Space Embodied
The projects exhibited in this pop-up exhibition, 'My Banya Your Banya: From Reality To Myth' and 'A Clinical Corpus: The Most Immaculate of Intentions', are the thesis projects of two Berlage alumni. Both projects assembled an archaeology of an architectural type where the treatment of the body by medical or hygienic rituals is performed. The two works reflect upon architecture's relationship to cleanliness and health.
6 October 2016 11:00 - 9 October 2016 17:00
The banya
Anastasia Gerasimova is an architect currently working in Rotterdam at Studio Makkink & Bey. She studied architecture in Russia, Austria and the Netherlands. At The Berlage Institute, she started her on-going research about culture and aesthetics of the banya.
"The banya, a Russian steam bath, is a type that has evolved over many historical periods from space of everyday life to an urban ritual. It is not only a utilitarian hygienic space, but also a place for celebration. Through the banya, collective nakedness and communal intimacy become a cultural condition."
The clinic
Piergianna Mazzocca is an architect currently working in Milan. She studied architecture in Venezuela, continuing her studies at The Berlage Institute in the Netherlands. Her project is an exploration into the typology of the clinic and architecture's enduring relationship to health and associated medical aesthetic paradigms.
"Since the eighteenth century, medical perception has dominated the observation and treatment of the human body. The rigor embedded in medical practice exposed the truth about it, the things that afflict it, the things that make it sick. Therefore the body, its treatment, was never questioned when framed through the medical gaze. The clinic, as the threshold between the two, embodied their encounter."
The new human
This installation will be presented in relation to the exhibition _Space Embodied. The Russian Art of Movement 1920-1930_, about the new, free human as propagated by the Russian avant-garde. These projects are also related to Irina Sirotkina's lecture at the Thursday Night of 6 October, on the stormy development of this 'free dance' and its philosophical context.