With the Urban Yoga project ("The Urban Yoga"), which can be supported on the Kickstarter platform, Anja Humljan is developing a new method for analyzing the potential of space, with which she wants to establish a bridge between the profession, the user and the architect.
Urban yoga it is not yoga as such. It is an architectural experiment that changes the way we perceive everyday situations in the urban environment: it is not about geometry and function, but about a subconscious sensory experience that affects whether we feel favorable or unfavorable in a certain space.
Project "The Urban Yoga" is a new method for analyzing the potential of space, in which the Slovenian architect graduated Anja Humljan combined the knowledge she gained during 12 years of teaching and researching yoga and 6 years of research work in architecture.
The goal Urban yoga is to develop a new method for designing a space based on the subconscious sensory experience of smell, touch and sound. Series of photographs taken in various world metropolises (New York, Madrid, Paris and Ljubljana), are a metaphor for what the method is supposed to explore: how, on a subconscious level, through all the senses, we perceive space while moving through it. Photo series establish dialogue and communication between the architectural profession and the general public. They communicate that space is more than just the physical composition of bodies, that it is more than what we see, more than geometry and function. Namely, while moving through space, we unconsciously measure and imitate the spatial configuration. Unconscious sensory perceptions are very close to us, as they represent the first way of communication we have with the world and we learn it even before verbally.
The author wants us through the project Urban yoga using pictures and words to explain that we are much more than just a body in space. We are a body, a spirit and a mind that feels, interprets, imagines, dreams and desires and intertwines with the environment in which we live. With her experiment, she is one of the first to combine architecture and yoga, which is very gratifying news for the yoga community, enriching the current general dimensions and perceptions of what yoga is and, last but not least, what architecture in combination with yoga represents.
The Urban Yoga is the second project in the field The potential of space, as a researcher calls her platform for researching architecture. A book The Urban Yoga, in addition to Urban Yoga photo prints and posters, can be purchased on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter and thereby help support the project.
