BUILT ENVIRONMENT &

SPATIAL CULTURE
Lecture 11, 11-04-2014

Application of Metaphors in Design of Built Forms

Earliest dwellings: Basic needs (Maslow), as per physical environment,
primordial images/shapes/ the circle/ primitive hut
Old English: to dwell = to be
Symbolic meaning of space:
Human Body/ functions of body parts/ measure of space (both actual
and metaphorical)/ constructability/ Vastu Purushsa Mandala
Universe/ Nature

Hindu Temple Architecture

Axis Mundi

Imago Mundi

Theory of Fractals

Fractals- each entity is simultaneously a part and a whole. In a fractals

system, each entity is a whole and at the same time is part of some
larger whole.

Aims to predict systems in nature.

Principle of self-similarity

Theory of Fractals

Application of Fractals in Temple Planning

Application of Fractals in Temple Form

Human Body as a Metaphor/ Ordering Principle

VASTU PURUSHA MANDALA

Sahasrara
Chakra
Ajna Chakra
Vishuddaha
Chakra

Anahata
Chakra
Manipura
Chakra
Swadhistana
Chakra
Mooladhara
Chakra

Entering the Garbha Griha/ Approaching Infinity/ Ulitmate

Enlightenment

The Human Body as an Ordering Principle in other built forms

Front = Symbolic = Parlour = Special Occasion = Public = Clean = Sacred

Back
Secular
Kitchen
Daily routines
Private
Dirty
Profane

Modern Dwellings

Primitive Dwellings: Tamberma

Primitive Dwellings: Tamberma

Universe as Ordering Principle

In order to establish order in the chaos of homogeneity, human beings

have always sought to have a fixed reference point to acquire some
kind of orientation.

In many societies, it is considered to be a sacred spot and also

corresponds to the centre of the world- axis mundi

Hindus consider cosmic mountain Mount Meru as an axis mundi.

Many societies consider the hearth of the dwellling to be a pivotal pointfocus.

Entire settlements based on similar concepts.

Temple of Jerusalem- both axis mundi and imago mundi

Forbidden City, China

Temple of Jerusalem

Temple of Jerusalem

Introduction to Michael Focault

Michael Focault (15 October 1926 25 June 1984)

From architectural plans for asylums, hospitals

and prisons;
to the exclusion of the leper and the confinement
of victims in the partitioned and quarantined
plague town;
to heterotopias, the spaces of libraries, of art and
literature;
analyses of town planning and urban health;
and a whole host of other geographical issues,
Foucaults work was always filled with
implications and insights concerning
spatiality

Definitions of Focauldian Power

power is not a thing but a relation

power is not simply repressive but it is productive
power is not simply a property of the State. Power is not something that
is exclusively localized in government and the State (which is not a
universal essence). Rather, power is exercised throughout the social
body.
power operates at the most micro levels of social relations. Power is
omnipresent at every level of the social body.
the exercise of power is strategic and war-like

Space as power
In the world of prisons, as in the world of dogs (lying down and upright), the
vertical is not one of the dimensions of space, it is the dimension of power. It
dominates, rises up, threatens and flattens; an enormous pyramid of
buildings, above and below; orders barked out from up high and down low;
you are forbidden to sleep by day, to be up at night, stood up straight in front
of the guards, to attention in front of the governor; crumpled by blows in the
dungeon, or strapped to the restraining bed for having not wanted to go to
sleep in front of the warders; and, finally, hanging oneself with a clear
conscience, the only means of escaping the full length of ones enclosure,
the only way of dying upright.
(Excerpts from Forces of Flight)

Panoptican

Jeremy
Bentham's
nineteenth-century prison

Cells open to a central

tower

Individuals in the cells do

not interact with each other
and
are
constantly
confronted by the panoptic
tower
(pan=all;
optic=seeing)

Panoptican

 Bentham's Panopticon is, for Foucault, an ideal architectural model of

modern disciplinary power.
It is a design for a prison, built so that each inmate is separated from and
invisible to all the others (in separate cells) and each inmate is always
visible to a monitor situated in a central tower. Monitors will not in fact
always see each inmate; the point is that they could at any time. Since
inmates never know whether they are being observed, they must act as if
they are always objects of observation.
As a result, control is achieved more by the internal monitoring of those
controlled than by heavy physical constraints.
The principle of the Panopticon can be applied not only to prisons but to
any system of disciplinary power (a factory, a hospital, a school).

Prison school Vs. Classroom Auditorium

Prison school Vs. Classroom Auditorium

CCTV Surveillance

Security Systems