This thesis begins to trace architectural experience as an
experience that is essentially analogous to the cinematic experience. This
thesis shows that in a like manner to our encounter with cinematic experience,
in our encounter with architectural experience, we encounter the ‘body’ of the
medium itself as being the body of an ‘inverted subject’. This is to say that
when we encounter either the architectural medium, or the cinematic medium, we
encounter a body that is exhibited in a manner that is inverse to the manner
that a human subject is exhibited before us. To further elucidate this claim we
can point out that in our encounter with another person we can sense his body
from its sensible external side, whereas we cannot sense what the other person
is sensing through his body, we can only assume what he is sensing through his
body. In an inverse manner, in our encounter with either film or architecture,
we see what they are sensing through their body, whereas during this encounter,
their body’s appearance from its perceivable external side is invisible to us,
we can only assume it. Our competence to assume the being of the cinematic and
architectural bodies as given from their external and perceivable side is
essential for our capacity to reach the things that can be present to us only
through an architectural or cinematic intervention. This competence is
grounded on our own being, which is an embodied being. Such claims are derived
from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s encompassing philosophy that offers us, among
other things, a rectification of our notion of art grounded on a radical
exploration of our being, as embodied.
