Spatial Models for Healthful Engagement
Summer Research Award
Tyler School of Art and Architecture
Temple University
Bodies
Physical activity, which is essential for maintaining a healthy condition, is often non-parallel, particularly in the curriculum of early adolescent education. Isolated to recess and gym class, or as separate extra-curricular activities, its metrics tend to be behavioral and external to cognitive activities. To address recent reductions in physical activity for adolescents, which the White House has interpreted as directly related to increased obesity rates in pre-adolescents over the last decade, a series of interventions within learning environments, class space, and facility syntax were developed to introduce activity breaks throughout the class day. This paper posits the findings from hybrid computer-aided visualization and simulation tools used in defining adequate space for adolescent physical activity in the classroom. Primarily, the research questions the volume of space attributable to each student based on the classroom size and number of students per academic year. The findings develop both the hybrid digital systems that map geographies of movement in adolescent bodies and work to facilitate an understanding of physical activity ecologies that can be prescribed to varying components in an educational institution. Additionally, the findings contribute to multiple speculative apparatuses' intent to redefine class space by situating certain physical activities with specific spatial modifications. In turn, establishing a formal agenda for situating activities in these conditions and determining the plausibility of devices in educational institutions that can encourage movement.
Controllers
The Control Wall Design Investigation focused on the interaction between grips, gestures, and physical positioning in developing interactive building elements. As the preliminary design proposal, the design task was limited to understanding the devices' spatial arrangement and positioning relative to initiating tasks that entice activity function and stimulate touch aesthetics based on play experience design.
This design begins with a user’s hand position and body gesture relative to a device. The hand gesture could be a tap, a clap, or a spin, and the body positioning would direct the intensity as controlled by play. The intensity of play challenges the range of interaction during use for differing functional and social contexts, simultaneously making the interaction personal and public.
Geographies
Objects can have both implicit and explicit gestural meanings. The differences in hand and finger positions in maintaining a grip on an object are defined by the performance of engaging the object’s shape. Changes in the shape, weight, and materiality of an object challenge the manner of human gesture, and the differences, whether large or small, define the corresponding behavior of the hand and body and their relationship to its use. The physical significance of this is profound, and in the definition of aesthetic, the aggressiveness of an object’s physical geography can be directly related to its presence in daily activities versus specific rituals. In understanding the relatedness of the human body to movement and its variability to the size, shape, and pliable distortion of objects, this proposal is to define a range of interactive testing for levels of physical activity categorized as low (seated or resting movements), medium (stretching to light walking), and high (climbing, jumping, running).