Experiencing Architecture: Inviting Dialogue
Royal Academy of Arts, London
Walmer Yard, London
Saturday 21 & Sunday 22 April, 2018
I curated two events that explore the dynamic and reciprocal nature of architectural experience. The title Experiencing Architecture: Inviting Dialogue is both a reflection of the event’s intention and the belief that a meaningful experience of architecture is one that results in a reciprocal and evolving relationship with the spaces we inhabit.
The event was in two parts: one an experiential encounter, the other a symposium. In the first a dialogue was invited through an experience of architecture – an exchange between building, visitor, and performer. Participants were free to inhabit and occupy the four houses of Walmer Yard, designed by Peter Salter, while experiencing performances that experiment with the possibilities the houses offer for sound, narrative, and movement. This experience was followed by a day-long symposium exploring related themes through presentations and discussions.
Encounter participants:
Marisa Futernick; Takako Hasegawa; Sharone Lifschitz; Musarc; Juri Nishi; Scanner
And conversations with Hélène Binet, (photographer), Steve Chance (Chance de Silva Architects), Mark Dorrian, Vanessa Jackson RA (artist), Michael McGarry (Queen’s University Belfast), Antoni Malinowski (artist), Hugo Speirs (neuroscientist)
Symposium participants and papers:
Stuart Andrews: Artistic Enquiry into Architecture
Tom Coward: Towards a Conversational Architecture
Andy Day: FORMER. Parkour, exploration, and the monuments of Former Yugoslavia
Outside Architecture (Bernice Donszelmann, Tim Renshaw and Helen Robertson): Plan/Unplan
Emily Fitzell: PERECEPTION
Sigrid de Jong: Experiencing and Teaching: Dialogues of Movement and Time at the Royal Academy
Liana Psarologaki: Atmospheres of Fabulation: Mythopoesis in Chronotopos in Post-Truth Era
Joana Valsassina Heitor: The Architecture Exhibition as a Spatial Argument
All photographs by Yiannis Katsaris
Producer and co-curator, Laura Mark
“Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light. For the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into its forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquillity holds sway.”
Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, 1933 (translated 1977)