Projective Practices: The Body in Space-Promoting Sustainable Urban Transports - A Case Study

Research Project, 2012 – 2014

The development of infrastructure is a large investment project in society. It is therefore important to develop new design methods and tools that promote the understanding of the paradox of human encounters within an efficient transport environment. The architectonic challenge is to upgrade the status of space for public transports. The explorative, empirical research study toolbox aims at developing a methodology for transdisciplinary communication considering human movement and sensory experiences (Hopsch & Cesario 2011) as well as ethical dimensions (McCann 2011), addressing issues of security, orientation, climate, and beauty in an environment that could cause alienation. This research study outlines the theoretical ideas that the methodology is based on. The toolbox methodology emphasizes how to design for relational space, pointing to social sustainability by designing with (spatial) care. Can thus a new phenomenological, architectural and bodily perspective bridge the ethical and spatial paradoxes of efficient public transport, how to make space for the individual? Will we, by such a perspective, be able to implement new design methods and tools for urban planning processes that further the encounter between humans and the built environment with a deeper knowledge of spatial urban form in an embodied context? The research project is a part of Architecture in Effect - Rethinking the Social in Architecture, Formas. The Body in Space – Promoting Sustainable Urban Transports, a Case Study