Embodied Spatial Practices

The act of space making enables one to experience different frameworks of reality and make way for future world building practices.

Unworlding Performance : We will immerse ourselves in immersive elemental environments to dematerialize societal and environmental distortions through performative movement and begin to un/measure bodies and environments.

Embodying Phenomena : Tapping into Immaterial forces (like static,gravity, light, smell, silence, heat etc) through movement, intuition and haptic senses we measure them in innovative ways as starting points for embodied spatial explorations. Synchronizing with presence without a material body. This phenomenological view of the context helps us see the problems through a new lens. Transcending toward an undivided space embodying limitless possibilities and new ways of being.

Material Somatics : Expanding our imagination and experimenting with hybrid material cultures, bio materials, mixed media ; we begin to embed curiosity in everyday spatial tools of wonder and change.

Performing Thresholds : This design investigates inventive ways of facade encasements in contemporary Art and Architecture. We will aim to enhance the essence of intangible / immaterial forces to bring more awareness to our environment. Design spaces that act as aesthetic frameworks for indwelling questions and sensitizing systems of care, belonging, and empathy towards an equitable material future.

Learning Outcome :

Adopting a performative and multi-modal lens to design pedagogy : Designers and Artists develop the ability to recognize their own conditioning by designing spatial environments focusing on sociocultural, ecological, and multi-sensory approaches to foster collective empathy and equitable spaces for the future.

Driving Innovation : Collective experiences of belonging, empathy and societal healing by reconfiguring time and space to develop innovative designs.

Slowing down spatial/architectural production : Making spaces with care, thoughtfulness and the planet in perspective.

PROCESS :

1 :  Art of Observing

• Story Telling - Communal Sharing / Healing

• Context (environmental or societal distortions)

• Cultural Cosmologies

2 : Dematerialize environment through movement

• Use performance as a tool for unlearning / un-worlding 

• Un-measure the body (subjective/objective)

• Dematerialize

3 : Embodying Phenomena

• Tune into Immaterial Forces

(ephemeral environments)

4 : Rasa / Essence

• Study Force Fields

• Sensory perceptions and documentation.

5 : Sense beings

• Abstraction / Forms of Knowledge.

• Collage of hybrid sensory protagonist/s.

• Build an Immediate space for care / collectivity.

6. Measurements

• Re-inventing Measuring Devices

7 : Movement, function and Visibility

• Performing movement and studying the aesthetic of function and visibility.

Site : MET’s American Wing Glass Facade.
Design Object : Facade Panels.
Designing new ways of encasing Art and Life in contemporary Art and Architecture.

8 : Enactments (field visit at The MET)

• Film documentation of enactments on site or otherwise.

• Museum facade / Art Encasements (Exhibition Design).

• Indoor + Outdoor (in between space)

9 : Mapping

• Critically thinking about the conceptual narrative of the work.

• Framing the Question. Title of your design / spatial investigation.

10 : Material Somatics

• Bio material / found objects.

11 : Structural design

• Diagrams, Drawings and quick mocks.

12: Prototyping the model

• Procuring materials

• Building strategy

13 : Technique / Craft refinement

• Building and documentation of the process

14 : Place making and Choreography

• Performing thresholds

15 : Final presentation

• Performance of the tool.

Design Outcomes and Deliverables :

1. A Performance Film

2. Art/Design strategy (Diagrams / Drawings)

3. Final Designed Facade Prototype.

Theory References :

Performance References :

-Vito Acconci, Reading & Performance.

-Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field

-Nikita Gale’s “Tempo Rubato (Stolen Time), Whitney Biennial 2024.

-Laurie Anderson-Chalkroom.

-Marcel Duchamp, 3 Standard Stoppages

Design References :

Site Visits :