Haleimah Darwish
Through each of these chapters I explore how the material world can unfold as a design, it can be not only mapped but also fashioned with the architecture of the material. The project develops an alternative spatial methodology exploring how our corporeal reality has shifted in this current time.
Chapter One: Body and Object
This chapter seeks to incite the standard ways of producing architectural meaning, using the body as a tool to implement the potentials of the design process. The production of form, as well as the relationships of femininity, domesticity and materiality are to be understood in a performative way.
Chapter Two: Body and Surface
Chapter two repurposes the practice of the tableaux vivant. Translating to 'living pictures' in French, it is a static scene represented from literature, art, history, or everyday life, usually stationary and silent, with carefully constructed sets and scenes.
Chapter Three: Body and Room
Chapter three engages all of the elements of the project into a living tableaux. Through performative acts and pictorial compositions to transform the domestic environment using methods of sewing and ruching.
From surveying and tracing forms of the body through methods of casting, tailoring, and draping, to the process of production of the room, through methods of sewing, ruching, and performance, the working methods result as a continuous dialogue between tactility and physical participation all through the design process. In total 60 meters of cotton, 100,000 threads, 22 yards of ribbon, and 47 days dressing the surfaces of the room.