To what extent do the disciplines of fashion and architecture serve each other, how has their relationship been manifested, and what does the contemporary dialogue between these two suggest for an architecture of today? Design Dissertation 2023-24 Balwant Sheth School of Architecture, NMIMS Harsimar Kaur Arora
ABSTRACT This dissertation is grounded on the hypothesis that Architecture and Fashion stand as two distinct disciplines, that share a longstanding relationship of multiple shared aspects. The contemporary dialogue between the two disciplines is being investigated. The two fields are becoming increasingly entwined, and as a result, increasingly complex. This paper aims to trace such a relationship. The most logical relationship is that both fashion and architecture provide a shelter for people in different social dimensions. Both disciplines shelter the body, react to spatial volume, are functional, and originate from a certain area of aesthetics . They affect and are affected by current economies, politics, and cultural situations while concurrently operating outside of them at the same time. Beyond a difference in scale, fashion endures in an ephemeral landscape grasping for the next innovation, rejecting past notions, altering perspective every few months. Architecture produces at a slower rate establishing a permanence and solidity in volume that is free from defined intervals of creative development and exhibition. It reacts to seasons defined by the climate rather than the fashionable elite. Often, architecture takes inspiration from structural and aesthetic ideas within fashion. Fashion designers also are constantly inspired to construct garments from volumetric ideas within the field of architecture. The result of such a process has created an “architectural” image for fashion, and “fashionable” image for architecture. What the notion of creating this ‘Image’ might be is then explored in order to speculate what the future of this relationship may look like.
CHAPTER 01
CHAPTER 02
CHAPTER 03
Background
Introduction
Theories of Semper vs Loos
CHAPTER 04
CHAPTER 05
CHAPTER 06
Wear ; Where
Enclosing ; Enclothing
Semiotics and meaning
CHAPTER 07
CHAPTER 08
CHAPTER 09
Formal elements
The fold, a tool
Eternal ; Ephemeral
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
Performative skin
Analysis
Conclusion
BACKGROUND On being initially drawn to striking comparions between garment and building, this thesis takes shape as an investigation that realises the relationship between the fields of fashion and architecture. The aim is to then understand the contemporary dialogue between the two fields, to utimately derive architectural clues from learnings within fashion. The two fields have often been influced by and inspired from eachother. There are many cases of practicing fashion designers who have a formal training of architecture. There are also cases of fashion designers who work with architects to design exhibitions, runways, stores, and backgrounds. One is aware that the two have a relationship of inter-exchange and mutual respect, this is a relatively more direct and obvious relationship of the two being of service to eachother. Initial comparisons of the two evoke the metaphor of a skin, protective in its surface while presenting aesthetic qualities through its primary material. Using tectonic strategies and new technologies, architects and fashion designers alike are bringing innovative thought to their understanding of skin. Relating to the surface, both types of artists today must mitigate the tension between interior and exterior, a cover or a reveal. ‘Today...stereotypical representations of identity seem antiquated and even politically incorrect, but architecture continues to serve as an assertion of identity or place in the world. For instance, Prada’s commissioning of OMA/Koolhaas and Herzog & de Meuron to design major retail spaces underscores the company’s identity as a purveyor of sophisticated cutting-edge in both fashion and architecture.’ The recent issue is ‘that a structures that direct the fashion system...have a profound, though hushed and even denied, effect among the producers of architecture.’ The challenge is to understand architectural practices as powerladen cultural practices that are deeply affected by larger historical forces... but also as practices that have their own specificity and social effects.
Warke, Val K. “‘In’ Architecture: Observing the Mechanisms of Fashion.” Architecture, in Fashion. Edited by Deborah Fausch. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994. 131. West, Cornel. “Race and Architecture.” The Cornel West Reader. Basic Books, 1999. 456-462.
‘The Church of Light’ by Tadao Ando
Inspired Garment designed by me in 2019
Architects dressed as their buildings at the Beaux Arts Ball 1931
Picured above: a misconception of the relationship between fashion and architecture. To dress as a building- a surfacial relationship between the two fields: context and meaning ignored, form merely replicated.
Warke, Val K. “‘In’ Architecture: Observing the Mechanisms of Fashion.” Architecture, in Fashion. Edited by Deborah Fausch. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994. 135. Hodge, Brooke, and Patricia Mears. Skin Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture. Compiled by Brooke Hodge. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2006.
INTRODUCTION “Fashion is architecture, it's a question of proportions” : Coco Chanel, Fashion Designer. “Architecture is how the person places herself in the space. Fashion is about how you place the object on the person.” : Zaha Hadid, Architect. Fashion and architecture are both based on basic life necessities — clothing and shelter. However they are also forms of self-expression — for both the creators and consumers. Both fashion and architecture affect our emotional being... On a deep level, fashion and architecture have less to do with luxury and design, but everything to do with feeling comfortable in your own skin and in your habitat.
The human skin is considered as a first layer that serves for protection, regulation and sensation. Clothing is considered as a second skin that serves as protection, identification, modesty, status and adornment. Architecture, or the wall as an architecture element rather, is considred as third skin that serves as protection/shelter, identification, status, and adornment. The human skin is neutral, it does not signify or vary usually from one person to another- it is innate to our being. However, clothing and architecture are choices, they are social signifiers and have both risen from the same functional need of protection and shelter, while providing a means to express idenitity.
: Karen Moon of Style Musee The relationship between these fields has been studied by many. A metaphor that has described the origins of this relationship is that of skin.
Chan, Kelly. “Finding Architecture in Fashion.” Architizer. April 16, 2012.http://architizer.com/blog/stylemusee-interview.
The metaphor of clothing and architecture as skin
From Gottfried Semper to Adolf Loos, the hsitorical understanding of cladding as skin has been written about extensively. Contemporary writings about the fields however, do not only talk about shelter, but also talk about identity. The relationship is evolving and this evolution is being realised. In the contemporary writing Skin & Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture, a catalog from an exhibit of the same name at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles in 2006, Brooke Hodge writes: ‘Both fashion and architecture express ideas of personal, social and cultural identity, reflecting the concerns of the user and the ambition of the age. Their relationship is a symbiotic one, and throughout history clothing and buildings have echoed each other in form and appearance. This seems only natural as they not only share the primary function of providing shelter and protection for the body, but also because they both create space and volume out of flat, two-dimensional materials.’
