Chen’s Animacy to architecture 

In cognitive linguistics, the concept of “animacy hierarchy” captures how the grammatical structure of a language accounts for the agency, sentience, and affectability of nouns and pronouns. Animacy hierarchies typically place human subjects (quite often adult, able-bodied, and male) at the top of the grammatical pyramid with nonhuman sentient animals being a (big) step below followed by non-sentient objects.

In their book “Animacy” Chen shows how “language users use animacy hierarchies to manipulate, affirm and shift the ontologies that matter in the world”, so that we can examine them. The consequences of this analysis are far reaching: Chen relates animacy to queer of color scholarship, critical animal studies, and disability theory amongst others. On all of these fronts it is necessary to rethink the ontologies that underlie our social structures and also architecture - from thinking about the social structures that architecture and design hold in place to resource usage and environmental impact. In response, this essay proposes alternative ways of thinking and communicating about architecture which are rooted in disability studies with a particular focus on neuroqueer. 

There are a number of studies about the impact of neurodivergence on architectural perception and on how to optimize spaces for neurodivergents. There is often a focus on dichotomizing the normal from the other- focusing on access as a special feature. For example, the focus is on how to make an autistic friendly school or therapy clinic, rather than incorporating these findings into architectural practice at large: architecture schools, theory and practice. Disability at large is not being tracked as a diversity marker by the American Institute of Architects. Invisible disabilities or differences are left entirely outside of (code) considerations. 

Cartesian thought and bodies norms 

The separation between body and mind dating back to Descartes has been a lasting underpinning of rational thinking that has dictated a normative view of social sciences and architecture. As discussed  by Steven Lubar in his chapter “Look don’t touch”- over the course of the 19th century, direct and tactile interaction with objects was increasingly corded off and replaced by distant visual observations. Tactile interactions were deemed unsophisticated and relegated to lower class experiences. Knowledge of the world could be only acquired through a rational perspective. A case in point is the fate of Wunderkammers, early expository spaces that in the 18th century played the role of modern day museums, where people could handle objects and not merely look at them. Parallel to this sensory censorship, the normative approach was reinforced by the drive to apply the scientific method in medical research and social sciences, disciplines that had up to that point relied mostly on heuristic criteria and qualitative trends. Innocuous statistical averages morphed into prescriptive standards that bodies and spaces had to conform to. Societies that, by contrast, passed knowledge through making and direct experience were classified as primitive by this western rationalistic perspective. However, in recent years ideas that challenge the artificial dichotomy between body and mind have resurfaced in the philosophical discourse of modern western societies. In Slow looking Tischman points out the emphasis of rational, critical thought in the pursuit of knowledge in contemporary western education, that leaves little space for slow looking (broadly interpreted and not only through the eyes). Research into learning recognizes ‘haptic’ and ‘kinesthetic’ learning styles- both of which are not helped in particular by visual information, rather by manipulation of objects movement. An example is the concept of “feel thinking”, a process whereby thinking is achieved through tactile and sensory interactions with materials. Modern studies of neuroscience also support this trend, for example linking the bacteria in the gut (microbiome) to the brain. Similarly, ancestral ritualistic practices such as knitting or weaving have emerged as powerful antidotes to depression and anxiety alternative to pharmaceutical treatments. 

Neurodivergence

Neurodivergence is an umbrella term that describes brains that are wired differently than that of the majority withing a certain culture resulting in a different way of processing information and in a different perception of space and external stimuli such as sound, colors and tactile experiences. Under the header of neurodivergence there are many categories such as attention deficit disorder, autism etc. but also the daily practice of meditation that can produce a divergence in neural pathways. There is a lot of variance in the experiences of each of these categories. Some of these result in dynamic disabilities: what is sometimes neutral or enabling, can be disabling in different circumstances.  In most cases, these differences in perception are not immediately visible to an external eye. Most people (architects) are unaware of variances in brain structures and the resulting differences in processing information and perceiving space.

Neurodivergence: architectural challenges and opportunities

Neurodivergence poses two distinct challenges (or opportunities) for design and architecture. One is practical. It concerns the design of spaces that cater for the sensory needs of neurodiverse people for example spaces that prevent emotional and sensory overload to occur. The second is conceptual although deeply intertwined with the first practical challenge. Since neurodivergence fundamentally entails a different way to perceive space, it cannot be easily accommodated in the language and visual representations routinely used in architectural practice especially if the latter have been developed (as it is often the case) from a neurotypical perspective. In order to evoke what a neurodiverse person feels in a given space it may be useful to draw on tactile experiences in addition to standard floor plans and renderings because what needs to be rendered is not a neurotypical response to that space.  Weaving, an ancestral precursor of visual expression and writing, provides a sensorially richer and hence potentially more inclusive venue for architectural representation. 

Fiber renderings in neurodivergent architecture 

Why backstrap weaving? Originally, weavings on backstrap looms were seen to be alive. Here it gives spaces to see the process of weaving itself is analogous to the process whereby neurodivergent minorities negotiate their place in a neurotypical world constantly trying to read clues through the use of scripts in place of instinctive behavior. Similarly in weaving the desired grid of threads is negotiated by constantly lifting the right combination of heddle sticks at the appropriate time. Second, the tactility of the thread offers a sensory expression of constructed geometries that cannot be captured solely through visual representations nor words. The choreographies made by the loom, the threads and the alternating  tension exchanged with the body of the weaver provide a soothing vessel for feelings of shelter and comfort. In addition, the malleability of the loom set-up in its entirety evokes a sense of control over the pattern of threads.  

