4.2.3 Human body in architecture

Figure 48: Body in clothing (Author, 2021). Figure 49: Body in building (Author, 2021).

a mediating layer between the environment, the body, and others. Clothes and buildings’ initial function is to protect people from external factors such as weathering (Louise, 2010, p.3). The disciplines create inventive forms and structures using shapes, lines, scales, and norms related to the human body to respond to human needs.

The plethora of technologies in the surroundings opens a new space for physicality, gesture, and body-based interaction. This interaction includes interactive clothes, biosensors worn by the human body, and wearable computers.

Architecture has always had a relationship with the human body, as the body is a key element in architectural practice. However, the documentation on the connection between the two is made by Vitruvius’ Vitruvian man, Le Corbusier’s modern man, and the rise of ergonomics. This section questions how the body is perceived (Figure 31).

“Fashion is Architecture, it’s a matter of proportion” Coco Chanel

Figure 50: Person wearing socks (Author, 2021). Crewe argues that the two disciplines are united as they focus on wrapping the body, thus sheltering and revealing in space (Crewe, 2010). Although this is the initial function, both these disciplines have developed into entities that facilitate the desired use.

Chinwendu explains that one can compare modern architecture to a dress. This statement is explained further that architects relied on the similarity of a dress as it has been thought of as an art of dress. The initial function of the modernist architecture was to shelter the elaborate clothing that was worn in the nineteenth century in a simple covering (Chinwendu, 2014).

Zaha Hadid once mentioned “Architecture is how the person places herself in the space. Fashion is about how you place the object on the person”.

Figure 51: Person walking into a building (Edit by Author 2021)