Ophelie Prevesianos

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About

Ophelie Prevesianos is a French MA architecture student. Before pursuing her MA at the Royal College of Art, she studied an Architecture BA at Central Saint Martins. She worked in interior design and architectural practices in Paris and London.

Her research interests are exploring how non-traditional architectural representations such as film, painting and performance, allow new forms of architectures and spatial experiences based on real life and emotions.

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Degree Details

Statement

A House by Four Women

Staging the female gaze on the domestic through dialogues and film making. 

This project looks to explore notions of domesticity and domestic space through the gaze of four young Parisian women: Lou, Charlotte, Ariane and myself, Ophelie. The project aims to unpack the female gaze on the domestic, by staging our group of four Parisian friends, imagining through Zoom conversations at home, the house in which we would like to live together.

This collective house is conceptualised through filmed domestic scenes and dialogues. The film elaborates a methodology infiltrating the personal lives of the group of friends, through a series of filmed activities such as cooking and eating, and dialogues about love and beauty. Spontaneous conversations on zoom between friends allow to reveal personal details and emotions that usually do not end up in a traditional architectural project. Our habits, memories, fears, irritations, and desires collected throughout the film, shape this imaginary collective house.

The project reflects on the traditional position of architecture as a rational and vertical practice and proposes one that is much closer to personal emotions. The process of positioning the architect on the exact same level to the future users by imagining this future house together, brings a richness to the design that would have not occur by looking at the project from a rational and distanced vertical point of view. This horizontal design practice based on emotions and real life enrich the design and humanise the relationship between architects and non-professional architects. 

A House by Four Women

A House by Four Women

The film is constructed through filmed daily activities in which we drink, we cook, we eat, we work, we dress up, we make the bed, we make up, we transit, we work while we talk about subjects such fashion, beauty, love, house labour, aging, sexuality, work, and our future house. Also, the multitude of camera angles creates a mosaic of interiors as if the viewer was looking through the façade of a Parisian building.

Artist collaborators:

Lou Duckett

Ariane Guyon

Charlotte Rault

Ophelie Prevesianos

Medium: Film

From Dialogues to our House

In our house, we live naked in summer because of the heat.
In our house, we live naked in summer because of the heat. — Because our house is under black roofs, it gets very hot in the summer and that we have to live naked.
In our house we have a Collective Wardrobe.
In our house we have a Collective Wardrobe. — A gigantic collective wardrobe shared between the four of us and spreading the clothes throughout the apartment.
In our house, there is a Wall of Treasures.
In our house, there is a Wall of Treasures. — The Wall of Treasures shelters the objects we love the most.
In our house, the floor is A Gigantic Bed.
In our house, the floor is A Gigantic Bed. — In our house the floor is a gigantic the bed. We can choose to sleep anywhere in the flat.
In our house, there is Le Salon des Refusés.
In our house, there is Le Salon des Refusés. — Hidden behind the Wall of treasures Le Salon des Refusés shelters all the objects we hate. These objects are transformed into new ones to create a comfortable salon space. The toilet seat becomes a mirror, the trash becomes a lamp, the chairs coat hanger, the vacuum a smoking device. It is a salon where we can retreat in peace.
In our house, there is a Beauty Salon.
In our house, there is a Beauty Salon. — The dressing table is a social space. Its shape and mirror transparency allows communication while doing make up.
In our house, there are secret views and passages for La Voyeuse.
In our house, there are secret views and passages for La Voyeuse. — There are secret passages and views allowing to control without being seen. All the rooms of the house can be viewed from a central secret corridor.
Mister Clean and Madam Scrubs: In our house, we avoid cleaning.
Mister Clean and Madam Scrubs: In our house, we avoid cleaning. — We avoid cleaning as much as possible. The floor tiles have holes in them to get rid of the dirt easily.
In our house, there is an acoustically insulated cupboard.
In our house, there is an acoustically insulated cupboard. — The men’s cupboard is an acoustically insulated space where noisy activities can occur without being disturbed.

From conversations our group of friends created a fantastic house, in which each room was a parody reflecting on the issues, desires, irritations, habits, we experience in the domestic. To design our house, I selected ten dialogues from the film and translated them into spatial concepts for our future house.