Architectural experience extends beyond the visual perception of form and develops through the interaction of bodily movement, spatial sequence, sensory perception, and the temporal unfolding of space. The architectural promenade, understood as the intentional organization of movement and the gradual revelation of spatial experiences, provides a framework for examining how architecture can generate narrative structures through the active participation of the body. This study investigates the cinematic qualities of the architectural promenade and asks how movement, perception, and spatial organization contribute to a time-based and narrative experience in architecture. The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art is selected as the case study because its spatial organization produces a continuous yet varied sequence of encounters.

The theoretical framework integrates phenomenological, architectural, and cinematic perspectives. Le Corbusier’s concept of the architectural promenade provides a basis for understanding architecture as a sequence revealed through movement. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology establishes the body as the primary medium through which space is perceived and inhabited, while Pallasmaa’s multisensory approach extends perception beyond vision to material, tactile, acoustic, and atmospheric qualities. Tschumi’s relationship between space, movement, and event, Eisenstein’s understanding of montage through the moving observer, Deleuze’s distinction between movement-image and time-image, and Bruno’s account of movement, memory, and affect provide further tools for interpreting spatial experience without reducing architecture to a visual imitation of film.

The research adopts a qualitative-interpretive methodology with a phenomenological orientation. Data were generated through five field visits conducted at different times of day. Three complementary methods were employed: kinetic experience documentation, spatial storyboarding, and thematic analysis. Field documentation recorded movement sequences, changes in viewpoint, spatial transitions, qualities of light, sensory impressions, pauses, changes in direction, speed of movement, and focal attention. Spatial storyboarding translated the main visitor route into a sequence of cinematic frames and used framing, shot scale, body-camera movement, rhythm, cuts, pauses, and transitions as analytical devices. The textual and visual material was then thematically coded and organized into recurring themes, including continuous plan-sequence, shifts in focal attention, montage of light and shadow, level change as scene transition, the dialectic between interior space and courtyards, and narrative pause and suspension. To strengthen analytical credibility, field observations were compared with secondary architectural documents and were re-examined in relation to the theoretical framework.

The findings show that the museum promenade can be interpreted as a continuous cinematic sequence in which the body functions as an active camera and editor rather than as a passive observer. The principal ramp organizes a flowing movement comparable to a plan-sequence, while openings toward adjacent galleries temporarily redirect attention and operate as perceptual cuts. Changes in light regulate the rhythm of perception and create gradual transitions, pauses, and moments of intensified attention. Shifts between enclosed galleries and semi-open courtyards alternate between focused and expanded fields of vision, producing a dynamic relation between interior and exterior. Changes in level, turns, and unexpected views interrupt predictable movement and generate spatial syncopation. Material and acoustic qualities further contribute to a multisensory spatial montage.

Moments of interruption and contemplation reveal a different temporal condition. The encounter with Noriyuki Haraguchi’s Matter and Mind, where the dark reflective surface of the oil mirrors the skylight and surrounding concrete elements, exemplifies a moment in which movement gives way to perceptual suspension. Such experiences correspond to Deleuze’s time-image because time becomes perceptible through pause, reflection, and altered attention rather than through continuous progression alone. The analysis indicates that spatial narrative is neither completely predetermined by architectural design nor produced exclusively by the visitor. It emerges through the interaction between the architect’s organization of spatial conditions and the user’s bodily choices, movements, pauses, and acts of attention. The promenade consequently functions as an open text reconstructed through each individual passage.

The study proposes the body-camera as an analytical model for understanding the relationship between body, movement, time, memory, and spatial narrative. In this model, the camera is not a mechanical substitute for human vision but a conceptual device describing the body’s capacity to select viewpoints, frame spatial events, organize sequences, and construct meaning through movement. The findings also suggest practical design implications: combining continuous and discontinuous routes, varying spatial frames, using light to mark transitions, coordinating tactile and acoustic material qualities with movement, introducing purposeful points of pause, and using spatial storyboarding during design. These implications are presented as case-derived guidelines rather than as a universal formula. Because the study is qualitative and primarily based on the researcher’s experiential documentation of a single museum, future research should compare different architectural types and incorporate complementary quantitative tools such as eye tracking, motion sensors, or physiological measurements. Overall, the research demonstrates that the architectural promenade can be read as a dynamic, embodied, multisensory, and temporally structured narrative in which every passage constitutes a unique sequence and every moving body becomes an active participant in the production of architectural meaning.