Taking into account different types of bodies that were not previously regarded creates a new image of Leonardo's Vitruvian man. Is the idea of the Vitruvian man even relevant, or has it faded as a range of different types of bodies has been brought up? Is there a way to combine the array of bodies to create a new "Vitruvian" man, or would a multitude of iterations be needed to account for the varying types of bodies?

Through discussions in Thesis Prep I, the idea of reflexivity came about. While everyone experiences spaces in their own way, it is interesting to take a moment and try to comprehend the composition of a space. Often, the design inspiration is overlooked when humans are experiencing spaces, but through being able to take time and try to understand it at a deeper level, it can be understand that some designed elements are modeled after the human body. This relates back to previous discussions about Le Corbusier's Radiant City and how environments were designed with the idea of proportions from the "ideal" human body.

Continuing today, individuals' minds, architecture, and medicine can still be considered connected. Everyone has their own experience within or around spaces, and the built environment or landscapes have health benefits, whether mentally of physically.

Believing that Leonardo pictured a mode of embodiment from the male perspective, it is interesting to see if another artist has or will try to create a related mode of embodiment from the female or disabled perspective. Is there a new Vitruvian Man to connect all elements of the different types of people/bodies, or is the Vitruvian Man something that is just referred to in readings, and forgotten about when designing due to the one-perspective view it takes?

While understanding the abled body throughout history has been the case, there are also been some attempts to understand the disabled body. While there are many different aspects that go into understanding the human body, it is important to understand more than just the abled/ideal body. When designing today, the abled body is still the body most designed for, while codes are the main elements that cater to the needs of disabled bodies. Is there a way in which the disabled body can be designed for further than just be paying attention to the code requirements?

Although technology is increasing, it is not always a positive attribute. Virtual experience can help to be able to make something more realistic, yet at the same time, it limits interacting with a spatial environment. The experience with something as straightforward as walking into a building is distorted due to technology. Rather than being able to truly experience a space in the present moment and become immersed in different characteristics, the ability to take pictures to be able to look at the space later on becomes the primary focus. While this might seem to help later on, it does not always, as it actually limits the ability to truly interact with and experience a space. Is there a happy-medium in which the users can physically experience a space while also being able to pull up images or videos and be able to mentally revisit the space and explore the environment to the same extent as when they were actually in the environment?

Feedback loops not only affect subjects at a given time. They also have the ability to affect history, or the future. The connections that interact with and between feedback loops distort or recreate information, which in turn affects the information, creating different outcomes. With the past, present, and future are all connection to each other, all information that is part of each directly effects the next time frame.

Information is always recorded somewhere, either physical or digital. No information is ever new, it has just been transformed from previous information. Similar to conversations in thesis classes where no thesis topic is new, it is just a way to rethink something. Is there ever a time in which information is thought of prior to connections being made to previously recorded information.

Information makes up everything, from inanimate objects to living beings. When the information is turned into an informational code, the form of life comes out, making it so that all "creatures" are life forms. Where can there be different categories of "creatures" and life forms if everything is technically a life form? How can they be categorized? Are there any instances in which information is not converted to an informational code that makes something considered a life form?

Feedback loops interact within, between and through subjects, environments, and observers. Feedback loops allow for the connection between living beings and machines. Are feedback loops what connection human bodies to machines, and what gives machines characteristics of human bodies?

People aim to be post human. People often think into the future, so thinking of themselves as post human could correspond to their desire to be in the future. What happens in the future if there is not necessarily something to look forward to, and if post humans ever wanted to become just human again.

Man as a machine vs. machine functioning like man

With the post human body, there is more of a focus on the machine like elements that are characteristics of living beings. With technology, there is a constant goal to create technology that best interacts with human beings. Technology, and machines made with technology, are creating a reliance on the machines, and how they can become human like by themselves, such as robots.

The body is an object that was designed to be controlled. Was is designed to be controlled by the mind? Is the body just an object that serves as a machine to hold the mind so that the mind can have experiences. How does this correspond to the post-human body?

"Few architects in Britain are registered as disabled people while the Royal Institute of British Architects has done little to encourage architects to think about the specific architectural requirements of disabled people." (42) Why do they have to be encouraged to think about designing for the disabled population? Why not design thinking about having the most possible users?

"For disabled people, such tensions have worked their way into hostile and oppressive buildings and built environments, underpinned by self-serving ideas which have failed to challenge the hegemonic position of key actors within the wider design and building industries." (38) Disabled bodies often feel disconnected from the built environment as they are not always able to interact with buildings due to barriers and design conflicts.

"For Le Corbusier, then, the design process was one of evolution and experimentation, of modeling the basic postures of the human body until the standard or object type has been derived." (34) What dictates what the standard human body is? What defines exactly what "basic" postures were and were not to be included?

"The symbiosis between beauty, truth, environment, and health was, for Le Corbusier, connected to a specific conception of providing for the 'good body' or a body which, by implication, denigrated aged and disabled bodies." (35) What about the beauty, truth, environment and health of old and disabled bodies? Why not "provide' for disabled bodies to provide spaces accessible and usable by all?

"However, the Radiant City was also premised on a specific and problematical conception of the (able) body." (36) What about the disabled body? Is there a Radiant City equivalent for those who are not able bodied? Abled bodies are capable of doing more. What about designing for the disabled body so everyone can have access?

