Neil Spiller, former professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, has been the muse and guide of the big idea Gothic Deviations. The scheme is broad and encompasses many media, but is focused around the crafting of the architectural detail through the use of the stereo-lithography printer.
Informed by my own original “poor-man’s” jewellery and a key architectural construction moment, that of the façade of the Cork Gallery by Erick van Egeraat, the design naturally moved toward Neil Spiller’s light and dark imagery which became the code from which the work developed.
Peter Cook of Spiller – “Underneath the bubbling and grunging lies an architectural mind of pure silver and a hand of boiling black ink..."
With Spiller’s Gothic imagery and ideals in mind, the shift changed and the work was designed for, and using the medium of light. Across four scale changes, that of the jewellery piece, the jewellery box, the dramaturgy (stageset) and the theatre, light has been the impetus for the work.
Spiller’s own interest in Neo-gothic subculture led the project in interesting directions. Research into Gothic literature brought issues of female emancipation from a highly structuralised patriarchal society to the forefront, and with this came the social and political stigma surrounding the fetish garment of the era – the corset. The wearing of the corset began as a highly repudiated piece of fetish clothing - a sexually liberating symbol for the trapped domestic woman, but quickly became dogma for aristocratic and bourgeois societies. “...the entire female body was one piece of jewellery, erotically stylized, deformed and alienated from its biological functions…”[1]
These ideas informed scale one of the design, the jewellery piece. A mask was a natural progression of this idea of identity and costuming especially when teamed with the original hanging façade detail and serves to gently “squeeze” Spiller’s temples.
Interest in the nature of the architectural drawing lead to the function of the jewellery box. A reconfigurable drawing board, made from standard but varying componentry, allows Spiller to store his mask while also serving as a functioning device. Resolved from a series of cuts in paper which was entitled “Black Ink”, the box is pinned together to create slits in the façade in which light can penetrate. It was designed as if experienced from the inside.
My own interest in theatre and design along with Spiller’s own love for theatricality and disguise led to scales three and four. The dramaturgic environment is drawn directly from the drawing board configuration. A stage set for a ballerina, screens which are unraveled from the ceiling serve to both deny her form and set her free, depending on their orientation, lighting and transparency. The theatre itself is a reconfigurable, flexible space used for smaller productions. Rostra can be orientated in many different forms allowing for innumerable staging and audience orientations, and the building affords generous green room and storage space below ground. The façade is the main detail – imagined as a blanket of light draped over the building, the curvaceous surface is made from tiles which come together to form a pierced surface, which allow poetic light moments to be experienced from the dark interior. The panels are also reconfigurable – arranged in patterns on the inside they can be manually adjusted to let light and air in to the interior spaces.
The project was realised in parts with the use of a stereo-lithography printer. In keeping with the Gothic aesthetic and function, the printed artefacts underwent a process of casting from which they emerged as gleaming bronze componentry pieces for all scale changes.
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