While they have much in common, they are also intrinsically different. Both address the human scale, but the proportions, sizes and shapes differ enormously. And while fashion is, by its very nature, ephemeral or ‘of the moment’, architecture traditionally has a more solid, monumental and permanent presence. This suggests the ephemeral versus eternal relationship between the two. Additionally, fashion shields a human body while architecture encapsulates multiple. Both disciplines also share the fact that they are reactionary to cultural conditions and norms — whether that be in concurrence or in contrast. Economic, political, religious, and climatic factors affect the ebb of flow of trends in both fields. In two-dimensional to three-dimensional translations they negotiate and dictate a position on contemporary subjects — firmly placing these disciplines as a snapshot of cultural identity at their creation and in prediction of the future. These parallels and theories will be studied further.
Hodge, Brooke, and Patricia Mears. Skin Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture. Compiled by Brooke Hodge. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2006. 11.
The origins of Building and the Human Body Architects and theorists have long contemplated the analogy between buildings and the human body. Vitruvius (c.90-c.20 BC) is an ancient architect and theorist who clearly makes this connection in his book On Architecture (De Architectura). For Vitruvius, the human body is thought of as possessing perfect beauty in both proportion and symmetry. In order to attain beauty and harmony a building must imitate the members articulated in a finely shaped human body. The significance of this analogy is the idea that a building is also dressed in the same manner a human body. Vitruvius believes that the Greek Doric order was shaped to resemble the strong, naked and unadorned male figure. The Ionic order, in contrast, was fluted to symbolise the female body dressed with long drapery. In his book, On Architecture, he states: The genders of the Greek orders were thus distinguished through the application of clothing and adornment. Joseph Rykwert points out in his essay "Body and Building" (1992), that the Greek orders are linked to the ancient Greek statues, in which males were portrayed naked, and referred to as Kouroi.The Kouroi usually wore a bronze or gilt belt to accentuate their nudity.The females, Kourai, were dressed with Peplos or free drapery. The purpose of distinguishing the genders was important for determining to whom the temples were dedicated. The Doric temple was dedicated to gods, the Ionic to goddesses.
DORIC
IONIC
CORINTHIAN
MALE
NEUTRAL
FEMALE
Vitruvius, Book I, 27. Vitruvius defined proportion as the symmetrical correspondence, or the"suitable display of details in their context". Symmetry refers to the appropriation or the relationship of parts of the human body to the whole.
Theories about body dressing and building dressing: The case of Semper and Loos Surficial Architecture: Gottfried Semper and Surface-play
Semper provided the basis of a systematic treatment of art history […] He explored the way visual artists, in particular architects, took structural features like the plaited twigs of primitive buildings or the woven threads of textiles, and exploited their potential for pattern making, and how they transformed such motifs to different materials, in this way generating architectural metaphors. This chapter presents a theoretical reconstruction of Semper’s primary thesis regarding the role of artistic motifs in the process of material transformation (stoffwechsel), through which materials are linked to metaphor and to tectonic memory. The chapter concludes that material metaphor (as derived from Semper) is cogent for architecture in that it supports a liberal imagination, and a mode of representation that is mediated by histories of material/tectonic culture. Semper’s woven surfaces woven fabrics almost everywhere and especially in the southern and warm countnes carry out their ancient, original function as conspicuous spatial dividers; even where solid waifs become necessary they remain only the inner and unseen structure for the true and legitimate representatives of the spatial idea: namely. the more or less arlificially woven and seamed-together, textile walls.
Semper's theory and practice can be construed as a desire to return to a decorative textile architecture of fesitivity and the artifice of the screen. In a passage of his main work on style, Semper traces the origin of monumental architecture not to the simplicity of a primitive hut, but to the surficiality of the festive celebration and the stage apparatus 'covered with decorations, draped with carpets, dressed with boughs and flowers, adorned with festoons and garlands, fluttering banners and trophies Today: His theories of the origins of art and architecture and his belief in the interconnectivity of different cultures, eventually dissolved into what became known as the International Style, which instead of allowing for a unity amongst differing designs, pushed forward the ideology of uniformty. However, Semper's theories became once again popular. amongst later designers of twentieth century who opposed the dogmas of Modernism. Ornament and Surface-play Semper considers dressing to be strongly associated with art and adornment, not simply to provide shelter and protection. He believes that body painting and tattooing performed by 'primitive people' showed the very early signs of human desire for adornment, this had been practised long before clothing was invented. In his lecture "On Architectural Styles" (1869), Semper states that adornment is part of human instinct. Semper's theories were highly Influential in the nineteenth century as exemplified by early modernists like Otto Wagner and Hendrik Petrus Berlage. Wagner's symbolic and constructive wall claddings for example. or the textile-like 'curtain wall' of Adler and Sullivan's Guaranty
Semper, Gottfried, 'Style 1n the Technical and Tectonic Arts or Practical Aesthetics' in The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writmgs, Cambndge: Cambridge University Press,1989. p. 257
Build ng, are built examples of Semper's teachings. Yet, much of Semper's ideas became neglected with the rise of Modernism. Today: At the present moment modernism has the ability to carry both radical and conservative architectural and cultural messages. Today evolution and mutation are the calls of the day and a strong disjunctive break is not feasible. Radicality and difference have been inscribed within logics of assemblage by thinkers like Deleuze. History is now much more vulnerable to uses for which it was not intended. - Greg Lynn Semper explains that in further developments, woven carpets were transformed into more solid materials, such as stone, brick or tiles. The colours and patterns of carpet were imitated on the surface of solid materials by painting or relief, while still retaining the symbolic meaning and significance of carpets as the first and true spatial enclosure. Semper calls this transformation Stofjwechsel, which translates from German as: "material transformation by carrying the formal and stylistic qualities of a design". The imitation carpet then became the dressing or the decorative part of the wall.
