Softening the Edge: diffuse boundaries between bodies, beings and architecture connor o ’ grady I want to tell stories about relating in significant otherness, through which the partners come to be through flesh and sign... about evolution, love, training, and kinds of breeds help me think about living well together with the host of species with whom human beings emerge on this planet at every scale of time, body and space. The accounts I offer are idiosyncratic and indicative rather than systematic, tendentious more than judicious, and rooted in contingent foundations rather than clear and distinct premises. 1 —Donna Haraway
Traditionally when we think of borders, we think of vast territory, contentious walls or other forms of geopolitics. Rarely does our mind first go to the edges of our own skin, arguably the most intimate territory of our being. If you can, close your eyes and take a moment. Take two fingers and press them together. Feel your finger pads against one another. Feel your cuticles, the wrinkles on your knuckles, the underside of your nails. Follow the contours and lines as your fingers meet your palm, and your palm meets your wrist. Press deeper, feel bone. Press lighter, feel whispers of hair. Feel the many layers of your own edges. If you are so inclined, close your eyes and begin again. Feel the differences, find patterns. Our skin is our daily interface with the world around us. Between buildings, bodies, nature and its elements, it should not be treated lightly. Beneath this layer, in many ways, is an internal mystery, one we may never personally see inside. Yet it is from within that our essential operating systems dwell. The skin, and our senses mediate our internal cognition; our emotions, memories and perception. This deeply nuanced, fraught and sensitive boundary is rarely considered as we go about the many tasks of our day to day. But this most intimate threshold contains potential keys to an alternative mode of thinking about our built environment. What kind of world can be imagined if our constructed environments are treated similarly? Imagine a world where our bodies do not privilege the eyes. A place where the history of Western thought and its grip on popular culture has suffered a great amnesia. It is now a world where the network of systems within fill us all with anticipation. Mysteries of the brain have been revealed, and its relation to all our other parts are awakened with renewed significance. Nerve endings intertwine, custom-programmed for each
of us. The bodily operations of both interior and exterior are acknowledged for their symbiosis. The boundary of the skin is not a barrier or wall. Rather it is a composition of many thresholds; protecting, moderating, sensing. It is through the nascent scientific discoveries in neuroscience that we can see our bodies differently. Comprehension of the brain has gained in both depth and breadth with technological advancement. The brain and the nervous system are the conduit that maps the insides and the outsides of our bodies together; a phenomenon that encodes itself within both skin and mind. Our perceptions and memories become experiences and emotions, encoded as a series of traceable coordinates, placed throughout us, archived and adaptable. Neurons fire and send messages to one another. Billions of conversations are happening between myriad parts of the body; prompting each of us to function, think, and act. These conversations lead to mirrored simulations. Previous experiences are remembered in the brain, and replayed prior to the repetition of an action. This means we can avoid pain, or experience the feeling of falling or jumping by revisiting past actions through memory. Because of this process, a particular sense can trigger responses in others, even without direct stimuli. Although the understanding of cognitive power appears to be simple, it has vast potential to modify our conceptions of and approaches to architecture. The archive of the mind extends the boundaries of the body beyond its physical and sensorial existence through a gradated system of perceptual thresholds. This extension of realms forms a complexity of boundaries that operate around our body, expanding the operative spatial realms being governed by our cognitive processes.
The applicability of this nuanced sensitivity to the body in space has only recently emerged as fertile ground for architectural conception. One example can be found in Architect Sean Lally’s sensorial envelope diagrams. These helpful illustrations communicate the perceptual realms that surround our body, and signify ‘invisible’ stimuli that can impact our personal experiences.( figure 1 )
from Sean Lally, ‘The Air from Other Planets’, modified by Connor OGrady
figure 1: Sensorial envelopes of the body
1 Donna Jeanne Haraway. ‘Species’ In The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003. pp 24-25
on site review 38: borders, lines, breaks and breaches 34
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