rab

paris 07

roshelle a born
herzog & de meuron jean nouvel louvre museum
national stadium
hussein chalayn wi00

hussein chalayan sp08

 Last summer abroad, I spent a lot of time in
art galleries and museums looking at art and
fashion exhibits, and going into high end
boutiques to get a glimpse of the upcoming
season’s fashion designs. The coursework
that summer had us look critically at the
street level of the urban environment, and
yeohlee teng sp/su06 how the materiality of the facades in Paris
and Italy functioned at street level in con-
trast to the urban environments of Germany
and Switzerland. The following January in
India solidified my interest in relating to the
alexander mcqueen fa/wi07
human scale at the street level, the sensory
engagement of our environments, and
fashion via the beautiful textiles produced
in India. The following booklet serves as an
entry point of research into these interests,
diagrammatically and textually.
li
nearity
conceal
reveal
phenomena
al literal

transparency
perspectiv
ve
 order
v.
nature
materiality
build up
break down
 pur
interior
rity
exterior
void
solid
This glossy text targeted to those interested in innovative fashion and design (and pretty pictures) in
an imagery-based catalogue of designs that “dress for the urban environment”, including the city in
transit, the gaze, as well as practicality, comfort and protection. In the introduction, Supermodern is
defined. Supermodern space is the interstitial, transitional space, or non-places found in roads, rail-
ways, airports or streets. The Supermodern condition is described as the overabundance of space, of
information and of individualization. Supermodern Clothing puts an emphasis on the physical aspect
of clothing (over the psychological and social aspects), and needs to achieve a balance between self-
sufficiency and interconnectivity. These features are evident in high performance sportswear, military
dress and wearable electronics. Sections in the text are: Functionality, Modular Systems, Mobility,
Shelter, Protection, Urban Camouflage, Supermodernity in Detail, and an interview with Lucy Orta.
AUTHOR NAME
Bolton, Andrew.

TITLE
The Supermodern Wardrobe.

PUBLISHER
V&A Publications,

LOCATION
London

YEAR
2004

*********************************
*********************************
This text accompanies the 2006 exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles that
covered 40 architects and fashion designers from the U.S., Europe and Japan from 1980 to the
present. Many of the fashion designers and architects covered in the other texts are once again
covered in this exhibition catalog, including fashion designers Hussein Chalayan, Alexander Mc-
Queen, Narciso Rodriguez, Yeohlee Teng and architects Zaha Hadid, Herzog & deMeuron, OMA/
Rem Koolhaas. This exhibition notes the common ground between architecture and fashion, such
as the human body as a basis of design, and of space, volume and movement, to suggest areas for
potential growth. The text begins with a few essays on the creative processes and deconstruction,
but a majority of the tome focuses on the designers, a short bio, and selected images of their work.
AUTHOR NAME
Hodge, Brooke and Patricia Mears.

TITLE
Parallel Practices in Fashion and
Architecture.

PUBLISHER
Thames & Hudson,

LOCATION
London:

YEAR
2006.

*********************************
*********************************
Harold Koda is the Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute at the MOMA who created this
exhibition for those interested in fashion, anthropology and body imagery across time and cul-
ture. The introduction provides a history of the ideals of beauty that persisted or shifted across
time and culture. Each chapter covers a major part of the body: neck and shoulders, chest, waist,
hips and feet. Many of the more modern designers present in The Fashion of Architecture are
featured here, including: Alexander McQueen, Rei Kawakubo, Issey Miyake, and Thierry Mu-
gler. It may be of interest to study the architectural aspects of their design in the other texts, and
then how this relates to the multitude of meanings and intentions for the variations from the nor-
mative naked body in contemporary fashion design focused on the Extreme Beauty exhibition.
AUTHOR NAME
Koda, Harold.

TITLE
Extreme Beauty:
The Body Transformed.

PUBLISHER
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

LOCATION
New York

YEAR
2001

*********************************
GT 503.K63 2001
*********************************
In Loos’ essay he describes dress as the most basic shelter, and prescribes that all ar-
chitects must first engage with textiles as a method of grasping the meanings and aes-
thetics of dwelling. Only after an architect has worked with textiles can they
move on to the built form, employing the principles used in the creation of textiles.
AUTHOR NAME
Loos, Adolf.

