ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book illustrates that embodiment in architecture is a site- and time-specific event: it reflects unique historical and cultural contexts as it informs building practices and the social production of space. It deals with the body, anatomy is an important science in many chapters, but biology was one of the 'delayed' sciences, not finding its own name, yet alone enjoying its own scientific revolution, until the nineteenth century. The book includes texts ranging from Greek poetry to theological tracts as well as medical manuals and architectural historiography. It demonstrates the power of anthropomorphic projection as it evolves with the history of science to serve a wide range of intellectual, emotional and social ends. The book describes the modern considerations of architecture, science and the body with a theoretical and historiographical survey of the rapidly changing ways of spatial beholding in the nineteenth century.
