The act of building can be seen as a rational act in which the necessities of program and function are met with a logically organized solution. Architecture, however should be asking deeper questions about the human experience of the world. That is not to say that there is no need to be rational and logical, rather there should be an effort to develop a methodology to both quantify and qualify human experience. Modernist architecture made every effort to dilute architecture to the rational and quantitative realm further reinforcing the Cartesian split in the human spirit. This attitude is reflected in everything from the treatment of the landscape to the use of material. The methodologies I seek to develop attempt to combine the quantitative analysis with a qualitative understanding of the human experience.
Each day, a person’s experience of the world can be characterized by such things as distance traveled, amount of time spent inside or outside, or the number of people encountered. This quantitative analysis would most definitely lead to increased information on the person, but it would it increase the understanding or knowledge of that person? Each experience could also be characterized in terms of the events of the day. Some might see these as thresholds crossed or boundaries encountered, both physical and perceptual. These events are not limited to their physical construct; they are defined also by the intangible context of experience. Humans have tried throughout their evolution to escape their own corporeality and become more powerful, knowledgeable, or immortal through the use machines and tools, or religious or other myths. Does architecture engage in dialogue or does it seek to become more than its own physical construct? If so, how does it do so? If not, then why? Is it the case that an architecture which is sensitive to emotional experience would actually become part of us?
In order to test these ideas, it is necessary to study an experience which is characterized by inherent tension. Elementary age children are engaged in very tenuous situations daily, especially in the ‘inner’ city, but more specifically in areas of high ethnic populations. Ethnicity adds the dimension of cultural ritual which may conflict with educational standards set forth by the United States government. Any racial tension certainly would be felt by students as well as educators. Students are also subjected to high rates of crime and poor living conditions, and possibly domestic issues. What are the events in the experience of the educational system which have the potential for architectural intervention? How can architecture engage in the human experience?
