Dance & Architecture
Designing as a Dancer
From the kernel of an idea to the realization of a design, the designer acts as a choreographer. I have always had a particular keenness to the design process as a dance as I have practiced both. The notion on composing spaces as a choreographer has influenced my designs, hence I have named it “Choreographing Space”. The use of plastic forms synonymous with those of a dancer are captured here through structure and movement. A dance can be many things and have layered meanings. They can be allegorical or abstract, exuberant or melancholy and sometimes both.
In my search for the synthesis of dance and architecture I needed to find a means of expressing space both from within and out. Thinking and designing spaces as a choreographer puts you at once as the viewer and the one being viewed. We express ourselves with our own invisible envelopes by movement and gesture. There is a myriad of ways in which each person communicates with the other. In many cases this expression of self is a byproduct of our cultural values and at others it can be the culmination of emotional energy acted out spontaneously. The expression of self from within is the hidden language and it carries deep sometimes subconscious actions.
Given this premise, the act of creating space must consider time as an active ingredient. Time can be understood experientially, as if walking through space or as a transformational act during the formalization of space. To illustrate I am including images which are abstractions of space. They are models, animations and drawings. The images in this portfolio represent projects, some built and others not. All were created by simulating the dancer’s “muscle memory”. In dance the definition of “Muscle Memory” is the body’s internal language of movement expressed through the coordination of muscles and skeleton.
My portfolio is part of a continuum of pieces which I have worked on over the last forty years. In coordinating my work, I have tried to illustrate my concepts by pulling together some of my earlier works, as they are the foundation from which I have built my designs. To support the earlier work, I have also included a catalog which chronicles my work to present day.
Defining the Concepts
The creation of space and form has traditionally been in the realm of the inanimate and static world most often represented as drawings and cardboard models. The idea of choreographing space comes from the premise that spatial conceptualization resides in a kinetic realm. I have defined three forms of kinetic spatial concepts that I work with, below:
Space as observed in motion.
The eye moves, the person moves, the sun changes, yet the object is static. The development of choreographed designs addresses the change of perceptible space while moving around the object.
Space as created by motion.
Kinetic sculptures, wind vanes, water fountains are some of the designed objects that depend on motion. We see objects differently as they change in color or materiality or by reflectance and intensity. These changes are due to external forces acting on them.
Space as perceptually altered by transformation.
The metamorphosis of plastic forms, due to internal forces, transform over time. These changes are due to internal forces acting on them.
Kinetic Structure
Buildings, like the human frame, have their own dynamic language and when captured become as important to the formal creation as the shape itself.
The Choreographed Space is illustrated graphically here. The top image shows the superimposition of a dancer and a structure. The dancer lifts into a high relevé—held in tension at the threshold between balance and release. In the same sense the structure is also in a high position. The membrane of the structure must expand vertically reflecting the skeleton’s force. When choreographed this structure externalizes its internal energies.
The lower image captures the release of energy, as the body yields and the structure settles into a new equilibrium. This is the controlled result of a fall. In each image the structure creates a completely different shape of the body. The forces in the structure have changed and the resulting external shape has changed.
To summarize, choreographed spaces are in part transformed structures. This synthetic transformation can simulate our imagination and engage the observer to experience the designs in motion.
Muscle Memory
The hand moves before thought—gliding across the paper, searching, adjusting, and finding its path. In your first impulse the pencil glides across the paper. In an attempt to clarify and test the ideas begin to overlap. There are lines with several movements. The experience of putting pencil to paper is synonymous with dancing. At the beginning you’re slow and you need to warmup. After a few attempts your fingers are limber and the pencil has the right feel; you’re moving.
Every one of these warmup exercises are familiar. It takes a few starts. A new sheet of paper. Slowly you begin to feel a connection with your movement. One piece of tracing over another, a pattern evolves. The first steps are always difficult but after some familiar phrases you become one with your craft.
In drawing and designing you take for granted the coordination of idea to paper transformation. Your lines are a movement across the stage. Your floor is the framed by the edge of the paper. Within that area you create a work you have envisioned and now it is coming into view on paper. It’s your new work, or maybe it’s a piece you’ve executed before. It doesn’t matter. There are patterns on the paper and if you could have recorded your movements you could recreate that period of time in which you performed. You might even want to start making changes to that last performance, start refining the gestures.
In 'choreographing space' you do just that. After sketching out the basic pattern you can start to isolate the movements, make phrases, isolate parts or capture one long statements. These are some of the possibilities. In dancing, the dancer coordinates a variety of movements prescribed by the choreographer. Those integrated movements represent years of practice. This refined movement has often been called 'muscle memory'.
If you tried to climb a series of stairs by thinking about each separate move you would probably stumble a few times. We take for granted our daily movement. Those are the coordinated movements which allow us to transport and transform our bodies every day of our lives. The different ways in which we execute these movements is part of our personality. We can tell how a person feels just by watching them move. In this portfolio I create dances with the assistance of computer graphics.
