{"id":6488,"date":"2019-09-06T16:27:23","date_gmt":"2019-09-06T15:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/architecture\/?page_id=6488"},"modified":"2019-09-06T16:27:23","modified_gmt":"2019-09-06T15:27:23","slug":"march-unit-13-2019-20","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/architecture\/march-unit-13-2019-20\/","title":{"rendered":"MArch Unit 13: The Body Exquisite: Dress, undress, redress. Dan Wilkinson, Ifi Liangi & Naomi Gibson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
The Egungun Festival of The Yoruba, 2017<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This year our unit will look to design outwards\nfrom ourselves, with our bodies being the detail around which we will weave architectural\nproposals between the scale of the costume and the installation. Working with\nceramics, textiles and other manual modes of thought, we will use ourselves as\npedestals for propositions, or at least as their starting point. Like clothing,\nwe will consider architecture as a second skin, existing anywhere between the\nintimate and the colossal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ideas of dress and soft propositions have played\na minor role within the history of architecture, but not so long ago it was\nexpected for an architect to be as equally familiar with the designing of\noutfits, theatre sets, pyrotechnics and even snacks, alongside the designing of\nbuildings – for centuries these activities were considered as inseparable.\nAlongside being a military expert, artist, theatre designer, engineer and\narchitect, Bernardo Buontalenti also found time to invent ice cream in the 16th\ncentury. For all of the Bramantes, Borrominis and Berninis that make up the\ntourist trails of Rome, it was really with their ephemeral papier-mache\nstructures, designed to be burnt, that worlds previously unimaginable were to\nbe found. Our group will consider the architecture of history itself. Away from\nthe same old references and givens, what if Niki de Saint Phalle\u2019s Tarot Garden\nis taken as the true architectural masterpiece of the 20th century? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether working at the scale of a costume or an\ninstallation, we will address ideas of the body through our own presence within\nthem. Our designs will exist at 1:1 – our bodies dressed with spaces that\nsuggest other worlds and future histories for architecture. The houses in which\nwe live can be seen as enlargements of our own bodies with the walls forming a\nsecond protective skin and with entire rooms, like the bedroom or the kitchen,\nbeing devoted to a single bodily function like our organs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Site<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018It is a place where you can lose your inhibitions. It\u2019s different from anywhere else\u2019<\/em> – Francis Bacon, on Soho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soho will provide the sites for our\nexplorations, with our projects looking to relate to the area\u2019s rich history of\ntickling the senses. The theatricality of the district, both past and present,\nwill be used to embroider our proposals with the realities of urban\ncircumstance, the weather and the holding of bodies. Through its history of\nfashion, dandyism, theatre, film, tableaux vivants and food, along with its\nmore sordid pleasures, we will look to entertain Soho in the manner that it has\nentertained many before us. While a costume can obviously be stitched, so can a\nroom or a building on a site. The ultimate aim of your designs for Soho should\nfall outside of the portfolio, and perhaps your portfolio could even be marked\nfrom within an iteration of your design. We\u2019re interested in developing\ntailor-architects, sculptor-architects, dramatic-architects and everything in\nbetween. We will use a variety of tools to weave reality and fiction, the every\nday and the magical, with the proximities between our own flesh and its\nenclosure determining compositional principles, informed by the strange\nprojects and practices hidden within the history of the discipline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year our unit will look to design outwards from ourselves, with our bodies being the detail around which we will weave architectural proposals between the scale of the costume and the installation. Working with ceramics, textiles and other manual modes of thought, we will use ourselves as pedestals for propositions, or at least as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6488","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/architecture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/architecture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/architecture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/architecture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/architecture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/architecture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/architecture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}