I was very happy to learn that two women architects are curating the Venice Architecture Biennale this year (through November 25).
Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, founders of Grafton Architects in Dublin, are this year's directors.
Their chosen theme, Freespace, has a lot of ideas and values in common with our work in Manuma:
Freespace provides the opportunity to emphasise nature’s free gifts of light – sunlight and moonlight, air, gravity, materials – natural and man-made resources.
Freespace encourages reviewing ways of thinking, new ways of seeing the world, of inventing solutions where architecture provides for the well being and dignity of each citizen of this fragile planet.
Freespace can be a space for opportunity, a democratic space, un-programmed and free for uses not yet conceived. There is an exchange between people and buildings that happens, even if not intended or designed, so buildings themselves find ways of sharing and engaging with people over time, long after the architect has left the scene.
Architecture has an active as well as a passive life.
Freespace encompasses freedom to imagine, the free space of time and memory, binding past, present and future together, building on inherited cultural layers, weaving the archaic with the contemporary
What's really interesting for me to think about as a garment designer is how to apply architectural thinking to fashion. I read the Freespace manifesto, and replace the word "architecture" with the word "fashion"…
Where architecture is about a much bigger scale of space and enclosure, sunlight and weather, accommodating the needs and wants of multiple (often, thousands, or more) people in one product, is it possible to think about clothing in a similar way?
How would that impact the design process?
How would that impact the choices, behavior, thoughts of the wearer?
On an individual scale, a garment encompasses the space around the body– we don't often think about the "negative" space outside the garment, and how that impacts the social environment.
We're just now beginning to think about how manufacturing processes impact the health and wellbeing of wearers and workers of fashion, and the wellbeing of natural systems…
Likewise, we've just started seriously considering the lifecycle of the garment before it reaches the wearer, and after it leaves the wearer…. What about the life of the garment when it's not being worn?
I think it's really invigorating and important for designers to learn from other making disciplines.
I wonder how it would impact the fashion industry if wearers/consumers also thought about their clothing the way they think about other products and avocations– what can you discover about your wardrobe from your love of music or theater, your appreciation of architecture, your admiration of fine art?….
- Read the Freespace manifesto here.
- Read an extended interview with Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara here.
I'll be having a long think about this.
Share your thoughts in the comments below, and share this post on your socials.
#clothisculture #architectureisculture
+ Allie