Moody architecture: emotionally intelligent prostheses

The digital age has altered the prosthetic relationship between the body and its extensions. Communication devices have started to engage us in an emotional conversation, whereas the focus on the body in architecture perpetuates the mechanistic relationship that dominated during the industrial revolution. This lack of emotional connectivity in architecture challenges the idea of the normative body in light of an analysis of the relationship between empirical reality and classical doctrine. This thesis proposition envisages architecture as becoming an emotionally intelligent prosthesis endowed with anthropomorphic characteristics. Phenomenology and cybernetic systems provide the tools to advance the relationship between the body and its prosthetics. A feedback loop demonstrating cognition and plasticity is a prerequisite for structurally coupling two such systems. Architecture is conceived as evolving to interact continuously with the physical and emotional state of the user. This speculative world allows the thesis to consider how the body and the building might become the organs and prostheses of each other.