"In an interchange between Le Corbusier and an unnamed individual, Le Corbusier's views, on the potentially complex interrelationships between the body and architectural form, reinforced his belief in the possibilities of generic solutions to fit the standard or constant type." (33) How can there be a general solution to fit the standard or constant type since the needs of the users vary? Standards create limitations and make options not necessarily accessible to everyone.

"Nevertheless, one of the big names of the 1925 Exhibition recently violently disagreed; with his heart set on multifold poetry, he proclaimed the need of each individual for something different claiming different circumstances in each case; the fat man, the thin man, the short, the long, the ruddy, the lympathic, the violent... he sees the character of an individual as dictating his every act." (33) Individuals each have their own factors that influence their needs. Due to this, there is not a generic solution, but rather needs to be solutions for different situations, or solutions that take into account the differences of individuals.

"Since all men have the same biological organisation, they all have the same basic needs. ... The body, for Le Corbusier, was, therefore, a biology and/or a physiology of parts which did not vary." (33) What is meant by basic needs? There are certain needs that all people need, like food and water, but the functions of individuals vary, and therefore the specific needs of individuals also vary.

"To search for the human scale, for human function, is to define human needs. ... The whole machine is there, the structure, the nervous system, the arterial system, and this applies to every single one of us exactly and without exception." (32) Once again, the body is viewed as a machine, and somewhat of an equation, where human scale and human function defines human needs. Not all humans have the same scale or functions, so their needs are different, creating a range of human needs that need to be considered.

"If our spirits vary, our skeletons are alike, our muscles are in the same places and perform the same functions: dimensions and mechanism are thus fixed ... human limb objects are in accord with our sense of harmony in that they are in accord with our bodies." (32) Human bodies range in scale, function and needs. While there are groups of people that are very similar with their scale, function, and needs, others do not necessary relate as closely. Bodies in general function similarly to one another, but they are not all the same. No two are identical to one another, and this idea needs to be expressed when understanding that human needs vary and the variation needs to be taken into account.

"Purism was also obsessed with the typical, or as Curtis (1986: 50) argues, 'the purist thought that neither the human figure nor landscapes were relevant to their aims... they wished to portray familiar everyday objects and to raise them to the levels of symbols by extracting their most generalised features." (31) The human figure and landscapes were aimed to be purist and to become symbols by taking the most generalized features. What are these generalized features? What symbols do they create?

"Others have noted the one-dimensional conception of the body propagated by Le Corbusier, the portrayal of people as asexual, and his pre-occupation with the establishment of an 'able-bodied' standard..." (31) Why is the body perceived as one-dimensional?

"For others, the limitations of the avant-garde are expressed through the materiality of designed body-spaces premised on conceptions of standard body sizes and shapes, that is, the body as objectification." (30) Designed body-spaces created limitations. While the body is viewed as an object, not all bodies are the same. If the traditional model body is an abled body, how are disabled bodies designed for?

"However, for Merleau-Ponty, and other theorists, the body is not an object per se 'but is the condition and context through which which an embodied person is able to have a relation to objects'." (30) The human body is not necessarily an object. Rather, it allows people to be able to experience objects. The body acts as a connection between a person and the objects they are interacting with.

"From individual idiosyncrasies and differences in order to reduce them to complexes of universal human needs and rights.' (29) Abstracting human needs to create architecture creates more usable spaces, only when looking at the different human needs of people, both abled and disabled bodies.

"Such determinism was underpinned by what Gray (1929) referred to as the vain arrogance of architects in their popularization of the aesthetic, or form, over the (bodily) use of buildings, so conceiving of the idea that the architect as artist is instilling critical capacities into buildings." (29) Architects often focus on the aesthetic (form) over the use of the building. The building's appearance becomes more important rather than how the users can utilize the space. How can the aesthetic of a building be the more important than how the space is used if some people would not even be able to use the space? How can a building be designed to both focus on aesthetic form and the users?

"Such bodies were either seen as being reducible to organic or technical and instrumental matter, that is, machine-like..." "Thus, such bodies are without sex or gender, or class or culture. They are, in Ann Hall's (1996) terms, objective entities to be dissected, manipulated, treated, and utilized as instruments and/or objects." "For architects, the body, as somehow inert, passive and pliable, is a pre-give which permits its (geometric) proportions to define the possibilities of design and building form." (27) Bodies are viewed as organic and instruments. They are tools used to define the possibilities of design and the building form. What purpose would reducing the human body to "machine-like" have?

"Underpinning this was the propagation of an engineering aesthetic based on the idea that a pure, distilled, design could be produced..." (26). What makes a design pure?

"I suggest that such conceptions are premised upon a decontextualized, disembodied, ideal of the body." (26) How can an 'ideal' be determined? The world needs to recognize that the human body comes in many shapes and proportions with different abilities and functions. The built environment can be built to serve and function everyone, but the idea of an 'ideal' needs to be revisited.

"If a disabled person visits a homeowner, it is to be expected that they can be assisted over the threshold." (25) What if they can't be? What if the homeowner is elderly or disabled themselves? Or if the threshold is too difficult to be assisted over?

"One of the critical contexts for the perpetuation and reproduction of social inequalities is the built environment." (25) The built environment creates the "social" inequalities, such as ramps vs. stairs. Often elements are not designed for everyone, creating the divide between the abled and disabled bodies.