2022

The Learning Anatomy: A Performative School of Architectural Bodies

Nicola Chang

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+64275740404
Head in a Brain Storm
My head is in a BRAINSTORM, flurried with paper ideas and bloodied ink looking for an idea to start the architectural design process.

Forming the narrative of a design process is an invisible but vital skill in architectural pedagogy.


Gestural stages from ideation to refinement enable architecture students to communicate the development of their design ideas. However, these intricacies of structuring a design process are not often explored in architectural design. The focus on executing a design outcome limits the student from embodying the rigour of their thinking in their final presentations.

The Learning Anatomy aims to project the thinking process of design through the moving body of an architecture student and use its performance to construct a series of immersive classrooms that form an alternative architecture school, reviving the importance of the design process.

My initial making of accessory-scale prosthetics is to help the body of an architecture student to translate the learning experiences of each design stage (ideation, development and refinement) into action. They are the learning steps to perform their design and enrich their concept towards the final presentation.


 
Spiralling momentum movement
In order to make the wind fan turn, I must use every movement of my body to find, form, formulate the design flow.

Along with Rebecca Horn’s prosthetic works, the learning body can be distorted into an architectural vessel to interact with abstract ideas from the mind and bring experimental play into learning.

 
Cufflinks set
CuffLink (Wrist Cuff): Recording memories of what my hand has encountered; text, pictures, paper?
Brainstorm
BrainStorm (Headpiece): Text projecting around different faces with new ideas and possibilities.
Spiralling Momentum Set
Wind-Milling (Arm Extension): Fans at both ends detecting ebbing energy around its surroundings and transfers to the limbs of the body. Circular, oxygenate dizzy, dissipate detectors.
Temporary cosing
Threads, Thingers and Toes (Artificial Fingers and Toes): Ending at one thread and reopening a new thread in the gridded plane. Different thread colours can colour code and spatially frame the different times artistic concept is at work. Not limited but extended through the veins of your fingers.

By creating accessory scaled prosthetics to full-body drawing garments, the architectural body is developed from the growth of an architecture student learning the design process to performing a lesson to teach it.

 
Spectre classroom
Spectre: A tight corset with pockets storing old drawings and releasing them out through the skirt. It forms a tent-like structure for visitors to sit under and trace drawings for different interpretations.
Noughts and crosses classroom
Noughts and Crosses: Twin shirts with opposite colours of black and white. Front chest doors are open with coils of strings for people to pull and orient towards different points of themes.
Multi Fool Eyes set
Multi-Fool Eyes: Leather cropped vest with windmill extensions to turn theoretical knowledge to performative action. Makes the body move in different directions in an exciting flux.

This alternative school hopes to use performance in the design process to activate the bodies of architecture students as future storytellers in architecture.