Rowan Tandiwe Watson
Rowan is an architect with a long involvement in design-build; craft processes and dance. As a lecturer at ITSligo, he is interested in inspiring and immersing students in design through craft and direct, embodied responses to place. Rowan am currently reading for a practice PhD at BCU that uses movement to bring immediacy to the experience of architectural design
Research
Tracing Place: Moving towards a body- speech for architectural imagination
This practice research initiates an approach to embodiment within architectural design practice. The research is part auto-ethnographic, part practice, drawing on sources relating to Laban analysis, contact improvisation, non-verbal communication, and environmental perception. It captures and then capitalises on a personal and implicit embodied imagination of place, developing a body-speech, rather than the body-speech, for architectural imagination. The research and emergent praxis do not provide a formulaic or failsafe way of embodying design or of making design decisions. Instead, they provide an emergent way of talking to oneself within movement during design; a way of enhancing a felt kinaesthetic sense of real and imagined place that brings physical immediacy to the experience of design.
This research began with a fascination in the relationship between body and place that has accompanied a long parallel involvement in architecture and dance. A growing interest in the relationship between bodily movement, imagination and the perception of place led to practice research that questions (i) what my imagining, moving body-self knows and say of its surroundings, (ii) how it says it, and (iii) how this body-speech might be used to bring a sense of body-place immediacy to the experience of architectural design. These questions prompted research for a practice-based PhD, supervised by Dr Rachel Sara and Dr Victoria Hunter. Interest in the relationship between the body, perception and the physical world is not new. Merleau Ponty (2013) argues that both emotional perception and our connection to the world are routed through the body and our senses. Likewise, this research highlights dynamic and interactive place as it is experienced from within a moving body, rather than constant place independent of inhabitants. Architectural experience is understood to be relational and experienced interactively, with buildings forming part of a dynamic exchange between ourselves and our animate surroundings.
This practice research initiates an approach to embodiment within architectural design practice. The research is part auto-ethnographic, part practice, drawing on sources relating to Laban analysis, contact improvisation, non-verbal communication, and environmental perception (Gibson and Pick 2000). It captures and then capitalises on a personal and implicit embodied imagination of place, developing a body-speech, rather than the body-speech, for architectural imagination. The research and emergent praxis do not provide a formulaic or failsafe way of embodying design or of making design decisions. Instead, they provide an emergent way of talking to oneself within movement during design; a way of enhancing a felt kinaesthetic sense of real and imagined place that brings physical immediacy to the experience of design.
Bibliography
- Merleau-Ponty, M., 2013. Phenomenology of perception. Routledge.
- Gibson, E.J. and Pick, A.D., 2000. An ecological approach to perceptual learning and development. Oxford University Press, USA.
- Olsen, A., 2002. Body and earth. An experiential guide. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England.
- Pallasmaa, J., 2012. The eyes of the skin: architecture and the senses. John Wiley & Sons.
Postgraduate supervision
- Dr Rachel Sara
- Dr Victoria Hunter
Publications
- Rowan Watson; Rachel Sara (2015) 350 duets: body with-in place-Towards a methodology of attunement [Unrefereed Article] Spaces of Attunement: Life, Matter & the Dance of Encounters Cardiff University, 30/03/2015-31/03/2015
- Watson, R., 2014. Learning from the environment and making: Using analysis and the senses. Journal for Education in the Built Environment, 9(1), pp.69-88.