Same element (wall) treated differently (material)
Egyptian wall motifs
Stoffwechsel
The essence of the wall The Four Bements of Architecture is a two-part work that Semper composed in the last months of 1850. The first half of the work is concerned with polychromy. However, the most important section of this work arrives in the fifth chapter (with the same title), in which Semper presents 'the four elements' as the generators of architectural form: hearth, roof, enclosure (wall), and mound. It should be noted that he does not use the term 'elements' as material elements or forms, but as 'motives' or 'ideas', or as technical operations based in the applied arts. For Semper, the first step in the making of architecture started from the 'mound' around which the other three elements were grouped. Then according to various influences like climate, natural surroundings, social relations. and different racial dispositions, the different elements of architecture developed at
Lynn, Greg. 'The Structure o!Ornament.' n Digital Tectonics, edited by David Turnbull and Chris Wiliams Ned Leach, pp. 63-68: Academy, 2004, p. 68
various rates, some becoming more developed while others receded into the background. Soon, various technical skills became associated with these elements, for example, connected with the idea of roofing, was carpentry tectonics. and associated with the hearth was ceramics and metal-works, whilst water and masonry works became associated with the mound. However, Semper's most important theory involved the element of enclosure, which he associated. with the 'art of the wan fitter (Wandbereiter), that is the weaver of mats and carpets. ' Semper admits himself that his statement 'may appear strange' but maintains his theory of the woven surface as the essence of the enclosure or the wall: ' ... I assert that the carpet wall plays a most important role in the general history of art. ... Wickerwork, the original space divider, retained the full importance of its earlier meaning, actually or ideally, when later the light mat walls were transformed into clay tile, crick, or stone walls. Wickerwork was the essence of the wall. ''
Carribean hut vs Crystal Palace
The analogy of glass as clothing or covering is problematical because the transparency of glass cannot satisfy the requirements for being a spatial enclosure or an intimate covering for the body. A glass wall clothes a structure yet does not mask the construction. The glass wall might be relevant to Semper's theory of dressing only symbolically, not physically.
The essence of the wall in different configurations
Semper, Gottfried, 'Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts or Practical Aesthetics' in The Four Bements of Architecture and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 104.
Surface / Structure As mentioned previously, Semper focused more heavily on the idea of 'enclosure' and the textile wall, which eventually led to his development of the idea of 'dressing' (Bekleidung). Relying on ethnographk: accounts, he emphasised that the invention of the woven wall mats hung vertically, came before cbthing. In his own words, '[t]he art of dressing the body's nakedness (if we do not count the ornamental painting of one's own skin discussed above) is probably a later invention than the use of coverings for encampments and spatial enclosures.' With this statement. he not only emphasised the deve.opment of textiles as more important than a technique to cover the body, but also argued that the woven surface marked the very essence of architecture: ' ... the beginning of building coincides with the beginning of textiles. '
Ultimately Semper's emphasis was on the rich, spirited and ornamented surface of architecture over its structural elements. With this he highlighted the importance of surface-play in the architectural language: My main interest in introducing these examples is to draw attention to the principle of exterior adornment and dressing of the structural scaffolding that becomes necessary with improvised festive structures, and that alwaysand everywhere conveys by itself the nature of the thing. From this I deduce that the same principle of valing structural parts, in addition to the monumental presentation of tent coverings and carpets stretched between the structural members of the prototypical scaffolding, must also seem to be equally natural where it is manifested on early monuments of architecture. Semper proposed a theory of architecture, in which ornament and surface decoration was seen as the essential act of architectural creation, rather than an act of frivolous superficiality.
Visual forces along the wall
As a result, structure that served to hold. secure or support this spatial encrosure became a secondary element in relatlon to space or the division of space. Semper thus concluded that structure is foreign to the original architectural idea and never a form-determining element, and by this proposition, he shifted the wall from its weight-bearing capacity as 'mauer' to that of the 'wand'. the partiton, or the screen.
Varying motifs in the horizontal theme
Varying motifs in the vertical theme
Ornament and Crime: Adolf Loos Loos shares Semper's belief that architecture is related to clothing, but while Semper mainly discusses ancient textiles, costwnes and jewellery, Loos is concerned more with contemporary clothing. Semper looks at clothing in its antiquity. Loos, on the contrary, views it as something that relates to modernity. However, the major difference in their concepts of body dressing lies in their views regarding the meaning of dressing itself For Semper, dressing is associated with art and adornment, which relates to culture and society. Through dressing, people become a part of their society. In contrast, Loos believes that clothing emphasises function rather than artistic elaboration to be displayed or presented to others. Loos considers dressing as something personal that affects the wearers rather than the viewers. He considers clothing as an individual rather than a social matter. According to Loos, "the architect's general task is to provide " warm and livable space". The creation of structure is not the architect's primacy task. He argues that the architect is responsible for creating the cladding, which gives certain qualities to the space.
Loos' exteriors are fully wrapped with continuous plain fabrics, leaving no place for any expression and representation. The solid exterior protects the privacy and individuality of the dwellers inside.
Loos, Adolf. The Principle of Cladding. Neue Freie Presse, 1898. 6
It is seen that Loos uses the exterior only as a tool to cover the interior, and these designs support the mask metaphor described in the Ornament and Crime article. With the metaphor of the mask, Loos likens the façades of buildings to the masks that people wear against the outside world. The exterior belongs to the society, and the interior belongs to the user. In the concept of tattoo, human and structure analogy is used. Loos has a very harsh and critical attitude towards tattoos and says: “If someone who is tattooed dies in freedom, then he does so a few years before he would have committed murder.” (Loos, 1931) Loos argues that societies with a low cultural level use ornamentation abundantly, and societies with a high level of culture prefer simplification. He says that the decorations made in the buildings should not be outside the building but with the use of materials inside.
WEAR ; WHERE?
In this thesis fashion refers to the industry and process of creating garments and collections as well as to the style and trends at a particular point in time. Formal definitions that apply, from the Oxford English Dictionary are as follows: noun 1. The action or process of making 2. Make, build, shape. 3. a) A particular make, shape, style, or pattern. b) With reference to attire: a particular ‘cut’ or style. 8. c) With regard to apparel or personal adornment. 9. a) Conventional usage in dress, mode of life, etc. b) Fashionable people; the fashionable world. c) High Fashion
While architecture is used in conjunction with the designing and constructing of a building and as a reference to those with significance and usefulness behind them. Applicable definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary: noun 1. The art or science of building or constructing edifices of any kind for human use. 2. The action or process of building. 3. Architectural work; structure, building. 5. Construction or structure generally. According to the Oxford English Dictionary fashionable is defined as “observant of or following the fashion; dressing or behaving in conformity with the standard of elegance current in upper-class society,” and architectural is defined as “of, relating to, or according to, architecture...Of furniture or other household objects: resembling architecture in style or ornament.”
But when architectural is used to describe fashion and when fashionable is used to describe architecture, the understanding of these expressions change and become unrefined. In contemporary discourse architectural fashion and fashionable architecture conjure up images such as: structural garments, geometric fabric, and three-dimensional printed textiles or sweeping, curvy, object-like buildings with romantic, gestural shapes.
