Touching Architecture

Why do spaces make us feel the way they do? This book examines how perception, emotion, and affect shape our responses to the places we inhabit, and how both our surroundings and our bodies play a part in that process. It treats architectural experience as something lived through the body, with all of the senses working together as we move through space over time.

The author takes up where critiques of architectural aestheticism from the late twentieth century left off. He shows the limits and possible consequences of an approach that treats architecture chiefly as a visual discipline, an approach that has become the norm in both professional practice and teaching. Drawing on research from several disciplines, the book argues that this visual emphasis works against the creation of meaningful places, and it sets out the rich, embodied character of our tactile encounters with buildings.

In place of the visual focus, the book proposes what it calls felt-phenomenology, a more-than-visual framework that can support physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. By recognising the two-way, participatory relationship between atmospheric affect and the phenomenological body, it shows the many ways we touch, and are touched by, the built environment. The book will interest readers of architectural history and theory, as well as those concerned with atmospheres, affect, and embodied perception.