BODY WONDER LAND II

BodyWonderLand II

23-30 October 2022

No prior knowledge, dance experience or skills are required. Every body is welcome to subscribe.

price range: approx. 300Fr.

12 students

together with the Chair of Christophe Girot

Teaching Team: Sonja Flury and Myriam Uzor with choreographers and dancers Marie Jeger and Juliette Uzor.

Open House Day on Saturday, 29 October, Apéro from 16:00

The body moves according to its surroundings. It incorporates the space. It feels temperatures, surface textures, the presence of others. It feels pain and excitement. Danger. Empathy. The body always responds to gravity. It remembers. It knows the sound of open air next to a concrete wall. It knows the sound of rain from behind a window.

The body knows more than we think. Its intelligence is intuitive. The body’s thinking is movement and the body’s movement is thinking. The mind is a muscle. Asleep, the movement continues. In life, the human body gives space a meaning.

Space is (and always has been) created for the human body moving through it. Nevertheless, in the field of architectural education, the physicality of our own body and the attention we pay to its sensibility is a blind spot. With the minimal action of a mouse click we create “dynamic and vibrant” spaces, represented in images populated by motionless half-transparent figures.

We feel that the subjectivity of the body as a vantage point enables us to critically address questions often neglected in the discourse of architecture, landscape and urban design: Which (mind-)bodies and communities are we building for? Which agencies and responsibilities are we entitled to as space- makers? And what can landscape, architecture and urban design actually afford? How fast / how slow do we want to move?

Using the seminar week as a research tool we will move through a field of unknown terms and practices to question and position our bodies in a familiar environment. We would like to pinpoint and disentangle the knots in our heads and bodies in search of new terms and practices.
Each day will start with modes of ephemeral space-making through the body guided by professional contemporary dancers Juliette Uzor and Marie Jeger.
In the afternoons, the gardens and grounds of Cima Città will act as central playground for our thoughts, fantasies, discussions, lectures, and performances. As architects we see ourselves as bricoleurs, by starting design with what is at hand, by rearranging and finding the fine line between what we consider to be a formal “space” and where that zone of possibilites ends. The process of observing, touching, arranging, staging and constructing adds another layer of the physical and social to the experience.

The mixture of industrial, natural and even urban landscapes surrounding the site of Cima Norma pose an ideal foundation for the bodily explorations and architectural intervention. Being far from the hustle and bustle of the city is paramount to being able the concentrate on oneself as a group.

The goal is not a final presentation (unless initiated by the participants), but the embodied experiences that come with the constant construction and deconstruction of space and bodies within this time frame.