Architecture today bears the stamp of being “fashionable” when it falls with gravity in an organic manner; and fashion bears the stamp of being “architectural” when it stands against gravity. FASHIONABLE “FALLS” WITH GRAVITY
ARCHITECTURAL “STANDS” ANTI-GRAVITY
A unique situation stands out from this relevation, two very different qualities of spatial definition have been defined by the organization and use of the terms. But these exhibit surface-level, superficial understandings of how the disciplines overlap and influence/ inspire each other. In this way, the imagery aroused by this investigation is thus denied as a true example of fashion and architecture in a deep rooted unity. In order to fully understand this quality, integral to the discussion of fashion and architecture as similar and diverging disciplines, one must dive deeper into these separate deviations.
degree of “architectural” ?
2001
Prada epicentre in New York, US by OMA
2003
Prada epicentre in Tokyo, US by Herzog & de Meuron
2004 2006
Christian Dior store in Tokyo, Japan, by SANAA & Peter Marino TOD store, Tokyo, Japan by Toyo Ito Prada epicentre in LA, US by OMA Hermes store in Tokyo, Japan, by Renzo Piano
2007
Gyre building in Tokyo, Japan, by MVRDV
2009
Armani store in New York, US, by FUKSAS Prada transformer in Seoul, South Korea, by OMA
2013 2014 2015 2017 2018 2020
Prada/Miu MIu Women’s Show in Paris, France by AMO Valentino flagship in New York, US, by David Chipperfield Maison Ullens in Paris, France, by OMA Valentino store in Rome, Italy, by David Chipperfield Dior: From Paris to the World in Denver, us, by AMO, exhibition Prada Fondazione in Milan, Italy by OMA (2007-ongoing) Prada Woman’s Show, Prada Man’s Show (yearly) by AMO, design of lookbook, ‘Real Fantasies’ (2012-ongoing) Prada Woman’s Show, Prada Man’s Show (yearly) in Milan, Italy by AMO, scenography design
Timeline of the fashion stores designed by famous architects in the twenty-first century
The consideration of surface and decoration in architecture has been historically linked to the discourses on image and media in architecture, where image is equally considered as low culture, and has similar trajectory of dismissal throughout the twentieth century history and theory. As art historian Barbara Stafford also reminds us in her analysis of image bias, working with surfaces does not necessarily qualify as superficiality. Once this is extended to the architectural discipline, additional examination can separate superficiality, or lack of ‘meaning’ in architecture, from being perceived as equal to architecture’s engagement with image or fashion. This can be noted in collaboration between OMA and Prada, which is a collaboration that embraces (and welcomes) fashion, branding, along with image and media.
5 Barbara Maria Stafford, Good Looking: Essays on the Virtue of Images (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), 7.
Enclosing | Enclothing
if the place enriches the being who is found there, the being confers on the place where it is found something of its own individuality
Place and colour are both inextricably linked and revealed in the shifting, animate and dynamic nature of the surface,
Or, perhaps to put it another way, we are coloured by place— dyed in the wool, so to speak—but so too do we cast upon it our own hues and enliven it, as we (the very threads of our being) interweave between here and there enclosed in place, moving in between, and in certain lights, igniting.
whether woven, painted, knitted or built. Chiasmatic in their tidal unfurlings and enfoldings, from the intimate to the architectural, place and cloth dress, binding the body to its environment, to the landscapes and its surrounds, to the city and the buildings which compose it.
For colour that imbues the woven cloth, like place, is by nature reflexive, ‘encompass that on which it reflects—… but never fully illuminate that which it encompasses’.
Contexts immediately apparent are thus established, and span across divides, with latent memories concealed within the folds and revealed and complemented in their afterimages.
FORMAL ELEMENTS In recent years, the connections between fashion and architecture have become even more intriguing. As advances in materials technology and computer software have pushed the frontiers of each discipline, buildings have become more fluid and garments more architectonic. Architects are adopting strategies more usually used in dressmaking, such as printing, pleating, folding, draping and weaving, while fashion designers are looking to architecture for ways to build or engineer garments which present new and provocative ideas about volume and structure, and in many cases also draw on the intellectual principles and concepts inherent in architecture. This chapter presents the cutting edge of fashion and architecture, and suggests a cross-contamination which has allowed each discipline to create new and enticing ways for the body to occupy both public arena and private space. In just the last quarter century the interweaving of fashion and architecture has allowed us to find new meaning and possibilities in both creative practices. One aims to then imagine what future connections can be made.
Shelter The primary function of both clothing and buildings has always been to provide the body with shelter and protection. In recent years fashion designers and architects have begun to reinvent this fundamental aspect of their practice to reflect changes in our environment and our society. Fashion designers are reassessing clothing’s potential to address the needs of the modern ‘urban nomad’, using high performance fabrics, and incorporating ideas of protection, mobility and identity. At the same time, architects are questioning the role of traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ structures, using new materials and techniques to create more versatile, adaptable and ecological structures that can respond to humanitarian need. Shigeru Ban
Yeohlee Teng
Vexed Generation
Shigeru Ban began using paper tubes in 1986 as a structural material in an exhibition design. Inexpensive, easily replaceable, and low-tech, paper tubes can be made to any length and are also recyclable, with little waste produced during their manufacture. Ban explored their potential in the range of temporary shelters that he designed for earthquake victims in Japan, Turkey, and India and for more than two million Rwandan refugees. Each of the Rwandan paper-tube structures ingeniously uses the standard plastic sheet issued to refugees by the United Nations to form its walls and roof.
Junya Watanabe
Yohji Yamamoto Yamamoto’s Wedding collection reveals his fascination with volume, structure, and transformation. Consisting exclusively of garments designed for a bride and members of her wedding party—including ethereal black dresses for the newly widowed—the collection incorporates many of Yamamoto’s signature elements: long languid silhouettes, cantilevered collars and necklines, and fluid dresses. Plastic whalebones—inserted in the hems of dresses, jackets, coats, and skirts cut from full circles of fabric to shape and stiffen garments—create gently sculptural forms that undulate with the wearer’s movements. A key piece in the collection is this wedding dress with a simple bodice and long hoopskirt. During the runway presentation, the model unzipped sections of her skirt to reveal hidden compartments from which she pulled accessories to complete her ensemble.
Constructing volume Both fashion design and architecture deal with creating space and volume out of flat, two-dimensional materials, albeit on different scales. Increasingly, with the aid of new technologies and materials, each has been able to develop shared techniques that provide texture, form and volume in new and intriguing ways, often introducing shapes and silhouettes that confound conventional ideas of proportion and form.