By encoding in the computer with the movements one can generate images. These images are principally different because they are in a dynamic state. By creating images with the computer, you can simulate what is called "muscle memory". What separates the idea creation with computer graphics from hand drawings are their ability to change in entire drawings or designs by changing a portion of a phrase. In doing this (the image, now a network of integrated movements) is transformed into a much-varied shapes.
In the following pages are a language which defines the types of movements one can use in exploring spatial representations. These three-dimensional images are called models. The vocabulary of movement that I am developing is a parallel to the dance technique developed by Jose' Limon. This particular movement is developed through an understanding of the anatomical structure in relationship to the control of the body and weight. The eight components of the technique are:
1. Floor 2. Center 3. Across the Floor 4. Labanotation 5. Suspension 6. Rhythm 7. Pattern and 8. Sequence.
Floor
The body begins grounded—movement anchored, measured, and held in contact with the floor. A floor series acts as a warm-up, stabilizing the body while isolating specific parts in motion. More complex movements build from this foundation, each one returning to a point of contact.
For example, in the case of a row house, the body acts as if it were the spine of a dancer or, in this case, the core of a building. The core becomes the pivot, generating movement through rotation and return.
The spinal link passes through the center of the house, creating a simple isolated rotation—each space understood as a movement around a fixed point.
Center
Balance is learned through subtle shifts—weight transferring, adjusting, settling. The center is not fixed, but continuously recalibrated through movement.
In the dance class, “center” trains the body to understand gravity in relation to its own weight. Designs organized around that same principle. The center becomes the vertical spine—the place where systems align and movement converges. It is the point of connection, and the point of balance.
After designing the unit as a network of connected zones, it becomes possible to test how space responds to different distributions of weight and placement.
This process moves directly into three-dimensional thinking, where space is shaped through phrasing—groupings of movements acting simultaneously—rather than through plan and section alone.
Across the Floor
Movement extends outward—crossing, looping, redirecting. The body traces paths through space, revealing it over time.
Design study explores how movement arcs through space—circling, redirecting, and continually reshaping perception. The project investigates how a viewer moves through and around space, and how that movement alters what is seen and understood.
Within a three-dimensional model, trajectories define primary paths of travel. As one moves, attention shifts—toward edges, landmarks, and moments of pause. From these observations, alternate paths emerge, allowing space to be explored as a sequence of choices rather than a single prescribed route.
Labanotation
Movement can be recorded, translated, and reconstructed. Like a score, it captures not only position, but sequence, timing, and intent.
Labanotation records the movements of a body through a system of symbols. Similarly, computational systems allow space to be “scored,” giving structure to movement through notation. These sketches explore how buildings can be understood as sequences of movements—phrased, layered, and interpreted over time.
As in the body, where joints and parts operate as an interconnected system, architecture can be conceived in the same way. The building becomes dynamic rather than static—its organization defined not only by form, but by the relationships between its moving parts.
Suspension
The body lifts—held between gravity and release. There is a sense of weightlessness, but also tension.
Suspension is an ethereal condition where the body hovers between lift and gravity, held in a moment of still tension. It stretches the limits of balance, creating a heightened awareness of both control and release.
In spatial terms, suspension produces structures that feel light yet charged. Tensile systems, cables, and extended spans create environments that seem to defy gravity while remaining anchored within it. These conditions are most evident in large, uninterrupted spaces where structure becomes both support and expression.
Rhythm
Movement repeats, but never exactly the same. Variation gives rhythm its character.
The illustration above shows a series of dancers as internal forces within a model. This continuation explores how massing develops through repetition and variation. Spacing and frequency establish rhythm, whether through columns, bays, or structural intervals.
Changes in rhythm allow space to expand or contract—more bays, fewer bays, tighter or more open spacing. These shifts create a cadence that is both visual and experiential, allowing space to be felt as a measured sequence rather than a fixed arrangement.
Pattern
Patterns emerge through repetition and change. What begins as structure becomes expression.
This study examines how pattern isolation leads to variation in massing. Rhythm or modulation is extended into larger sets of moves, producing forms that evolve through incremental change.
The drawings interpret modular groupings, revealing how internal forces—like those within the body—can generate variation within a system. As patterns shift, space becomes both ordered and dynamic, holding structure while allowing for transformation.
Sequence
Space is understood over time. One moment leads to another—each shaping the next.
This final study explores how movement constructs experience. A person moves through space while simultaneously observing it—circling, redirecting, and reorienting. The perception of space unfolds in motion, each moment briefly held before giving way to the next.
Animated models extend this understanding, allowing space to be experienced as a continuous path. As modeling evolves, these tools offer increasingly immediate ways to engage space—not as a fixed object, but as a sequence revealed through movement.