Ayuso, Alessandro;
(2022)
Experiments with Body Agent Architecture: The 586-year-old Spiritello in Il Regno Digitale.
[Book].
Design Research in Architecture.
UCL Press: London, UK.
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Abstract
Experiments with Body Agent Architecture puts forward the notion of body agents: non-ideal, animate and highly specific figures integrated with design to enact particular notions of embodied subjectivity in architecture. Body agents present opportunities for architects to increase imaginative and empathic qualities in their designs, particularly amidst a posthuman condition. Beginning with narrative writing from the viewpoint of a body agent, an estranged ‘quattrocento spiritello’ who finds himself uncomfortably inhabiting a digital milieu (or, as the spiritello calls it, ‘Il Regno Digitale’), the book combines speculative historical fiction and original design experiments. It focuses on the process of creating the multi-media design experiments, moving from the design of the body itself as an original prosthetic to architectural proposals emanating from the body. A fragmented history of the figure in architecture is charted and woven into the designs, with chapters examining Michelangelo’s enigmatic figures in his drawings for the New Sacristy in the early sixteenth century, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s physically ephemeral ‘putti’ adorning chapels and churches in the seventeenth century, and Austrian artist-architect Walter Pichler’s personal and prescient figures of the twentieth century.
| Type: | Book |
|---|---|
| Title: | Experiments with Body Agent Architecture: The 586-year-old Spiritello in Il Regno Digitale |
| ISBN-13: | 978-1-80008-170-3 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.14324/111.9781800081703 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800081703 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Text © Author, 2022 Images © Author and copyright holders named in captions, 2022 Any third-party material in this book is not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence. Details of the copyright ownership and permitted use of third-party material is given in the image (or extract) credit lines. If you would like to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright owner. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial Non-derivative 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This licence allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for personal and non-commercial use provided author and publisher attribution is clearly stated. Attribution should include the following information: Ayuso, A. 2022. Experiments with Body Agent Architecture: The 586-year-old Spiritello in Il Regno Digitale. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800081703 Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ |
| Keywords: | architecture, figurines, design, Renaissance, Baroque |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10146038 |
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