This forthcoming book chapter develops material from Chapter 4 of my PhD, Bodies(in)Form, and follows my contribution to the Designing for Bodies conference. Focusing on routesetting—the practice of designing indoor climbing routes—it asks what embodied design can learn from a discipline that creates problems, movement, and felt experiences for other bodies. Drawing on post-phenomenological feminist theory, the chapter uses encounters as a methodological and analytical frame for understanding embodiment as relational, intercorporeal, and shaped through difference.

Abstract

This chapter explores routesetting—the practice of designing indoor climbing routes—as a form of embodied design. Drawing on post-phenomenological feminist theory, especially Sara Ahmed and Gail Weiss, it uses encounters as a framework for understanding embodiment as relational, intercorporeal, and shaped by difference and power. Based on practice-based research conducted through both observation of professional routesetters and firsthand participation in routesetting training, the chapter argues that routesetting is a body-first design practice in which movement, bodily speculation, and imagined body-images shape the design of emotional, pedagogic, and kinaesthetic experiences for other bodies. In doing so, it shows how embodied design is not simply generated through an individual designer’s body, but emerges through the messy, situated, and ethically charged relations between bodies, materials, and environments.

Reference

Robinson, Scott. TBA. “Bodies Inform: Embodied Design (as) Encounters.” In Designing for Bodies, edited by Mads Nygaard Folkmann and Harun Kaygan. London: Routledge.