Dip/MArch Unit 20 Yr 4: Daniel Baumann, Dave Edwards, Marcin Kurdziel, Hyun Min Koh, Babak Niai Tizkar. , Brad Sliva, Joanna Szulda. Yr 5: Jenna Al-Ali, Kasper Ax, Luis Carlos Reis, Jason Chan, Laurence Dudeney, Tsehayou Mengistu, Vicky Patsalis, Soraya Somarthne, Graham Thompson, MArch: Yousef Al-Mehdari, Johan Voordouw.
Convoluted Flesh The convoluted (i.e. overlapped, intertwined and blurred) nature of contemporary architectural design, as we understand it, goes beyond the functions of opulence and intricacy, of technique and simulation, of module and optimisation. It invokes something ranking above notions of beauty, style, and elegance - it evokes the sublime, the blissful and the mysterious. Simultaneously, our understanding of Flesh in architecture stands in opposition to the common, yet reductive metaphor of skin as a flat and thin membrane. In a time when a lot of the mainstream architectural discourse is essentially surface-bound - risking flattening and disembodying the architectural ‘skin’ ever more, the aim of Convoluted Flesh, on the contrary, is to stress the urgency of a Thick Embodied Flesh. Our endeavour is then to establish a debate in which experimentation, technology and progress does neither exclude the intuitive and poetic freedom of designers as truly creative thinkers, nor the inherent relationship between the user and the depth of the architectural flesh. Hence, we consider a poetic, as well as ‘corpological’ approach that complement a typological, topological and ecological understanding of architecture. At the same time, we pursue an approach that develops from inside out, involving experiential qualities, inhabitation and use.
Marcos Cruz and Marjan Colletti
This page: Graham Thompson.