Architecture from the Inside Out: From the Body, the Senses, the Site and the Community

by Karen A. Franck, R. Bianca Lepori

Introducing a basis for design that transcends fixed notions of style and emerging technologies, this book emphasizes feeling, moving and the experiential. Since the book's initial publication in 2000, architects and writers have been drawn to a more sensory approach to architecture. But there is still a need to encourage and to illustrate the pursuit of design, not as a project, imposing preconceived ideas upon a situation, but as a process evolving from the inside - from movement, sensation, surroundings and a dialogue between architect and client. The authors describe such an approach that places human life, experience and materiality at the centre of design and that seeks out opportunities for discovery, growth and transformation.

Karen A. Franck is an environmental psychologist who has taught for many years in the New Jersey School of Architecture. R. Bianca Lepori is a practicing architect in Italy with many years of experience in designing houses and maternity health care facilities.

Praise for the first edition:

Franck and Lepori believe [architecture] should be more alive and take its character from the human body. When similarly designed from the inside out, rather than being austere and devoid of sensibilities, buildings would offer spatial sensations that connect with people.
Beverly Russell, Executive Director, Archeworks

The authors use...contemporary lenses as phenomenology and feminism to guide us on our journey through buildings. They trace the haptic qualities of architecture back through the design process with both daring and documentation.
Deborah Gans, Architect and Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

This book should be required reading for all architectural and design students as well as for all those individuals who are responsible for making decisions that influence our built environment.
Wayne Ruga, Founder, Symposium on Healthcare Design and the Center for Health Design.

200 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2007

Reviews

[Nana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have guessed this book is written by women from the first sentence, even if I hadn't read the names (I don't know if it's good or bad, I suppose it runs both ways). Some bits were very poetical for my liking, but then again I am used to the more formal academic style of writing. Does comparing the mental process for an unsuccessful design to ejaculating without conceiving sound a bit far fetched, or is it just me?
Most of the examples were well picked and descriptive and because many were relatively unknown it made the reading more interesting.
It becomes a bit repetitive on the Cartesian imposed hegemony of the eye, ocularcentrism, vision is distorted and evil type of thing, but I suppose I should have seen it coming when I picked a book on phenomenology.