spatial production in architectural education, more specifically during the first year of the initiation process. The exercise Spatial Bodies, developed at Umeå School of Architecture in Sweden, aims to explore the phenomenon of space, through the lens of moving bodies, to discover what is the effect that space can have on movement and what is the effect movement can have on the creation of space itself. Through an experimental pedagogical methodology, that combines mapping techniques, choreography, material experimentation, design methods and performative instruments, students are asked to analyze, compose, build and perform a series of architectural artifacts that have the capacity to activate awareness of the interaction between body and space. This process enables the discovery and awareness of concepts such as geometry, structure, articulation, movement, material, surface, choreography and place, which go far beyond their surface meanings.