Theory

Other theory that I have been reading which has been helping inform my design practice have been these. I will add in specific quotes when I have chance.

The Poetics of Space' Gaston Bachelard
'Made in Tokyo' Momoyo Jaijima, Junzo Kuroda, Yoshihary Tsukamoto
'On Altering Architecture' Fred Scott
'The Eyes of the Skin'
'The Endless City' The Urban Age Project by LSE and Deutsche Bank's Afred Herrhausen Society
'Le Coffet de Santal' Charles Cros
'The Gold Bug' Edgar Alan Poe

Constantining Structures

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'Articulated Lair' Louise Bourgeois

Andrea Zittel

These are projects taken from 'Andrea Zittel: Critical Space'.
I think there are some similarities to the furniture at the Museu D'Orsay.

TO BE UPLOADED

Museu D'Orsey Furniture

TO BE UPLOADED



These are some photos from the Museu D'Orsay which I visited at the weekend as I went to Paris. I particularly liked the furniture exhibition, and I thought it was particularly relevant for my project as it explores notions of foldability of adaptability. I think the functionality of the furniture at this period is something which isn't so popular in contemporary furniture being produced at the moment.

Function/ Non-function

 'The Gift' Man Ray

'The Bicycle' Marcel Duchamp

These two sculptures are taken from such familiar items that we think we know what their function is, but they have been altered in such a way that they completely loose this function and in the case of Man Ray's 'Gift' become the opposite of what they were, and the title 'Gift' becomes ironic.

Eva Hesse

Spatial Proposal Development

This morning I went to 'Absolute Vintage' on Hanbury Street, Spitalfields to look for a larger box/bag which I can use to develop my ideas with. I like the idea of using an object which already exists, particularly a bag with some kind of hinging mechanism which allows the object to be opened in various ways and giving different forms to the object depending on the extend to which it is opened. I think I found a good sized, fairly structured bag which I am now going to test and alter in the workshop.

Diagram and Five References

PAINTING

‘Throbbing Pulse’ Louise Bourgeois

In her book ‘Drawings and Observations’ Louise Bourgeois describes her drawings of repetitve circles and lines to give a calming effect and to find relief from chronic insomnia.

In particular to this painting she writes, ‘ My work has to do with a defense against fervour , that is completely meaningless. the drawing is a call for meditation... I am an insomniac, so for me the state of being asleep is paradise. It is a paradise I can never reach. But I still try to conquer the insomnia, and to a large extent I have done it, it is conquerable. My drawings are a kind of rocking or stroking and an attempt at finding peace. Peaceful rhythm. Like rocking a baby to sleep.

The painting seems to me to be moving and extending back deeper into the picture. The ways the lines are drawn creates a very three-dimensional image which has a dynamic quality where it feels as it the painting is constantly changing between a state of expanding and contracting. To me, it draws the spectator into the painting to feels as if you are amongst the lines and forms constantly in changing motion. Its transient nature is suggestive to its title, ’Throbbing Pulse’ which suggests it is about blood being pumped through arteries. The rise and fall of the peaks feels as if forms are transforming to a certain rhythm, but also feels  flexible as if the spectator could push and pull and manipulate these forms themselves.


NOVEL

‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ Enid Blyton

This is a children's book, but I have a strong personal connection to these stories as it left a very strong impression on me as a child.

It is essentiallabout a magical tree which three children come across one day in the woods near their new home. When they climb the tree, it soon becomes clear that it is a lot bigger than it first appeared as they discover many different characters compressed together and all living within this tree as the climb higher up. As they reach the topmost branch, by making their way through the clouds they enter into another world. The world is an expandable piece of ever-changing space.

The new worlds they enter are temporary, only attached to the faraway tree for short periods of time in the year and this is dependent on the type of world. And they can only travel back to the tree and these same particular times where the world and tree connect. In the 'roundabout world' described in this passage, it is the first world for the children to have entered from the faraway tree.

BUILDING

‘Prada Store Tokyo’ Herzog and De Meuron

Located in the Aoyama District if Tokyo, Japan. The architecture of this six-floor store has a hard-hitting edge from the sharpness of the design. Futuristic, yet straight to the point, with each curve, its is sure to pull you in to the merchandise and the design genius.

I entered the building through a tunnel set twenty metres frim the rhombus shaped main entrance. I entered the tunnel initially thinking it wasn't part of the building at all, but something entirely separate. But I couldn't help but see where it led to. Down the narrow tunnel and down some narrow steps, I entered into the basement of the store. Clothes and bags are folded and arranged on carbon fibre shelves, which are part of the walls mould or hung on fibrecovered rails which feel aas if they are yet to be replaced.

Moving up white steps led me back up to the ground floor. The space felt luxurious with thick carpets and light flooding in creating shapes of light on the floor and which move across the space as the sun moves. It does not feel like a shop. The merchandise is mainly arranged in the trademark Prada, if not larger-than-life suitcases and trunks. The shelves don't seem like shelves, but feel as if the clothes were put there, because the wall just so happened to be shaped in that convenient way.

