RONIT EISENBACH University of Maryland With many architectural projects, there is little opportunity to study the construction of space from a move- ment point of view, while with many performance projects, there is little time to contemplate the influence of the physical environment on constructing experience. Placing Space: Architecture, Action, Dimension, a collaborative summer course at the University of Maryland offered to undergraduate and graduate stu- dents of spatial design and movement, provided an opportunity for dance and architecture students to mutually investigate the reciprocal role that movement and space can play on each other’s formation. Placing Space Architecture, Action, Dimension Embodied Experience, Conditioning Space Placing Space: Architecture, Action, Dimension was a three-week workshop that explored the integra- tion of architectural space and human movement at full scale and in real time. It was codeveloped and cotaught by myself, an architect, and choreogra- phers Dana Reitz and Bebe Miller. 1 The class focused on the embodied experience of ‘‘place’’ in an interdisciplinary context of shared inquiry and serious play. We three, choreographers and architect, agreed that the effect of space on movement and reciprocally the effect of movement on space are intertwined and inseparable. In order to encourage multiple ways of addressing and studying this condition, we wanted to set up a laboratory where we could create a research situation aimed at honing student’s sensitivity to embodied spatial experience; enable the manipulation and study of spatial, temporal, and movement relationships at full scale and in real time; and, through our 2. Extending the body to claim space. (Photo by J. Crousillat.) 3. Bodies and concrete push back against one another; viewers see what is already known—the columns’ stiffness and its continuous labor to hold up the building. (Photo by Mercedes Afshar.) 4. Hands touch and the fabric gives, drawing forth the memory of the unyielding column surface. Viewers experience these differ- ences visually and viscerally in their bodies. (Photo by Mercedes Afshar.) 1. Moving the ‘‘walls. ’’ (Photo by Jackie Crousillat.) 3 4 Journal of Architectural Education, pp. 76–83 ª 2008 ACSA Placing Space: Architecture, Action, Dimension 76