The human body has been used as both a model and metaphor in architecture since antiquity. This book explores how it has been an inspiration for the exterior form of architectural colossi through the years. It considers the body as a source of architectural and artistic representation and in doing so explores the results of such practices in colossal sculptures and architectural praxis within a philosophical discourse of space, time and media.
Architectural Colossi and the Human Body discusses the role of Platonic and Cartesian philosophy and how philosophers such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, and theoreticians such as Frascari and Pallasmaa, have seen, described and analysed the human body and the role of architecture and perception. Drawing upon three key case studies and by employing theoretical ideas of Venturi and others, this book will provide an understanding of the role of anthromorphism and the relation and use of the human body with reference to selected architects and artists.
Author(s): Charalampos Politakis
Series: Routledge Research in Architecture
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 184
City: London
Architectural Colossi and the Human Body- Front Cover
Architectural Colossi and the Human Body
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
List of figures
Introduction
Chapter 1: Towards a first syllogism
Human bodies everywhere in the human world
Anthropomorphism in architecture: in a forest of structured human bodies
Chapter 2: Towards a second syllogism
Learning from the human body
Everything can become architecture
Chapter 3: Fashionable illusions
Approaching the proposed colossal monuments and buildings
The human body as an object
Chapter 4: The object as subject: these are not binoculars
The collaboration: the architect and the sculptor
Building identities
Chapter 5: Skeletal apotheosis of the human body
The arts and sciences complex
‘Penetrating’ the human body: an artificial praxis
Chapter 6: Complexities and developments
Index
