2024

The Architect, The Performer and The Ghost: A ST James folly.

Rhea Shroff

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Architecture becomes a stage where the gaze defines roles of control and desire. The inhabitant, as the primary object, and the visitor, as the looking subject, constantly exchange agency, creating a fluid dynamic of power. This interplay evokes intimacy and control, blending comfort and tension. The interior frames and traces existence, embodying a presence that is both seen and felt.

Desire and lack are intrinsic to human nature—what we desire is what we lack. Achieving desire creates new voids, perpetuating a cycle driven by consumerism. Vision fuels desire, making the gaze pivotal. Yet, while the gaze seeks understanding, it often fails to truly see, exposing the limits of human knowledge.

Through architectural forms like walls or labyrinths, subjects and objects converge and diverge, their roles shifting endlessly. This embodies the paradox of the gaze: a demand to see and a desire that can never be fully satisfied.

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"The architectural object always implies a subject."

This relationship lies at the heart of the dynamic interplay between gaze and architecture, where control shifts—consciously or unconsciously—between subject and object. These exchanges construct a theatrical performance, transforming residents and visitors into performers and audiences, blurring the boundaries between observation and participation.

The exploration delves into the human experience of lack and the perpetual desire to seek or be sought. Architecture mediates perception through visibility and invisibility, revealing the tension between recognition and obscurity: to be visible is to exist; to be invisible is to be denied.

Informed by Beatriz Colomina's Sexuality and Space and Slavoj Žižek's Looking Awry, the study investigates how the gaze distorts and defines objects, suggesting that meaning emerges only through the act of looking. This fluid dynamic frames architecture as a stage where power shifts endlessly, intertwining voyeurism, narcissism, and desire.

Ultimately, the work examines how architecture can stage performances that reflect human nature's need for recognition, control, and desire, crafting spaces where power and identity converge in provocative and theatrical ways.

 
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