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The discipline of architecture has always worked in ambiguous conditions: Aristotle defined the challenge of architecture as establishing a static, predictable and determined condition (telos). Still today, architecture is understood as a statically fixed discipline, in which objects are created for a constant, actual state and period.

My work is questioning this static production, control and state of space by investigating geometrical organization and textile materiality, mapping social relations of and in space, merging insights from architecture, art, fashion design and body performance. Individuals are required to participate, eliminating both the role of the spectator and that of the author. It engages art and architecture through the medium of the tactile, focusing the spatial quality of architecture on the personal nature of the body and on physical interaction with space.

Performative and participatory strategies for spatial production generate a changing, multi-dimensional understanding of architecture and space. In this context it becomes evident that the concept of the architect needs to be expanded to an initiator of space who provides a system that is open to changes. Architecture becomes a public statement in which notions of the body, collective living spaces and temporary or mobile shelters produce ideas about personal boundaries as well as on an urban/human scale, and where the second skin becomes an envelope for self-expression and an extension of the body.

The limit of a person is not the outermost layer of skin. Therefore, these spatial structures de-limit the surroundings of the body, marking out a territory in the public urban fabric that allows a person to reappropriate the notion of living and where architecture is brought back into the realm of the everyday.

gabi schillig