Bunker Auscultation

Abstract

The investigation trials a cognitive mapping methodology designed to analyse theories of spatial behaviours and focuses on the nature of perception in the formation of subjective reality and interpersonal feedback mechanisms. A subterranean WWII bunker, hidden under the City of Plymouth, is used as a specific context for centering the investigation, inasmuch the enquiry considers the bunker as psychoactive in nature, that is, stimulating a range of psychological, emotional and behavioural responses in relationship to the percipients spatial register. The project focuses on the formalisation of a classification system, and examines space as a conveying medium. The project acts as a scheme for establishing a critical methodology of sensory space and develops an interdisciplinary architectural language for thinking about architecture as phenomenological constructs, whilst implying a greater understanding of the roles of mnemonic structures. Auscultation is performed as a multi modal examination of the internally inscribed environment, for the purpose of understanding the features of space-consciousness.