DESIGN STUDIO’S PLACE IN ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION: CONCEPTUAL STUDY EVALUATION IN DICLE UNIVERSITY ARCHITECTURE DEPARTMENT AS A STUDIO EXPERIENCE

ARCHDESIGN ’xx19 VI. INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN CONFERENCE, Athens, Yunanistan, 22 - 23 Mart 2019, ss.387-398, (Tam Metin Bildiri)

The link between the man and architecture take us to research about how

we perceive the space, how we embody the space using Juha Leiviskä’s works as

cases of study. We are analyzing some of his projects based on Maurice Merleau-

Ponty theories about phenomenology of perception, neural and corporal reactions

and responses based on neuroscience developed by Antonio Damásio and Juhani

Pallasmaa arguments about a phenomenological conception of architecture; for

this, we are using several methodologies such as observation in situ, historical

analysis of architecture and context.

There were establish several important architectonical concepts for the

perception of the space, from the body to the brain. Our body is a biological and

cultural organism that is constantly changing, based on the environment that is

developing in. When we talk about our body perception in architecture we talk

about human scale, movement, promenade architectural, but another concept

is time; we measure the time trough architecture and our own bodies, as Juhani

Pallasma says:

“We are incapable of living in chaos, but we can’t live outside of the passage of

time and duration. Both dimensions need to articulate and give specific meanings.

Time must be reduced in scale to human dimensions and concretized as a continues

duration.” (2016, p. 9).

Our brain and body are mutually correlated; they represent two aspects of

the same thing, as Merleau-Ponty defends. We started from visual and auditory

perception to understand how we experience the space, but architecture is a bodily

experience, more than a visual sense or other of 5 Aristotle’s senses which are not

enough to grasp all architectural experience. From these aspects and based on

Juhani Pallasmaa writings we are developing this analysis of the Cultural Center

of Bethlehem in Palestine as a case of study to understand how we experience

this building, in a multicultural context, not only as a recovery of a church with

a religious and historical meaning but as a social center. Because we believe that

architecture is a stimulus generator for certain uses but also is a receptor of these

uses by the inhabitants, as Juha Leiviskä argues, “The aim of [architecture] is to

create from human dimensions space to be experienced by people.” (1999, p. 9).