Ankles aren’t it. Mine inverted falling off a sidewalk.
Kind of an embarrassing but easy enough description. Now try conveying that in a language you weren’t super familiar with. That’s how I felt sitting in a Buenos Aires hospital with a list of Spanish medical terms on my notes app.
Tobillo (ankle). Not rodilla (knee) – which was what I had been accidentally telling people was broken for the past week. Yes, to many confused stares as I pointed to my sprained foot instead.
Torcido (sprained), not roto (broken).
Mi tobillo se invirtió, está torcido.
Jumping off the bus in Buenos Aires, I was speed walking home to dinner when I collapsed down a six inch curb. After a month of using a boot and 1 more month of physical therapy, my ankle was functioning to a similar level as before. Looking back, I can internalize Christina Cogdell’s definition of disability as “an ever-present human condition” that “everyone will [experience] at some point” (59). Abby Wilkerson observes how “bodily normativity is coded as masculine and constant” with idealized notions for how real individuals touch, stir, fill and fall in built spaces (68).
This begs the question of who the quote unquote “user” of the built environment is typically considered to be? Who can access? At the very least, it has to be the bodies [often male] who designed and constructed it. Occasionally, it can’t be accessed by any body beyond this narrow definition. To examine who can fully use a constructed environment, it’s probably apt to start at the source – the architects and their ideal conception of the body.
For Kisho Kurokawa, a Japanese architect of the latter half of the 20th century, his user floats. Homo mōbensu [ホモ・モーベンス (Homo movens)] is man on the move. Moving between the mobile human body and the new technologies that the body is constituted of, interacting with, and surrounded by.
Kurokawa conceived of this term as a way of connecting Japan’s spiritual Buddhist practices and technology oriented future. The Kurokawan floating user is in a near-future world of hyper mobility. Floating, not falling. And rapidly. Rapidly. Immediately. And in constant action.
However, the relationship between the body and technology is actually quite intimate, far more than what is implied by the term user.
La chica morena en la calle
país blanco
La chica con la bota en el boliche
gran tranco
In Kurokawa’s vision, the body will be inseparable from technology, optimized to constantly move from one productive task to another. This is a fraught image of humans that erases much of the diversity in body types and creates unhealthy expectations of work and individual possibility. Japanese – and American – society suffer from over work and a cultural expectation of capitalist productivity. Floating is slow, Homo movens is anything but –
más vida, más vida, más vida, más vida, más vida
Kurokawa’s capsule hotels promote temporary living and inadequate rest before devoting time and loyalty to the employer. In Japan, this emerges as Karō shi [ 過労死 ], death from overwork. The Homo movens is on the move till when they’re not.
Since Kurokawa wrote of Homo movens in the previous century, the modern city has been constantly on the move. I say has in the past tense, because the past year of the pandemic has shown that mobility is not a given for urbanity. Cities are not inherently in motion.
If we see the pandemic as a dis-abling of the city, then the re-emphasis on walkability, plazas and outdoor eateries can be seen as an avenue for access, not comprehensive, but a step in a welcoming direction. A normative understanding of the body similarly ignores any consideration of the potential that non-normative bodies generate and the new ways they establish of maneuvering their surroundings. As the human body is in flux, the built environment is also in flux. A constant trajectory for the future? Incoherent, implausible.
Instead, an alternative for man on the move should be created. First, let’s take out “man” and replace with person, throwing out the unnecessary gendered manifestation of the term. Rather than “on,” in. And instead of “the move,” change. Person in change. We can fall – we can float – we can change. This definition brings together the logic of movement, but one that is less about actual mobility and more about the embodied condition of actual human beings.
Or even moreso, constructors of and imposers on the built environment need to more critically think about what body they are centering their vision around. They also need to recognize the long term consequences of these actions and be in a position to adapt based on these changing person-hoods. Indeed, see all bodies as a non-constant, as some entity a bit broken, a bit lavish.
Nakagin Capsule Tower – Kisho Kurokawa
References
Cogdell, Christina. “Design.” In Keywords for Disability Studies, edited by Rachel Adams, Benjamin Reiss, and David Serlin. New York: New York University Press, 2015.
Kisho Kurakawa Architect and Associates. “Nakagin Capsule Tower.” Kisho Kurakawa Architect and Associates. 2015. https://www.kisho.co.jp/page/209.html.
Kurokawa, Kisho. “A Master Plan for Redeveloping the Nation: The Symbiosis of Redevelopment and Restoration.” In Each One a Hero: The Philosophy of Symbiosis, translated by Jeffrey Hunter. London: Academy Editions, 1994. https://www.kisho.co.jp/page/310.html.
Wilkerson, Abby. “Embodiment.” In Keywords for Disability Studies, edited by Rachel Adams, Benjamin Reiss, and David Serlin, 67-69. New York: New York University Press, 2015.