Greg Lynn FORM
Nigel Coates Vivienne Westwood
Ralph Rucci
Geometry The use of geometry to generate form is a strategy shared by both architects and fashion designers. Simple forms such as circles, squares, and ellipses as well as more complex forms such as the torus and the Möbius strip, with its convoluted twist and continuous form, are used in both disciplines. In architecture, geometry is often used to create complex interior spaces or shape the overall physical form of the building, while in fashion design, once a garment is draped on a body, its shape is transformed and the geometry that generated it often becomes invisible.
Preston Scott Cohen Cohen’s building for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art is organised around a synthesis of oblique lines and hyperbolic parabolas. Twisting façades define a circulation sequence around and into the museum, while inside an extraordinary spiralling atrium pulls light into gallery spaces three storeys below ground. The building’s discontinous planes, which are actually aligned according to independent axes, resolve the difference between the idiosyncratic triangular site and the flexible rectangular galleries within.
Yeohlee Teng
Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA
J. Meejin Yoon Eisenman Architects
For the Max Reinhardt Haus, a thirty-four storey mixed-use tower proposed for Berlin, Eisenman explored the idea of folding in a vertical orientation. Starting with the form of a Möbius strip, which can be seen as symbolising the then newly reunified city, he transformed the shape through a series of iterative operations to create the complex prismatic form of two faceted towers joined by a twisting arch
Yohji Yamamoto
Structural skin In both fashion and architecture designers have recently begun to develop structural skins that bring the surface and the structure of a design—or the ‘skin and the bones’—together so they become one and the same thing. Structure and façade become joined in a single surface.
For his Tod’s Omotesando building, a seven-storey retail space in Tokyo for the Italian luxury-goods company, Ito wrapped the building in a graphic pattern of glass and concrete that references the trees lining Omotesando Avenue. The pattern not only serves as ornamental skin but provides structure, as the building surface supports the floor slabs, thereby eliminating the need for internal columns.
Toyo Ito
Alexander McQueen OMA / Rem Koolhaas
Construction | Reconstruction | Deconstruction
Ralph Rucci
Junya Watanbe
Eisenman Architects
Gehry Partners Peter Eisenman collaborated with philosopher Jacques Derrida on this garden proposal, which they called Chora L Works, for Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette. Eisenman devised a system of superpositions by overlaying the grids of four projects—his own earlier but parallel redevelopment proposal for the Cannaregio section of Venice, Italy (unbuilt, 1978); Tschumi’s La Villette; and each of the slaughterhouses that historically occupied the Cannaregio and La Villette sites—to reveal reverberations in scale and in time. Inspired by Plato’s description of chora, Derrida proposed a uniquely shaped gilded object that reflected the outline of the site.
Tectonic Strategies Wrapping
Comme des Garcons For the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Gehry wrapped the complex billowing structure with stainless steel to create a shimmering curvaceous building reminiscent of a ship’s sails. Designed well before the opening of Gehry’s groundbreaking building for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Disney Hall marks his adoption of Computer-Aided Three-dimensional Interactive Application (CATIA), a software program originally developed for the aerospace industry.
Gehry Partners
Pleating
Gehry Partners
Issey Miyake
Draping
Heatherwick Studio
Yohji Yamamoto
Semiotics and Meaning
The view of fashion as a system of signification, first introduced in the important work of Roland Barthes The Fashion System (1967), has been dominant since the development of Fashion Studies. But in the last two decades it has been increasingly criticized and confronted with the concepts of identity as flexible dimensions. From a semiotic perspective, the materiality of clothes almost “disappears” into representation. Emerging research on fashion, on the contrary, draws on Gilles Deleuze's notions, that ideas are inseparable from their material expression, and tries to follow attempts in fashion to break with representational mode. But, if Deleuze argues that the possibilities to escape the representation belongs to modern art, with its metamorphoses,what can we argue about fashion?
The limitations of applied semiotics of fashion are evident (clothing and its representations always exist in the context of further semiotic systems), but ultimately unlike the heterogeneity of everyday practice, the “methodological purity” of discursive practices permits expert analysis. The chapter discusses Roland Barthes’ ideas of evolving semiology and the applicability of a systemic approach to contemporary fashion; one tries to link the current ideas in Fashion Studies with the semiotics of fashion.
Fashion theorists commonly reproach Barthes for only working with the discourse of fashion (the starting point of Barthes's conceptualization of fashion is the argument that fashion does not exist without words, because real clothing is inert and does not have any meaning in and of itself), and that he does neither take into account the physicality of the body and the materiality of dress, nor clothing production. Can there be an architecture without words, because the physical building is inert? It is unlike a language insofar as its patterns and structure lack the semantic quality of making referential statements on the outside world. Architecture can do without the personal story of the architect’s taste and style, but this story has the added value of making explicit what is already visible, thus functioning like the decoration that illustrates the point. The larger frameworks of reference of cultural traditions that left their mark on architecture tend to be equally or more helpful as “guiding stories,” in cueing and experiencing meaningful architectural spaces. From a semiotic perspective, the materiality of clothes almost “disappears” into representation, into the realm of image. Emerging research on fashion (Miller 2005; Smelik 2011; Entwistle 2000) on the contrary, draws on Gilles Deleuze's notions, that ideas are inseparable from their material expression, and tries to follow in contemporary fashion attempts “to break with representation, to disrupt narration, to escape illustration” (Deleuze 2005: 2). As far as Deleuze argues, representation has only a single centre, “a false depth” closed private room, decorated with a ‘drapery diversified by folds’
common rooms, with ‘several small openings’: the five senses
The Baroque House (an allegory) Aesthetic theory: Gilles Deleuze’s The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque
Fransworth House by Mies’ understood differenly by image and spatial narrative
Defining the problem; How to explain fashion: as a system or everyday dress? The shift in Fashion Studies from the dimensions of signifcation to embodiment The role of the system in structuralism Fundamental to Saussure's concept of system is the idea of structure. “Structuring isthe process of creating order” (Nöth 1990: 194). In this logic, language structure is a network of oppositions and differences: elements of the system have value, because we can distinguish them from each other. Saussure's semiology have influenced the development of structuralist methodology based on systems analyses. According to the rules of structuralist analysis, formulated by Jean-Baptiste Fages, “the elementary structures have to be integrated within the totality of the system” (Nöth 1990: 295).
