Political Bodies proposes to read architecture through two opposing scales, the individual and the community. Architecture is also, at the same time, the expression of both power and self-awareness. This can be seen most clearly in how architecture has signified and embodied ideal bodies over time.
Ideal bodies have emerged throughout the histories of human culture to reflect a society’s values, which has in turn informed the scale, proportion, and materiality of architecture. Students from the first and second year of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie’s Architectural Design department worked throughout the spring of 2020 in collaboration with the Holland Festival to deconstruct contemporary ideal bodies and craft new ones.
Serving as founding architectural myths for alternative worlds, students started by developing an atlas of spatial references and writing a manifesto outlining the value systems of projective, fictional, political bodies. As the architectural element that most directly embodies the values of ideal bodies, students then designed a portal, which was realized both as a collage and a 1:1-scale model. They then zoomed out to envision a collective space, a stage for communal expression.
Students: Nikolai Aarre, Lene Antonopoulos, Fanny Bezie, Miriam Chair, Wimke Dekker, Robbie Doorman, Julia Hager Jutterström, Kevin Kim, Neža Kokol, Yasmin Lyon, Tania Phuong, Giovanni Salice, Arnar Freyr Sigurðsson, Valter Torsleff, Leonie Marie Wegertseder.
Studio Tutors: Traumnovelle
Website: 4 us & 4 others
https://political-bodies.xyz/