There is one particular space, a pod like space which you enter into through a void cut out of a diagonal slanted wall and down some steps into a cosier room. There you can try clothes on in more privacy, but not in a small pokey cubicle, or have a consultation with a personal shopper. The space is flexible. In the store, everything feels temporary, as though it could be packed up and replaced with new merchandise within the hour, with clothes already in trunks. But the shell does not feel cold or stale, rather a blank but luxurious canvas, where merchandise can be shown there temporarily before being transformed to showcase the new relevant seasonal stock.

INSTALLATION

'Dhatu' James Turrell (see James Turrell specific post)

FILM

'Afterwords' Hussein Chalayan (see Hussein Chalayan specific post)

James Turrell Exhibition

I went to the Gagosian Gallery to see the James Turrell Exhibition which is currently on. In particular I wanted to refer to my experience of the ‘Dhatu’ installation.

You enter a large white room where on one wall there appears to be a square of coloured light projected onto it, as in the room before. Looking at the square of light, I saw the image of a man of what I thought was a man projected also onto the wall. His body was outlined with a thin blue line, as if it was a slightly hazy three-dimensional film. But as the image of the man began to get bigger as he walked forwards towards the camera, he stepped out of the ‘screen’ and walked down the carpeted steps, breaking my expectations.

It was only then, that I realised the square of colour was actually a space you could enter at the top of the stairs. After taking off my shoes and walking up the carpeted steps which led you to the soft diffuse pastel light source, the coloured square only transforms to become a void with depth as you cross the threshold of the space. Before then it still looks unreal, like a flat screen or panel of projected light.

Once inside the pink mist, you can’t see the space either, just a haze of pink and everything disappears. I found myself having no perception of the depth of the space I was in. I could not tell where the space ended and where the walls were until I was about an inch away, or I found the ground beneath my feet curving upwards into the walls, giving a sense of disorientation.

When looking back out of the square void we had entered through, the room which had been white, appeared to be green, through the pink light that filled the space I now stood in. The colour of the room was always temporary, changing its colour what felt like every few mintues which gave a rhythm to the space and some sense of scale to the otherwise dimensionless scenario.

I will use this as the installation for my five references.

Gary Chang- Gary's Apartment M-2007

This is the project, 'Gary's Apartment M-2007' by Gary Chang from Edge Design Institute, Hong Kong.

Version M-2007 is also known as the domestic transformer, it can transform into different 'spaces' to give a number of different functions. I want to also upload some floor plans of this project taken from his book, 'my 32m2 apartment' when I have chance.

Hussein Chalayan Exhibition

Today I went to see an exhibition of Hussein Chalayan at Spring Projects in Old Kentish Town in October. His work is known for cerebral collections that, especially in the context of the performances he stages to present his work, are more connected to the art world than to commercial fashion. Inspired by nature, culture and technology, his designs reveal an ongoing preoccupation with issues related to his experiences as a Tukish Cypriot living abroad and to the wider realms of religion, cultural identity, and migration.

Chalayan experiments with unusual materials such as Tyvek and fiberglass to create protective enclosures for the female body that are sometimes functional and sometimes decorative. In this photos I took from the exhibition, it shows fibreglass decorative dress sculptures with their moulds.

I am particularly interested in his film ‘Afterwords' from his AW00 show. The show explores the idea of having to flee home in times of strife. The collection was presented in a domestic tableau that included chairs and a coffee table; models entered the setting and converted the furnishings into garments for themselves- the chairs were transformed into suitcases and their slipcovers worn as dresses, and the coffee table became a dramatic telescoping skirt. All the objects within the space are changeble and their lives temporary before changing their state, remaining relevant to the current needs being demanded of them.

I want to use this film as one of my five references which will help guide the direction of my research.
Below is a link to this show, watch from four minutes in.

This is also another show of Hussein Chalayan's exploring the theme of Animatronics.

Introduction

Conceptual Development of a 'city' using Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities' as a starting point

I am very much a studio based designer and I have developed a design process that is a combination of testing through model making, experimenting with social ideas of inhabitation and interventions. The work I produce is always a result of an extensive process of different, interconnecting design steps. Only by taking one design step, can it become clear which step to take next and I try to allow this design process to be natural and unforced.
From my BA in Architecture, I have found that there is not always time to develop ideas experientially for the inhabitants. Not enough attention is given, for example, to looking in detail at the scale or materiality of interiors or furniture and installation design, which I would really like to develop further.
I am interested in looking into compact living in the context of high-intensity hyper-urbanised environments and responding to the need for architecture to adapt to the constantly shifting social trends and economic demands of space and challenge the notion of the permanent and the temporal, the dynamic and the static. I am also interested in developing design strategies for the neglected inter-peripheries of London. This could examine and identify moments of disjuncture where adjacencies of textures, scales, structures and programmes are revealed and through interventions could re-connect back to their surroundings.
From taking the MA Interior and Spatial Design at Chelsea College of Art and Design, I hope to also be able to position myself better professionally. I would like to work in an area of the design field that is not solely limited to one design discipline but has the flexibility to cross between the disciplines of architecture, interior, fine art and furniture design, which I feel can work in conjunction with one another.