THE LANGUAGE OF FASHION by Roland Barthes
‘Systems and structures’ introduction to applied semiotics
Barthes’ evolving ideas on semiology as elaborated trhough a critique of ‘clothing history’
‘Fashion debt and interpretations’ Chanel and Courreges
Linguistic system according to Saussure
Dress ---------- Langue strong form of meaning, constitutes an intellectual notifying reltion
Language
Dressing ---------- Parole weak form of meaning, expresses more than notifies
Speech
Denotation: collective act
Connotation: individual act
speculation if in Fashion;
then in Architecture:
Dress (Act): Type
Dress: Cladding
;
;
Dressing (Choice) : Variation on type
Dressing: Material
Saussure defined meanings as circulated in the system as differential values. His conception of the language system is holistic. “Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others. [...] Being part of a system, it is endowed not only with a signification but also and especially with a value” (de Saussure 1965: 114–15).
Thereby the structuralist: • analyses structures within the system, primarily in a synchronic perspective; • analyses features of the system which have a differential value; • determines systemic opposition in minimal pairs by the commutation test; • studies the rules which govern the combination of elements; • studies historical change on the basis of a synchronic analysis of the system; • studies the communicative and other functions of the system (Nöth 1990: 295). Here it is necessary to note that function is a key term in the study of semiotic systems. Function conforms the parts of the system to a whole. Scholars differentiate structural function and pragmatic function of system. As Nöth explains, structural function “connotes instrumentality, utility, or even finality and presupposes the holistic framework of a system” (Nöth 1990: 181). Pragmatic function is bound to communication.
Sinifier and signified 1. Signifier
1. Signified
LANGUAGE
MYTH
3. Sign
I. SIGNIFIER
II. SIGNIFIED III. SIGN
The semiological scheme of myth in Barthes's Mythologies.
Signifier = The tangible garment / building Signified = Representation / Meaning Sign = Perception
In The Elements of Semiology and then in The Fashion System, Barthes advanced the theory that semiotics is a part of linguistics. “It is true that objects, images and patterns of behavior can signify, and do so on a large scale, but never autonomously; every semiological system has its linguistic admixture”
Cultural systems Barthes was one of the propagators of Saussure's semiology. In The Elements of Semiology (1964) he described various phenomena (food, cars, furniture, garments, architecture) in terms of a system. It is necessary to emphasize that Barthes's research on cultural systems has ethical dimensions. Since the relation of the signified and the signifier is arbitrary and unmotivated, Barthes claims that signification always distorts naturalness: we see signs of cultural systems as natural, but they are merely cultural constructions. In Mythologies (1957) Barthes devised the project of unmasking ideological illusions of consumer society. His attitude to fashion system was basically critical as well.
denotative/ direct level
connotative
(connotative) myth
Horshoe as a signifier of good luck
Remembering Semper Glass is a very important material that has been used largely in the twentieth century; thus a consideration must be made as to how it should be categorised. Glass is dressing material, since it is non load-bearing and is always visible. Nevertheless, it can lead to confusing interpretations. In the foreword to Wolfgang Herrmann's book Gottfried Semper: in Search of Architecture (1984), Adolf Max Vogt contributes his views regarding the connection between glass and Semper's theory of dressing. He views Joseph Paxton's "Crystal Palace" of the London Great Exhibition of 1851 as being related to Semper's concept of the enclosure in the Caribbean Hut, based on Paxton's notion of "table and tablecloth". Vogt cites Paxton's idea of the analogy between the iron structure of his "Crystal Palace" and the "table", and indicates that the glass skin is analogous to the "table cloth". The iron structure is clothed by the glass skin. Vogt assumes that this is parallel to Semper's Caribbean hut, in which the timber scaffold is clothed with carpets.
TI1e Caribbean Hut compared with The Crystal Palace A glass wall clothes a structure yet does not mask the construction. The glass wall might be relevant to Semper's theory of dressing only symbolically, not physically. Glass : partititon : private Material : transparency : public
As Barthes defines, “real” clothing is burdened with practical considerations, “the triangle of motivations” (protection against harsh weather, hiding nudity out of modesty and ornamentation to attract attention). For Barthes, “what should really interest the researcher […] is not the passage from protection to ornamentation (an illusory shift), but the tendency of every bodily covering to insert itself into an organized, formal and normative system that is recognized by society” (Barthes 2013: 6). Barthes is much more interested in the social, communicative function of clothes that is reached in “represented” clothing, “which no longer serves to protect, to cover or to adorn, but at most to signify protection, modesty, or adornment” (Barthes 2013: 73). For Barthes, clothes are above all a mode of communication. Fashion clothing as an object of signification is fundamentally linked to society. As Barthes explains, the sociology starts out with imaginary clothing (conceived by the fashion group), but then explores its actualization, “real clothing”. The aim of sociology is to observe and systematize practices, and link them to social conditions. For Barthes is important that from that perspective we cannot discern the individual act and the social institution (ibid.).
The Fold, A Tool of structural design
The Case of Issey Miyake: Pleats, Please “Clothing has been called intimate architecture. We want to go beyond that. “
“Architecture allows us to create striking contemporary pieces which make you want to find out what they’re like inside. I remember how amazed I was when I saw the Centre Georges Pompidou or the pyramid of the Louvre for the first time! That’s the role of architecture to give off real energy by it’s mere presence.” : Issey Miyake Miyake draws on both artisan production and new technologies and explores all expected and unexpected possibilities in the process. In both his Pleats, Please and A-POC collections, he has embraced the new postmodern woman of the late twentieth and early twenty-fi rst centuries. He has shown her that, through the beauty of simplicity, clothing can be unaffected by the shifting tides of taste. His work suggests that meaning, either symbolic or inferred, can allow the imagination to expand well beyond the literal needs of clothing.
Around the year 1990, Miyake was increasingly exploring his pleating techniques, and eventually in 1993 developed an entire clothing range devoted to pleats, entitled Pleats, Please Issey Miyake. In 1991, Miyake designed pleated costumes for the dancers of the Frankfurt Ballet. He was so interested in the way the garments moved on their bodies that he began having dancers, rather than models, wear the Pleats, Please clothing on display. As time progressed, Miyake used his pleating techniques on newly accessible synthetic fabrics. Despite the seemingly simplistic strategy of this clothing line, Miyake has continued it successfully since this time, today still selling under the Pleats, Please label, with different subthemes for each fashion season. In 2002, Miyake released a Fête collection under the Pleats, Please umbrella, which he described as focusing on the general themes of life and technology, a kind of celebration of the two. The collection’s pieces use ultrasonic waves that emit heat vibrations to shape the patterns, which will then be cut into unique forms to make up the garment. This is one of many highly conceptual lines Miyake produced with the Pleats, Please philosophy, and the line has developed over the years to include new techniques and themes. Miyake’s Minaret dress for the line of the skirt. In 1998, The Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris held a retrospective on Miyake’s work, entitled “Issey Miyake Making Things.” In this exhibition, garments from Miyake’s Pleats, Please line were hung from strings and stood on podiums, emphasizing their duality as wearable works of art. Miyake’s interest in the natural world, as well as individualized customer experience, come together with his embrace of technology to produce a unique take on the design world and fashion industry. In 1999, the designer said of his Pleats, Please line, “even when I work with computers, with high technology, I always try to put in the touch of the hand.” Therefore, Miyake relies on technology without often making it the face of his brand.