ARTICLE TITLE
“The Principle of Cladding.”
COLLECTION
Spoken into the Void:
Collected Essays 1897-1900.
PUBLISHER
The MIT Press:

LOCATION
Cambridge, Massachusetts,

YEAR
1987
PAGES
66-69
*********************************
*********************************
This text provides a series of case studies intended for architects that describe the affects and
materials that allow architecture to connect with culture. The introduction begins by distin-
guishing between decoration and ornament. Decoration is contingent and produces communi-
cation and resemblance (aligned with fashion.) Ornament is necessary and intrinsically linked
to architectural affects and resonance (aligned with clothing.) The way in which the authors
describe ornament as necessary for affect and sensation is similar to the way in which Juhani
Pallasma, in The Eyes of the Skin decries modernism and its ocularcentric nature. Follow-
ing, each case is given 4 pages: The first spread describes the affect, while the second spread
describes the materials used to construct these affects via sectional perspectives. This text pro-
vides a lot of architectural information succinctly and graphically, capturing of the multitude ways
in which architecture can engage (something that Pallasma begins to do textually in her essay).
AUTHOR NAME
Moussavi, Farshid, and Michael Kubo.

TITLE
The Function of Ornament.

PUBLISHER
Harvard Univ. Graduate School of Design:

LOCATION
Harvard,

YEAR
2006.

*********************************
NA 3320.F86X 2006
*********************************
Pallasma’s polemic was created as a lecture for students and now as a work respected by both architects
and academicians. The text is organized in two parts, the first essay serves as a background and the
second is instructive in the ways in which architects can reengage. The first essay gives an overview of
the development of our modern day occularcentric culture that stems from the ideals of modern design
to the over-use of computers in architectural design today, and how this strips our everyday experienc-
es of sensory engagement. Pallasma gives architectural, art and film examples for this phenomenon.
In the second essay, Pallasma lays a framework to begin thinking about a multi-sensory ap-
proach to architecture that fosters integration and engagement. This aligns with the ideas
behind The Function of Ornament but takes an interdisciplinary theory-based approach.
AUTHOR NAME
Pallasma, Juhani.

TITLE
The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and
the Senses (Polemics).

PUBLISHER
John Wiley and Sons

LOCATION

YEAR
1996

*********************************
*********************************
Bradley Quinn is an author and journalist also wrote Techno Fashion and other esoteric fashion/
style based publications. This text is intended for designers or academics interested in a futuris-
tic, predominantly textual, description of the relationship between fashion and architecture. The
text emphasizes the ways in which architecture has aesthetically and technologically influenced
fashion via theoretical and high tech fashion design examples. The chapter titles and sub-topics
(Place and Non-place, Mapping Fashion Space, Surveillance and Visuality, to name a few) suggest
a lot more in the way of architectural and spatial evaluations than is actually covered in the text.
Further research could include fleshing out some of these topics from an architectural standpoint.
AUTHOR NAME
Quinn, Bradley.

TITLE
The Fashion of Architecture.

PUBLISHER
Berg Publishers:

LOCATION
Oxford,

YEAR
2003.

*********************************
*********************************
Bradley Quinn, also the author of The Fashion of Architecture, on the integration of fashion and tech-
nology. The introduction covers, and perhaps overemphasizes, the influence of space suits and Star
Trek on our apparel. Many of the artists covered in The Fashion of Architecture, Extreme Beauty,
and The Supermodern Wardrobe are again covered in this text. Topics include innovative materials
and technologies, transformables (or what Andrew Bolton would refer to as modularity), body image
and surveillance, providing many cross-references between this text and the other fashion-related
texts cited. Of particular interest in the section on Hussien Chalayan, explaining how he explores
the extent to which fashion and interiors and architecture can be integrated into a single design.
AUTHOR NAME
Quinn, Bradley.

TITLE
Techno Fashion.

PUBLISHER
Berg Publishers:

LOCATION
Oxford,

YEAR
2002.

*********************************
*********************************
This text, intended for art/architectural historians and theorists, challenges the architectur-
al history of the 20th century by questioning the neutrality, purity and nakedness of the mod-
ern white wall. Modernism advanced the white wall as a symbol of stripping off the fashion
and decoration of previous times; however, Wigley emphasizes the loadedness of the white
wall in the sense that it is a layer and a fashion in itself and cannot be considered naked. The
first chapter contributes to the bibliography in that it requests that “modern” architects clothe
their buildings according to the terms of “modern” times. This text has parallels with Pallas-
ma’s Eyes of the Skin in that it attempts to expose the negative influence that modernism has
had on contemporary architecture. In describing the shortfalls of modern discourse on the white
wall,Wigley highlights the layers of paint, the necessity for youth, and the perceived nakedness
of the building, subjects which are also covered in the texts that focus predominantly on fashion.
AUTHOR NAME
Wigley, Mark.

TITLE
White Walls, Designer Dresses:
The Fashioning of Modern Architecture.

PUBLISHER
The MIT Press:

LOCATION
Cambridge, Massachusetts,

YEAR
1995.

*********************************
NA 3485.W54 1995
*********************************