Reframing Anthropometry and Ergonomics Beyond the Normative Body

Within interior architecture education, anthropometry and ergonomics constitute foundational domains of knowledge for understanding the relationship between users and designed environments. Their pedagogical application often positions the user as a body to be measured, proportioned, and accommodated within space. This study recasts that initial framing by asking how these domains can be taught beyond the normative body and how they may support a relational understanding of user, action, object, and space. The study was conducted as part of an undergraduate course, Ergonomics in Interior Architecture, at Özyeğin University during the Fall 2024–2025 semester; through an active learning exercise structured around role-playing, a case study, and a poster session. The study was conducted in the Ergonomics in Interior Architecture course at Özyeğin University during the Fall 2024–2025 semester through an active learning exercise structured around role-playing, a case study, and a poster session. Students created fictional users with non-normative bodies, mapped their daily routines, and developed spatial and furniture proposals responsive to their abilities, limitations, and needs. The research material comprised the project posters and written reflections of 10 students who completed all stages of the exercise. The data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The findings indicate that the students moved beyond the procedural application of anthropometric and ergonomic standards, interpreting bodily difference as a generator of design reasoning. The study suggests that by centering a non-normative user in a design problem, anthropometry and ergonomics can move beyond their conventional role as instruments of fit and become pedagogical means through which students learn to understand interior space as a relational field.