Miyake’s emphasis on folding and pleating sheds light on the tectonic strategies shared between fashion and architecture. Both folding and pleating take flat media and give them volume, and different forms of these techniques can be found both in fashion and architectural practices. Morphosis’ Sun Tower in Seoul , constructed 1994-97, has origami-like folds of a perforated aluminum surface, similar to the folds in Miyake’s fabrics. The Sun Tower demonstrates how folds allow architects to play with light and shadow in a visually interesting manner, as well as creating volumetric form out of flatness, as is seen on garments. Similarly, Winka Dubbeldam of Archi-Tectonics worked on the Greenwich Street Project in New York from 2000-2004, using a kind of skin of folded glass on the structure. The crystalline façade appears to be composed of horizontal pleats, which required three-dimensional modeling software to allow the plates to fold. In a not-too different practice, Miyake uses pleats to introduce sculptural volume into lightweight fabrics. This technique has inspired the sculptural wrapping forms of Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert.
Issey Miyake, ‘Minaret’ pleated dress with seven hoops, 1995.
‘
,
‘
What is a pleat? A pleat is a sheet of material folded back and forth; the pairing – to use terminology borrowed from origami – of a ‘valley’ fold with a ‘mountain’ fold. A pleat can be straight or curved, sharp or soft, geometric or organic. It can create a two-dimensional surface or a three-dimensional form; it can be made once, or made as an endless repeat. It can be flexible or rigid, decorative or functional, made from one piece or fabricated from many pieces, and made from one material or from a combination of materials. Miyake placed great emphasis on the actual methods of construction of his garments, informing the buyer that there was something more to his clothing than just the superficial ‘skin’. Pleat in Fashion | Fold in architecture intelligence of construction strength through geometry
aesthetic through geometry
structure through geometry
Basic open pleat
Closed open pleat
Pleats as Rhythms
Pleat patterns are essentially rhythmic. The basic pairing and equal spacing of a valley fold with a mountain fold will create the familiar accordion pleat. This is the simplest pleated rhythm.
Here are some simple examples that show how the basic pairing of a valley fold with a mountain fold can be developed.
The ‘open’ and ‘closed’ forms of knife pleats and box pleats
Miyake: participation with Architecture
Drawings for collection : ‘CITY MEETS BODY’ : Homme Plisse
21 21 Design Sight Museum by Tadao Ando Conceptualised and inspired by APOC by Miyake
Aesthetic dimension
continuous tangent (minimum radius of curvature)
discontinuous tangent (assembly material)
Pleated surfaces also provide an interesting effect of light and shadows, and result in a harmonization of the architectural space. The folds change the pattern, modify spatial parameters but also structural forms. It appears that each pleated construction finds its balance between shape parameters and structure. The architect J.M. Delarue has identified four variables that generate emotion: - The "fascination of animated" by rhythm. - The "euphony" upper and lower ridges, peaks and valleys, positive and negative. - The "nuances" from the light revealed. - The "hold of line" guiding the eye.
Accordion Pleats
Non-linear Pleats
Multiple gutters and V Pleats
Tectonic/ Structural theory: Resolving fluidity at an architectural scale
Box Pleats: load transfer
The Work of Eladio Dieste: an engineer of efficiency and economical forms For him, structure, geometry, and material were all components of an interrelated whole, approaching form as an issue of synthesis. Dieste decided to capitalize on the availability and affordability of a well-known local material: brick, which became his instrument.
Church of Cristo Obrero. Atlantida, Uruguay. 1958-60. Credit: Julian Palacio.
Diagram of ruled surface generation. Credit: Julian Palacio.
Diagram of gaussian vault generation. Credit: Julian Palacio.
Idea of renewal: Parallel practices in Japan
Fashion : Kimono : Textile
Architecture : Temple (Ise) : Wood
Every 20 years, locals tear down the Ise Jingu grand shrine in Mie Prefecture, Japan, only to rebuild it anew. They have been doing this for around 1,300 years. Some records indicate the Shinto shrine is up to 2,000-years old. The process of rebuilding the wooden structure every couple decades helped to preserve the original architect’s design against the otherwise eroding effects of time. This is an important national event. Its underlying concept — that repeated rebuilding renders sanctuaries eternal — is unique in the world. The Sengu is such a large event that preparations take over eight years, four years alone just to prepare the timber.
Considered the pinnacle of Japanese traditional architecture, The Shrine is constantly being rebuilt every 20 years, with its construction techniques passed on from previous generations. It is constructed out of unfinished cypress wood, and the plank walls out of thatched reeds or cypress bark. It has a linear construction style, gabled roof, and raised floors. The roof is supported by the exterior board walls, with independent exterior pillars supporting the ridge board. The rafter extensions located at the gable ends, and the horizontal log elements which protrude from the roof’s ridge, act as weights to keep the roof secure.
Clothes were valued very differently by older generations. In the event of a garment wearing out due to the inevitable passage of time, we are looking back at upcycling and mending as techniques to extend these life cycles. Mending is a slow fashion practice that focuses on repair and stands against consumption. A humble act born of necessity has become an expression of resistance to our dismissal of the world and our environment. It has also become a way to bring us together, to re-engage with materiality, and to invite us as consumers back to understanding the contexts of makers and making.
The old Jingu is not abandoned, it becomes part of other buildings, and in a way, it renews itself. Aside from all the fascinating cultural minutiae of the Shikinen Sengu, what is intriguing is the idea of a “perishable” architecture, which gains value (and eternity) precisely because of this aspect. An ephemeral architecture has the ability to mediate between aspired permanence and inevitable change, sustaining cultural meaning despite a short existence. Framing a moment in time through construction processes and lingering fragments, a building designed to disappear can foster a potent communal memory. The fleeting experience created by a temporal archtecture can serve a didactic purpose within its community. The tectonics of the building will be telling of its mutable nature not only as urban furniure, but also as a dynamic marker of place and time, showcasing the potential sustainable value in impermanence.
