Design Commissions
For the spatial design of In Search of the Pluriverse, architect Sean Leonard draws on the idea of the Caribbean yard, a semi-public private space where daily activities such as cooking, playing, working and rehearsing (for Carnival!) need to be combined. For this exhibition, the curators reshuffled the narrative into a circular story of four chapters that you could look at as seasons or moments of the day. Time to Harvest. Letting Go. New Beginnings. Heat of the Action. There are 27 doors into the pluriverse: some small, some a little bigger.
Sean Leonard
Sean (b.1962) is a practising architect who trained in London and works and lives in Trinidad and Tobago. He is one of the founding directors of the architecture practice co-rd Limited, and has held executive positions in the Trinidad and Tobago Institute of Architects and the Federation of Caribbean Associations of Architects.
In parallel and related to his formal practice of architecture, is his active interest in Carnival 'mas' production and set design. The ephemeral nature of the products from both these creative activities and their inherent reliance on abstraction and human interface (wearer/performer) for their embodied presence, continue to intrigue Sean. For fifteen years he designed and produced children's Carnival bands and from early in his career, has consistently designed stage sets for numerous music and theatre productions, for which he has been recognised locally.
Sean is also one of the founding directors of Alice Yard (2006), a contemporary art space located in Port-of-Spain, which hosts and facilitates an ongoing programme of artists and artists' projects respectively, where networking, collaboration, improvisation and play are key tenets in its operation.
With the support of his practice and Alice Yard, Sean has been engaged in an ongoing exercise of conducting and compiling an audio archive of interviews of key selective professionals and players of the generation before him, who were critical in shaping the construction and experience of Trinidad and Tobago's built environment.
Sean Leonard was the inaugural recipient of the Tilting Axis /Het Nieuwe Instituut Fellowship. More information about his fellowship can be read in an interview on this website.