Colloquia
The Mind and Space colloquium
Sunil Bald, Karla Britton, and Yoko Kawai
Self and Space
Through the lens of “Self and Space,” Yoko Kawai and Karla Britton will investigate how architecture’s material and spatial presence can shape consciousness and community. Both will engage these questions through culturally diverse works of post-WW II architecture. Professor Kawai will examine the traditional Japanese concept of Michiyuki, the interlaced journeying of body and mind towards transcendence and its reflection in Junzo Yoshimura’s Shofu-so House for the MoMA sculpture garden (1953). Then, Professor Britton will explore architecture’s potential as a space of repair in communities dealing with social trauma through Paul Rudolph’s Chapel for Tuskegee University (1969) and Diné College on the Navajo Nation (1971).
The Mind and Space colloquium, organized by Yoko Kawai and taking place across a series of four events throughout the academic year, explores important questions including how our mind perceives space and whether our spaces can influence mental health. The events reflect on contemporary academic conversations on Mind and Space from the conceptual, such as the cultural definition of the self and space, to the scientific, which can be measured. Accordingly, invited speakers join from the fields of philosophy, religion, neuroscience, cognitive science, environmental psychology, and behavioral science.