Ise Shrine, Mie Prefecture, Japan
Can architecture mediate between permanence and obsolescence? Can architecture teach or promote an attitude toward permanence that will promote sustainability both ecologically and culturally?
Performative skin The human scale and their thermal comfort are considered the center of both disciplines, where fashion deals with the direct body as clothes, while architecture deals with the body inside the space (Ertas and Samlioglu 2015). Both fields are dealing with space, mass, and structure using geometry, which consequently shows the visible relationship of their design process (Hedayat 2012) in turning the two-dimensional surface into a three-dimensional form. In fashion design, the conventional process uses pattern-cutting to flat fabric cut, assemble, and sew generating the 3D garments (Valle-noronha et al. 2020). Although this process produces waste, yet, the folding technique can consider one of the most excellent educational experiences to reach zero-waste reduction (Rissanen and McQuillan 2016; McQuillan 2020) for both fields. This hands-on technique can be reached without using advanced tools (Jackson 2011), which is based on undergoing multiple trials and errors to achieve a self-supporting model.
Architecture and Fashion Design Intersections in the Digital Age Although the fashion industry is more about aesthetic expression (Hallnäs 2009), zero-waste concepts started to appear due to the markets’ need for economical problem-solving. This concept became a practice in relation to climate crisis solutions (McQuillan 2020) through waste reduction, which in parallel changes the sequences of traditional fashion production. The appearance of this concept exists in both fashion and architecture fields that can be seen in resource reduction, unlike conventional techniques (McQuillan 2020). As a result of waste reduction, there has been a rapid rise in the use of new digital fabrication tools which assisted both designers to optimize their designs before the fabrication and production process for precise rapid prototypes. Increasingly, the aid of new digital tools introduced new shapes and echoes in both disciplines which provided innovations in texture, form, and volume in non-conventional ways. However, the digital tool should be taken as an addition to and not a replacement of analogue tools. In the past years, the computational age had witnessed a fascinating intersection in architecture and fashion design in the design concepts, design process, vocabularies, languages, theories, geometry, materials, and digital tools (Zunde and Bougdah 2006; Hedayat 2012; Quinn 2003; Valle-noronha et al. 2020). The evolutionary growth of new technologies and materials shifted the fashion industry from couture and mass production to a multifaceted process. Although it is difficult to predict the deformable flexible fabrics in clothes (Tanaka et al. 2007), each material property can be controlled (Bugg and Ziesche 2013; Brändle 2004). The fabric application in architecture has been integrated since the use of tents, animal skins, and bones in construction. It has expanded with the discovery of smart and hybrid responsive materials that open the doors for body adaptation. Fabrics as a formwork give stability to free-form structures found in the work of Mark West, Miguel Fisac, Sergio Prego, Massimo Moretti, Richard Bush, among others. In modern textile-based constructions, fabrics gradually started to appear again not only as an aesthetic element but as a part of the manufacturing and structural element that gives the flexibility of non-conventional forms (Kuusisto 2009). The traditional workflow of the fashion industry follows several processes as stated by McQuillan starting with design, which includes ideation, concept, and sketching, followed by making, which includes testing different iterations and patterns, and ending with a production sample, factory sample, and the final production piece (McQuillan 2020). Although sketching is considered a main essential technique during pattern-cutting and maker-making of garments (McQuillan 2020), the repetition of the trial and error process to generate the desired designs consumes a lot of resources. Thus, the revolution in the digital age shifted the design process to integrate more digital software which became a tool of prototyping to assist in zero-waste practice for reducing the waste of resources. Correspondingly, digital tools go back and forth in the design process which allows more visualization moving between the 3D sketch, 2D pattern, and 3D sample (McQuillan 2020). Certainly, digital tools play an important role in reaching better results, yet, the workshop in this paper aimed to minimize the use of digital tools during the design process depending on a traditional tool for experimenting with folded units. Material and structural stability tests for folding techniques are hard to test digitally without experience in analysis software. Accordingly, this workshop focused on testing the units on the manikin dealing directly with the body to understand different dimensions and scales which can save time unlike if they were just designed digitally. This highlights the valuation of the hand-made exploration and the making process of craftsmanship more than depending on digital tools.
Peformative garment
Peformative facade
Towards a New(er) Architecture? Conclusive clues from each chapter: The fold: Architecture that suggests that the wall is not a mere surface for ornamentation, but instead serves as a load-bearing structural member, and enables a certain joinery-free continous aesthetic. The idea of renewal: Architecture that suggests preservation as a sustaiable practice. Promotes the idea of an architecture that permanently exists but is constantly altered within the public memory. Performative skin: Architecture that suggests providing a sense of thermal comfort while being able to physically alter patterns of the skin. There are multiple versions and functions of the same skin.
An architecture that sustains meaning yet is temporary can mediate the conflict between the quest for permanence and inevitable obsolescence. An ephemeral architecture is one that is design to exist for a short period of time and then disappear, providing a fleeting experience and leaving behind a memory. Like an ephemeral stream or an insect whose life lasts only a day, the experience will be unique and more meaningful precisely because of its acknowledged time limit. Semper, deconstructed a view of arch lecture where form and structure were dominant, replac:ng it with one in which surface-play became important. In this way, he provoked an understanding of arch;tecture as taking place at the front, on the face, and on the surface of architecture. He advocated the use of colour and pattern as the joy of architecture. creation. The lndustr,al revolution and the architectural theories associated with it, sought to create an architecture which was economical, practical and universal. An architecture which could be created easily, cheaply and effectively. Ths resulted in a preference for formal structure over surface-play. However, nem digital technologies and construction techniques have brought about a continuat•on of the Semperian delight in surfaces. E-paper, digital screens, printed concrete, composite polymers and dynamic cladding systems allow us to relish our appreciation of architecture at the surface level. The greater interaction of architecture with the digital media has allowed for a return to the p ayful use of colour, light and pattern n architecture, which bears great resemblance to ideas put forward by Semper and his contemporaries in the nineteenth century. Thus, surface in contemporary architecture can be viewed as more substantial than superficial: it can be seen as surficial. What is of great importance is an nterd sciplinary appreciation of architecture and the acknowledgment of surfaces as bearers of meaning and as places for communication and exchange.
The aspects that one will then incorporate in the design proposal shall: 1: Have an understanding about the Corpus/ Body 2: Have a Representation/ Meaning 3: Have Lightness/ Be Adaptable 4: Be associated with Culture The design dissertation will focus on how one can cover these aspects into a built fotm in the contemporary world> There have been attempts to respond to all these aspects eg. Fun Palace. How does one attempt to respond to these differenlty today?