Ribeiro, P.S.H.; (2005) Space in bodies and bodies in space: an examination of bodily experience in Parc de la Villette. Masters thesis , UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This report investigates different forms of bodily experience in Parc de la Villette. Bodily experience is defined as perception and action through the medium of the body in the real world. In addition, the concept presupposes the interaction with other bodies in that same real world. Therefore, the assumption is that different levels of bodily experience, from the individual to the collective level, arise from particular properties of the world in which the body is situation and from its relation to other bodies. The purpose is to shed light on different forms of bodily experience and how they are linked to syntactic and spatial properties of space. It is argued that this is a meaningful topic within the framework of space syntax as the duality of the individual situated body and bodies at the aggregate level are intrinsic to its technology and theory. The research methods used to investigate this topic were three-fold: observation data using the 'static snap-shot' technique were overlaid onto outcomes of syntactic and spatial analysis, resulting from the visibility graph and the isovist techniques, respectively. The findings have shed light on three levels of bodily experience; an individual level in the cinematic promenade, an intermediate level in the potentially exploratory patterns of movement along the park and in the 'un-programmed' activities, and a collective level manifested in the aggregate patterns of movement along the integrated axes. Links are established between findings and models of thought in order to put forward varied interpretations in the light of the research topic and specificity of the site. The report concludes that these different forms of bodily experience can be said to exist, in an abstract form, in space itself, and that their concrete manifestation in space-time occurs through the action of bodies in space. Furthermore, it is argued that the abstract techniques of space syntax bring to the fore different forms of bodily experience that are implicitly embedded in space.

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