PParsons
5031
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Fall 2011
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Faculty:
Andrea Ruggiero
Furniture is a vehicle to study the space between body and architecture, working with materials at full scale. Furniture is often thought of as an object with clear boundaries and distinctly separate from the space it occupies, suggesting that it is movable, not fixed, apart from the walls. But a piece of furniture can also be understood as the thing occupying the realm between the body and the confines of a space. Thing is used here deliberately, because it also can be that which makes the larger space it is in more cohesive, aid us, hold us or our belongings... It can guide us through a space, remind us who we are and where we are and what we do in that space. Because it is in between the body and the building or larger environment, it is able to bridge or mediate, by scale, function, and material. This workshop aims to examine and perhaps challenge the preconceptions of what furniture is and offer an approach to design and making through a series of short projects working with actual materials and at full scale. The immediacy of making at the 1:1 scale opens up possibilities beyond the problem of representation and necessitates a direct engagement with matter. The final project will result in a site-specific construction that is able to temporarily support the weight of a body.
