Spaces & their Stories (Abstract)

SPACES & THEIR STORIES: A GUIDE TO COMMUNICATE WITH SPACES

DISSERTATION IN ARCHITECTURE 2021-2022

MEHR

ABSTRACT It is not an enhanced ability to communicate with a Space. A person does it innately and inevitably – whether you are simply standing in the middle of a room or navigating your way on a street, you are always in communication with the spaces around you. It is said that you can know about the people that inhabit the space just by perceiving the space. Every space has a story, sometimes people listen to them, but most of the time they remain unheard – or it seems.

The truth is, people are always listening, always perceiving, always recording these perceptions in their memory whether or not they would like to. We often relate perceiving a space to what we see. Over the centuries we have become more ocular-centric. The visual perception dominates all the others and one fails to realize it is the most deceitful of them all. In most cases, what the space looks like is very different to what it feels like and what it does feel like is always an accumulation of all the sensory experiences and the memory recorded of it.

How does one communicate with a space? How does a space communicate with oneself? What is our responsibility in listening to these spaces? What is the give-and-take that exists between people and spaces?

In this Dissertation, there will be an attempt to understand the need to hear these stories narrated by the Spaces, the importance of Sensory Experience as an aid to interpretation of the stories, the alteration of memory on those experiences and the conversations between people and spaces.

Keywords: Communication, Sensory Experiences, Memory, Perception, Senses, Stories, Narration