IN/VISIBLE: Architecture as Somatic Experience

Abstract

IN/VISIBLE: Architecture as Somatic Experience investigates how architecture can emerge from the body’s own modes of sensing—what this thesis defines as somatic sensory intelligence. Rather than treating ramps as residual infrastructure for accessibility, the project positions them as primary architectural systems that generate form, cadence, and perception. By centering proprioception, vestibular balance, and interoceptive awareness as design criteria, the thesis develops a museum architecture in which movement, orientation, and material response are not secondary effects of form, but its generative origin. The research unfolds through a layered architectural method structured across ten ACTS. ACT I establishes the theoretical ground, drawing from phenomenology, ecological psychology, and sensory theory—particularly the work of Merleau-Ponty, Pallasmaa, and Gibson—to frame perception as a distributed condition between body and world. ACT II situates this framework within questions of somatic equity and universal design, arguing that accessibility can operate as a generative architectural ethic rather than a regulatory add-on. ACT III examines precedent case studies—including the Guggenheim Museum, Carpenter Center, MACBA, Kolumba Museum, MAXXI, and the Ed Roberts Campus—to analyze how ramps, thresholds, and light structure architectural time, cadence, and embodied presence. ACT IV translates bodily rhythms into architectural form through gesture drawings, material studies, and massing investigations, where contraction, release, torsion, and extension emerge from somatic motion rather than imposed geometry. These studies inform ACT V and ACT VI, in which site and plan logic are developed around paired thresholds, mirrored organizational halves, and a central atrium structured by parallel ramp systems that maintain equivalence in time and demand. ACT VII extends this inquiry through sectional analysis, revealing how circulation, structure, and vertical light operate as interdependent systems that register ascent, descent, and pause. ACT VIII turns to materials and details, examining mirrored façades, bottle-green laminated glass, CLT structure, resilient ramp flooring, hardwood gallery floors, and marble atrium surfaces as instruments of somatic registration rather than finishes. ACT IX focuses on light as a temporal and perceptual medium, analyzing how skylights, reflected fields, vertical gradients, and differentiated thresholds choreograph bodily awareness across ramps and galleries. ACT X synthesizes the thesis as an architectural proposition: accessibility redefined as a perceptual and structural driver, where ramps function as the architectural equivalent of a nervous system—guiding rhythm, attention, and presence through the building. The contribution of this thesis is both conceptual and architectural. It argues that architecture can be generated from the body’s invisible sensing—transforming inclusive design from compliance into a language of form. By making perceptible the in/visible thresholds of movement, balance, and perception, IN/VISIBLE proposes an architecture in which accessibility, sensory intelligence, and architectural order converge as a single embodied system.