ARCHITECTURAL THESIS 

the realREAL:
CHOREOGRAPHY
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Realism + Romanticism
SPRING 2020

When considering the influence of an architect and how architecture encourages and guides the experience and thoughtfulness of the inhabitant, I began to investigate how the architect and the audience can influence and change each other and ultimately the design. To me, this was the definition of “realism” which I found most productive. 

This project proposes a network of dance studios. Dance, similar to architecture, offers a form of tectonic artistry with both internal and external expression and impact. 

My design facilitates an exchange of different movement styles of dance within a singular system; and through the shared spaces and varying proximities of my project interventions, the project deliberately takes on the challenge of addressing a long-existing critique of the traditional hierarchy, accessibility and ownership of the spaces and movement principles of dance.

Using my background as a dancer I further defined the three programs of dance as training, socializing and performing. 

Distilled to their most fundamental and foundational architectural components, each of the three elements can be transformed to specify how the dancer interacts with the space and moves the body, and this movement further exposes a reimagined architectural identity through which the fantasy of the architect and the fantasy of the dancer converge. 

Detailed delicately, each studio pavilion expresses its functionality through a curated palette of materials, corner conditions and lighting that encourages spatial and self awareness. 

This is done in the tradition of Herzog & De Meuron at Laban Dance Centre, Alvaro Siza at Casa Fez, and Sejima and Nishizawa at the Toledo Glass Pavilion.

At the urban scale, the openness of the design and the aggregation of the endless network enables dancing through the interstitial and “stitial” spaces to generate an accessible exchange of truths across architect and user, various types of dancers, and dancer and audience. 

The details and concepts are further developed in the supporting documentation presented, and my film depicts this project from an experiential lens tracing the process and life of dancers. It also serves as a tool to develop the organization logic and architectural language.