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Abstract
Third stage: Building dance performances discussing and exchanging ideas with each other
as well as their design and dance instructors. The
Task 6. Choreographies: DanceHagiaSophia story of the choreographies had to be accompa-
and DanceBabel nied with coherent dance movements. They also
With an improved consciousness that architec- had to think of how to use the stage and the
tural design and dance choreography both deal sequences of their actions. While composing the
with creation of a spatio-temporal form, the choreography, the students made use of the
students were asked to design and perform a 56 plan-view drawings to note the traces of their
minute dance piece on an architectural theme. movements and made sketches of snapshots of
HagiaSophia (Turkish: AyaSofya, a former their body forms on stage (Figure 6).
Byzantine basilica, later a mosque, now a museum
in Istanbul, Turkey) and the legendary Tower of Task 7. Performances: DanceHagiaSophia and
Babel (the structure featured in chapter 11 of the DanceBabel
book of Genesis) were chosen as the architectural Two professional dancers one being the dance
themes since they embrace rich sources of mean- instructor, the other being a professional ballet-
ings and purvey material diversity. dancer coached students on performance tech-
The exercise started with a discussion on simi- niques where improvisation was advocated. It
larities of the processes of architectural design was observed that the students showed an ines-
and dance choreography i.e. both having a text/a capable tendency to favour the formal aspects
program, a theme/a concept, notations/drawings and visual qualities. At the end of the day the two
etc. Thus, it appeared to the students that struc- architectural choreographies DanceHagiaSofia
tures of dance choreography and architectural and DanceBabel were performed to a small
design could be treated analogously. Depending audience (Figures 7 and 8). Re-watching the Opposite page:
on the theme of the choreography, the materials recorded data with students was an important Figure 3
ranged from the visual (architectural drawings, part of the process. In that time frame, it was Construction of an
technical representations, photographs) to writ- observable that the majority of the participants object: abstraction
of form
ten documents in the form of narratives, tales had a much clearer idea of the scope of the tasks
Figure 4
and myths that represented and expressed the and their responses to them. Learning through
Constructing the
history and construction stories as well as the their bodies, the students experientially created a Tower of Pisa
atmosphere and the life of the buildings. Besides distinct way of regarding architecture. Figure 5
such documents, the subjective and lived experi- Constructing Sydney
ences of the students were also taken into Conclusions Opera House a
small choreography
account. Hagia Sophia was visited by most of the Building Dancing started by proposing an initia-
This page:
students whereas the Tower of Babel was expe- tive to support experienced-based learning in
rienced only through texts. architectural design education. Holding on to the Figure 6
Working on the
The students worked together for one full day notion of favouring experience over knowledge- choreography of
on the composition of their choreography, based learning, the Building Dancing experiment DanceHagiaSophia
demonstrates that such an approach is promis- differing age groups, varying class levels and diver-
ing and can/should be developed further. sifications on new themes would offer the poten-
The issues of embodiment, bodymind unifi- tial for further investigations of this approach. Also,
cation and spatio-temporality which were usually in future work, the framework can be the struc-
tackled in theoretical courses or in design studios tured to parallel the design studio curriculum more
were the core issue of interest in this study. The effectively. As the work develops, the dance-
amount of time spent on the workshop was far movement tasks may find a place in the curricu-
less than that usually allocated to such theoretical lum of architectural design education.
aspects of the course. This shows the intensity
and effect of embodied learning processes.
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