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Body and Imagination

by LUCIA PRIOLETTI

Space, event and movement : Tschumi's triad defines his architecture. An architecture that does not have an autonomous or closed dimension in itself, but that embraces sensorial concepts and experiences; theory and practice, material and social relations. It joins philosophy, cinema, literature, visual and performing arts; in balance between space and time , impossible to separate from the events and the movement of the bodies that inhabit it. Space is a physical reality, shaped by the experience of movement within it and by the relationships that man establishes with it. Tschumi puts man at the center of the architectural work, it is the man who lives that space and through his movement creates the event.

I imagine that it is precisely the man who inhabits that space, who even unconsciously makes a judgment about it, a subjective judgment, which confers a value, even an aesthetic one, on that construction. A judgment of taste like the one we have of the dishes of a restaurant, an expression of our personal perception of flavors, of our emotions, of our sensorial memory.

Thus my aesthetic judgment develops from the relationship between my physicality, my body experiencing that experience and my imagination. What I observe , whether it is architecture or a work of art without my imagination, my perception, would not exist. Without the viewer there can be no beauty.

NEW ACROPOLIS MUSEUM

Athina | Bernard Tschumi Architects (2009)

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