In yesterday's post we looked at Iris van Herpen's Haute Couture S/S 17 collection and mentioned some of the works that may have inspired her by architect Philip Beesley, who has become a close collaborator of the fashion designer throughout the years.
Let's continue the thread today with a quick look at close-ups of the garments and at pictures of Beesley's works and structures.
It is indeed clear that some of the vacuum-molded 3D elements applied on tulle or wool look very similar to the fronds of Beesley's immersive installations.
Now, if you have ever rambled around these structures you were probably too mesmerised and distracted by the moving elements to actually study the exact shapes of the various elements forming them.
Yet there was an exhibition last year at the ADM Gallery at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore that can maybe help refocusing a bit better on the single structures forming his installations.
Entitled "Living Architecture Systems", the exhibition included Beesley's research and notebook sketches while exploring themes such as Organicism and the possibility of borrowing from natural sciences to find a new architectural glossary and developing innovative designs for complex structures employing contemporary materials and digital technologies.
The event included a mention of organicist buildings from the past century, highlighting how their plans were often conceived as a series of rooms shaped like the organs of an animal, each organ having its own function, each function its proper size and hierarchy to create a sense of unity.
In a way you could reinterpret some of van Herpen's designs from this organicist perspective as well: the gaps between the structures that she created for the S/S 17 collection are indeed extremely similar to the structure of a human skeleton with repetitive patterns in specific sizes that created a sense of unity while dissimulating the body's perspective, tricking and challenging the eye's perspective in an hypnotic way.
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