Document: Mhairi McVicarDocument: Mhairi McVicar

published: Intersections: Design Education and Other fields of Inquiry,(2006), Iowa State University, 224-228

INHABITING SPACE: BODY, SCALE AND PERFORMANCE

Collaboration between a first year architecture studio and performing arts resources at the University of Illinois at Chicago personified the first experience of proposing space, and highlighted the phenomenological and interdisciplinary nature of architectural design.

As a means of exploring this potential, a series of first year architecture studios were taught as interdisciplinary studios, moving between architecture and theatre whilst exploring a variety of spatial concepts through performing arts techniques, such as Anne Bogart’s ‘Viewpoints’ and Viola Spolin’s ‘Theatre Games’. A series of projects were based on concepts of learning to experience space, mask construct, implied gesture, implied space and performance structure. Perceptual responses to scale, repetition and axial shape were explored spatially in the theatre through individual gestures and group performances, and translated in the architectural studio as orthographic drawings, sketches and collages which mapped and analyzed the face and body as site.

Photo credit: Year 1 03-04 studio, School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Chicago. Photo: Mhairi McVicar.