Yuliya Savelyeva

Our experience of art and of everyday life depends on the spaces we inhabit. This thesis explores the friction between two seemingly incompatible but closely related programs of a hotel and a performance space—merging them into a codependency that celebrates and capitalizes on their intersections. Architecture and light have the capacity to create a new type of day-lit, immersive, mediated environment, conducive to new kinds of experiences. The whole building becomes a stage, every inhabitant can wear a performer’s mask, and the boundaries between mis-en-scène and audience, everyday life and performance, are blurred. The hotel program has the potential to expand the practice of shared lodging through its inherently performative characteristics.  

Light is the first medium to create magic, and it can challenge the static materiality of architecture to reveal or conceal physical separation. Viewing a show in a dynamic day-lit space allows for perceptual shifts and blurring of prescribed spatial boundaries. The divides between the real and the unreal, the staged and the spontaneous, are questioned. Opening these spaces calls attention to naturalized roles and divisions and is intended to heighten your capacity as an observer and participant in everyday life. The building is a “changing room” where architecture, lighting, and people step in and out of their roles as backdrop, protagonist and observer. www.yuliyasavelyeva.com