This book was originated within the research environment Architecture of Embodiment, which inquires into architecture from an enactivist perspective and through aesthetic practices. This research environment does not primarily aim to formulate answers to its main research question—how does architecture condition the emergence of sense?—but to provide the adequate conceptual, methodological, and communicative conditions to address it. Ultimately, it aims to destabilize its objects of research in order to disclose new intelligibilities of the issues under inquiry. In this sense, Architecture of Embodiment intends to fulfil a fundamental cognitive function of research through aesthetic practices. The pluralized word "architectures" in the title of this book refers to conceptual rather than material constructions relating to fundamental aspects of architecture and research.
Architectures of Embodiment is a constellation of coexisting autonomous artifacts: texts by Alex Arteaga, Mika Elo, Ana García Varas, Lidia Gasperoni, Jonathan Hale, Susanne Hauser,
Dieter Mersch and Gerard Vilar in dialogue with one another through comments and comments on the comments. It is conceived as a dialogical research dispositive: an invitation to participate in an open ended process of research within a growing ecology of research practices.
Alex Arteaga is an artist researcher that integrates aesthetic and phenomenological research practices for the inquiry of embodiments, environments and aesthetic cognition. He studied music theory, piano, electronic music, composition and architecture in Barcelona and Berlin and received a PhD in philosophy at the Humboldt University Berlin. He has been visiting professor in different universities such as the University of the Arts Helsinki or the Berlin University of the Arts and has developed long-term artistic research projects such as Architecture of Embodiment (
www.architecture-embodiment.org) or Contingent Agencies (
www.contingentagencies.net).
