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CONCEAL/ REVEAL AKA ARCHITECTURE OF DRAPERY
"CONCEAL / REVEAL"or"ARCHITECTURE OF DRAPERY"
proposal in ceramic
800 L x 430 H x 100 D cm
2014 - 2015
This work refers to the origins of architecture, “the mother art,” which birthed the fine arts and its lower sibling, applied arts. However, this is where it refers to and breaks down this hierarchy: architecture originated as the creation of space, such as with early nomadic humans hanging rugs and woven fabric to define a living space (structure came in as a secondary function). The hanging of these woven materials is now considered part of the applied arts, less serious than architecture; yet it is this “lowly” applied art which indeed birthed “the mother art” - architecture.
“The architect’s general task is to provide a warm and livable space. Carpets are warm and livable. He decides for this reason to spread out one carpet on the floor and to hang up four to form the four walls. But you cannot build a house out of carpets. Both the carpet on the floor and the tapestry on the wall require a structural frame to hold them in the correct place. To invent this frame is the architect’s second task.
This is the correct and logical path to be followed in architecture. It was in this sequence that mankind learned how to build. In the beginning was dressing.1”^2
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1. Wigley, Mark. White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001. Print. P. 13/366
2. In Wigley, p. 13/ 366: Loos “The Principle of Cladding (1898),” 66 → Adolf Loos, “DasPrinzip der Bekleidung,” Neue Freie Presse, September 4, 1898, translated as “The Principle of Cladding” by Jane O. Newman and John H. Smith in Adolf Loos, Spoken into the Void: Collected Essays 1897- 1900, 66-69, 67. Bekelidung is being rendered here as “dressing” following Mallgrave and Herrmann’s translation rather than Newman and Smith’s translation as “cladding.”
PUBLISHED:
"The Institute." Tielt: The Lannoo Publishing Group, 2015. Print, pp. 161, 581.
