Alex Schweder La: Student project
Watch the Creative cowboy film Space Time Performance and the discussion between ALEX SCHWEDER LA and PETER HYLANDS, Our weight around us.
ALEX SCHWEDER LA describes the thinking behind his series of works, Buildings That Perform Themselves.
“During my time at the American Academy in Rome, my work focused on architecture that mirrored out ephemeral bodies. This time base fluctuating reference was in contrast with the perfect bodies that we see used as a point of departure for styles of building throughout history.
In Rome, buildings from different moments were built upon one another and by moving up and down a staircase centuries could be crossed. Here I understood buildings as already in flux, but at a rate that we cannot perceive. The works that came out of this sped the rate of change to one that we can sense.
The projects in this series work like a mirror, the viewer stands outside the work looking at it and registers the distance between the familiar and the strange. In so doing, it is my hope that they recognize themselves”.
Make your own architectural performance project. Think of three different kinds of buildings, you choose which ones, but an example might be:
- A suburban house;
- a grand historic building; and
- an old factory
Take a two hundred year period and think about how these different types of buildings will be used over time, if they survive at all.
Create a set of drawings and models that demonstrate each type of buildings use over time.
ALEX SCHWEDER LA talks about the impression that people leave on buildings. Write an essay that describes the people that inhabit the building at different points along your timeline and the way they interact with each of the buildings you have chosen.