Duarte

Nicholas DUARTE

Hylozoic Dynamism as Contingency in Architecture:

The design of an interactive art classroom in the Capitol Theatre

Supervisor Co-supervisor Dr MJ Stander, PhD (Arch) Mr L Pienaar, MTechArch (Prof)

Abstract

Traditional (modernist) architecture with its roots in the modernist tradition acts as a hermetically sealed envelope. It numbs the senses, leading to detachment and losing engagement with the body and environment. Nikos Salingaros, an urban theorist and mathematician, takes the position that architecture within the modernist framework “encourages us to deny our biologicallyevolved senses and embrace an unnatural, inhuman built world.” (N, Salingaros, 2013) Salingaros argues that traditional modernist principles imposed on a cityscape fracture the built environment and the people using it.

This mini-dissertation argues for a hylozoic dynamic architecture, which would produce a built environment that engages with the human senses and express a human ideal in built form. Furthermore, this mini-dissertation aims to provide an architectural approach to creating a lifelike architecture, focusing on how the user experiences this architecture through the human body. The theory of hylozoism refers to the notion that all matter possesses life. The application of this theory will guide the design of an interactive art classroom in the Capitol Theatre in Church Square in the Pretoria CBD. Hylozoic; from the word hylozoism, the philosophical doctrine that all matter has life or is alive. Dynamism; the theory that the phenomena of matter are due to the action of forces. The combination of these two ideas/ theories, it is hoped, will result in a living architecture with which the individual can engage and interact. The interior boundaries will no longer be static surfaces that accommodate human interaction but rather living, dynamic elements that respond to human interaction by creating a positive feedback loop between the environment and the user. The architectural notion of Hylozoic Dynamism is in contrast to modernist principles that currently populate the Pretoria CBD.