Sheds as fiber renderings of refuge spaces

Here a focus on a paradigmatic example. When planning the architectural program of a building, spaces for activities outside the desired realm of neurotypical individuals are not usually conceived.  One way to make spaces more broadly accessible is to prevent sensory overload from occurring. This can be achieved by having spaces that can be organically configured when people need them. These spaces, sometimes referred to as shelter or refuge spaces in the autism literature, will naturally provide a way to seclude from superfluous inputs. Since they are currently unplanned, such refuges are mostly fortuitous or unresolved in-between spaces such as understairs, end of hallways, recycling rooms or even lockers. So called sheds in weaving provide a visual analogue and rendering of these refuge spaces. A shed in weaving is an in-between space separating variegating sets of warps to create a passage for the weft resulting in the woven cloth. This intricate structure, shown in Fig. 1, literally resembles a refuge created by a double cloth. In order to weave a pattern into a double cloth, a specific sequence of sheds leads to the formation of that one right shed. When the warp is passed through, it locks together the right threads so as to create two separate cloths that are interlaced. The opposing warps switch position and hence create the desired pattern. In figure 2 a variation on human scale- describing and making space.  

Tactile Diagrams 

Since tactile representation is more directly related to the world of experience, of doing things with your own hands, its language necessarily more flexible, less prescriptive. It is also a language that you can make up as you move along and you experience an object. As such, it is naturally more open and inclusive.

With that in mind, tactile diagrams provide an avenue for experimentation as a complementary architectural representation of spaces and the emotions associated with them. The goal is to construct tactile analogues of floor plans or dimensional renderings that emphasize touch and sound but still represent walls, doors, windows and the heights and width of space, just less visually and more by touch. 

For example there is movement, rhythm and height inherent to stairs that can be represented through textural variation and folds in fiber. Consider, as an example, the tactile diagram in Fig. 3 in which regularly spaced stitches convey in a tactile way the regular succession of steps while adapting to the meandering shape of the stairs.

Characters of textile representation employed in tactile diagrams 

Information is always encoded in physical processes be it the microdevices in the hard drive of your computer or in the stitches of a fiber pattern. The scientist Rolf Landauer coined the motto: “Information is physical '' to convey this fact. Fiber art is no exception: information and hence meaning can be stored in bits  that correspond to different binary choices of where threads are located with respect to each other, i.e. above or below. Even with binary information encoding one can create meaning from the pattern.  Think of the analogy with Morse language where arbitrary words can be written using strings of zeros and ones. The meaning of a text is however not only in the words but also in how those words relate to the context: the meaning is always encoded in the global pattern, not just in the local sequence of words or stitches. Can we experience the physicality of information through the tactile experience of fiber renderings?

Appendix - Encoding Information through Fiber

The characters of this tactile language are the different styles of fiber representation some of which I list and discuss below. They include weaving, knitting, knotting, lace and stitching.

 
Weaving
In weaving there is still a binary representation of information but the bits composed by zero and one are encoded in the choice of going over or under the warp thread. Weaving naturally encodes information into a pattern. The difference between weaving and knitting (in its simplest form) is that in knitting one continuous yarn is looped into itself - whereas in weaving you have at least warp and weft yarn.  

Knitting
In the process of knitting, you can do a purl or a knit- with two different stitches. This binary coding has been used historically to collect data (2nd ww). Another recent development has been to make the information encoded in a single stitch non-binary by using the degree of stretchiness in the knit, as exemplified by the work of Elisabetta Matsumoto. This change of perspective analogous to going from analogue to digital signals potentially allows for different representation of information. 

Knotting A different way of embedding knowledge into textile is through knotting, such as Khipu’s. It is not exactly known in which way this encoding worked: researchers in computer science are trying to crack it. That said- the ply of the thread, the distance between the knots and type of knots and also the color of the thread are all thought to play a role. 

Lace
Lace is the intertwining of yarn in a weblike pattern. Unlike the other techniques, lace has not been used to encode data historically. However the presence of recognizable and tangible patterns gives ample opportunities to encode information and hence represent space. Lace pattern develops as much by the open space as the yarns holding it together. Hence it would make a great representation tool for the empty space needed in architectural composition. 

Stitching
Stitching is the weaving of thread through a priorly existing substrate. Stitching and embroidery gives different types of access to relief. Stitch length, direction, pattern, knotting, and density can all be used to create patterns freely without the constraint of the underlying structure that exist in knitting, weaving and lace.  

Fiber characteristics as features of metric representations
When we employ the characters reviewed in the previous section, (weaving, knitting etc.) to develop a textile representation we have an additional palette: the fiber characteristics. These include for example the loftiness (wool halo vs cotton non halo) and thickness of the fiber, and also the relief that is not inherent to the fibers themselves but to how you work the yarn onto or into the cloth.  

Leontine Van Clef

MM Spring 2022 | MA Architecture 2022