Choreographing Exposure : Theatrical configurations of architectural disjunction

Abstract

The way architecture articulates social, cultural, political, and organizational values as well as character and identity through manipulation of visibility, permeability and the relation them in-between has been discussed by many researchers. Consistent methodologies that focus on this specific split are however unusual, and it tends to be handled discursively and on a case-by-case basis. There are also shortcomings in how such disjunctions are considered both in functional and communicatory terms. For development of morphological and configurational analysis, studies of well-known architectural works can be used to investigate geometric and configurative properties and how they relate to analyses and understanding of spatial mediation of societal values. This, however, faces a methodological challenge, as it deals with a multi-variable set of relations – including both amount of and degree of differentiation between visibility and permeability, and potentially questions of directionality that are problematic for syntax analysis to deal with. To move forward, one can either build a library of analysed buildings to compare and evaluate different disjunction patterns to, or compare these analyses to a base set of geometries and disjunctions. This paper intends to make generic methodological and theoretical contributions through specific studies of these relations focused on a well-known and analysed building: Adolf Loos' house for Josephine Baker (1928), and introducing comparison to other situations. It also aims to more clearly begin establishing a terminology for such disjunctions that can be used to further refine the understanding. ; QC 20140110