Phd in ARCHITECTURE. THEORIES AND PROJECT

Thesis title: Corpi e architettura dell'altro abitare. Transizioni e pattern: spazi di cura, detenzione e apprendimento

The dissertation Bodies and Architectures of Other Modes of Dwelling. Transitions and Patterns: Spaces of Care, Detention, and Learning investigates the relationship between body and space within the contexts of “other dwelling,” taking schools, spaces of care, and detention facilities as its primary fields of inquiry. Drawing on a phenomenological perspective and the notion of embodied knowledge, the research approaches the body not as a merely metric or anatomical datum, but as a perceptive, situated, and plural subject, whose experience is constructed through orientation, movement, memory, and interaction with the built environment. From this perspective, the dissertation highlights the limitations of traditional design tools, largely grounded in Euclidean, normative, and performance-based parameters, in accounting for the complexity of the dynamics between spatial configuration, perception, and possibilities for action. Starting from this critical premise, the work proposes an expansion of the typological approach through its dialogue with a topological reading of space, aimed at grasping continuities and discontinuities, thresholds, sequences, gradients, and trajectories. The methodology combines theoretical and critical analysis, comparative inquiry, questionnaires, workshop practices, interviews, site visits, and configurational tools, including Visibility Graph Analysis, applied to six contemporary case studies related to the three selected fields. The outcome of the research is the construction of an analytical and operational framework based on the categories of porosity, gradient, and trajectory, considered in relation to perceptual channels, in order to assess how specific spatial configurations affect the quality of experience. The dissertation ultimately argues that, in highly regulated contexts, the quality of dwelling depends not only on functional efficiency, but also on the modulation of sensory intensities, on possibilities for appropriation, and on the relationship between spatial devices, practices of use, and embodied experience.