bodyoftheory
Research
Podcast: “Phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty and Architecture”
My latest output is a podcast interview with Ambrose Gillick, as part of his fascinating series entitled A is for Architecture: “In Season 2, Episode 15 A is for Architecture, I speak with architect and writer, Jonathan Hale, Professor of Architectural Theory at the University of Nottingham, about his 2017 book, Merleau-Ponty for Architects, published by Routledge as … Continue reading
Merleau-Ponty’s ‘Body Schema’*
For Merleau-Ponty the body is not an object, but rather a set of possibilities for action in a given environment: an orientation toward the world that is—in essence—our very means for “having a world” as such. If our sense of space in the world around us is grounded by our “inner” sense of the body’s … Continue reading
Atmospheric Architectures
Review of: Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces Gernot Böhme (edited/trans A-C Engels-Schwarzpaul), London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. ISBN 978-1-4742-5808-1, Hb, pp. 199. Published in: Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts, 18, Pattern / Surface: a pursuit of material narratives, December 2017, pp. 93-94. http://interstices.aut.ac.nz/ijara/index.php/ijara/article/view/258 This is a fascinating collection of essays by the German philosopher … Continue reading
Through the Eye of the Mirror
In Jacques Tati’s 1967 movie Playtime the bus-loads of tourists who have come to visit Paris seem permanently marooned in a grey and endless suburban business centre. Caught in the spatial limbo of something like an infinite airport arrivals hall – the very archetype of the contemporary ‘non-place’ described by the anthropologist Marc Augé (Auge, … Continue reading
The Tectonic Sensibility
One of the problems that haunts any discussion of tectonics in architecture (typically defined as the raising of construction to an art form) is that it can often seem like an obvious fallacy is being committed, broadly of the pars pro toto variety. If we become too fixated on the fabric of the building as … Continue reading
Architectural Projects of Marco Frascari: The Pleasure of a Demonstration
Review of: Architectural Projects of Marco Frascari: The Pleasure of a Demonstration, by Sam Ridgway (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), ISBN 978-1-4724-4174-4, Hb, pp. 109. This is a useful collection of commentaries on the fascinating work – both written and built – of the Italian architect and academic Marco Frascari, who died in 2013. Frascari, born in 1945 “under the … Continue reading
The Extended Self: Architecture, Memes and Minds
Review of: The Extended Self: Architecture, Memes and Minds, by Chris Abel (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015) ISBN 978-0-7190-9612-9, Pb, pp. 357. This is both a fascinating and a frustrating book. It ranges freely across a broad intellectual landscape and is rich with philosophical references. For me, the real fascination came from the discussion of architecture as a category of technology, … Continue reading
Performing Place: A Conversation with Sioned Huws
Invited by the Nottingham based international centre Dance4 I recently took part in an online conversation with choreographer and performer Sioned Huws. Originally from Bangor in north Wales, Sioned has been working for a number of years with community groups in northern Japan, helping to record, preserve and promote traditional forms of dance, such as … Continue reading
Rosemary Butcher – Moving in Time
Exhibitions about dance have to face a similar dilemma to most exhibitions about architecture – literally a dance around the void created by the notable absence of the object. But in the case of Rosemary Butcher this problem takes on a whole new meaning in the sense that in much of her work the performance … Continue reading
Ingold on Making – Agency and Animacy
In his latest collection of essays subtitled ‘Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture’ [1] Tim Ingold continues his interdisciplinary investigations into the messy world of making. Written in a typically lively, direct and highly accessible style, one of the strengths of Ingold’s approach is the intimate connection between philosophy and field work – you get the … Continue reading
Latest Book
BORSI, K., EKICI, D., HALE, J., HAYNES, N., ed's. Housing and the City (AHRA 2020). Abingdon: Routledge, 2022.
Latest Article
JIN, X., & HALE, J., Unbinding architectural imagination: Wang Shu’s textual bricolage in theoretical writing and design. Journal of Architecture, 28(1), 2023.
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