Shifting Perception: Defining Space Through Architectonic Form

Abstract

There exists a constant dialogue with an individual and their interaction with space, architecture, and being. At a primal level, the individual develops a dichotomous understanding of environment.

At one spectrum exists the physically tangible and regulated ideas; these emanate in formal definitions of country, state, city, and block. Many neighborhoods but more so turfs represent metaphysical space - varying in definition and regularly fluctuating. The latter is a culturally understood space and has blurred edges that change with each report. Whether physical or idealized, both equally shape an individual’s perception of environment as they mature and develop.

Experience endures as both an inevitable and necessary part of life because to live is to engage with life and through doing so create experiences. While active experience only deals with individual points in time, the ability to remember them lends more to comprehension. Memory, in relation to experiential recall, is fundamental to spatial growth and active perception because it is derived from the continuum of experience. As an individual grows and engages life, the experiences and thus memories of their life blend to form a cumulative understanding.

Naturally, memory relies most heavily on the most recent experience or past prominent memories. Manipulating and creating a new memory of an environment allows for a shift in how it is experienced as well as the perception of it because to “experience is to learn; …acting on the given and creating out of the given”2. Using architectonic form as an intervention allows for a shift in the experience of an urban space and contributes to the creation of a new vision of how an environment can be developed and invested in based on any given proposal.

The intervention manipulates pre-conceived notions and ideals to strengthen, weaken, or ultimately remove them. The product of altering spatial perception through analysis, design, and implementation fosters new investment and growth by outside developers.