Framing the Body–Space Relationship to question Research and Practice

Editorial

Abstract

This UOU issue, derived, expanded and deepened elaboration of EURAU Milano 2024, reaffirmed the importance of 'togetherness’, the co-presence of bodies in space as both a social value and a tool for rethinking spatial practices in an age of crises and transition.

Echoing global agendas on sustainability, equality, and care, the Journal Issue positioned the corporeal not as a nostalgic attachment to the physical but as a vital locus for imagining inclusive, just, and sensorially rich spatial futures.

After a new Call, this UOU issue has identified ten outstanding articles and seven project contributions which address the complex and crucial relationship between space and the body within the fields of architecture, urbanism, environmental studies, and landscape design.

Collectively, they highlight how the relationship between space and the body is not a peripheral concern but a fundamental condition for understanding, designing, and transforming contemporary environments (Pasqui, 2018). They show how spatial practices and theories, when attentive to embodied experience, can engage with a wide range of contemporary challenges - from political to ecological, from the situated to the digital - revealing new, urgently needed trajectories for design research and practice.