Architecture as Gesture

This studio addressed an architectural approach that is gestural - the idea that minute observations of human life and situations can lead to convincing architectural responses to the human condition (in all its forms), responses that need not be of a large scale or even permanent to be effective.

Drawing of mother and son. Son asking mum to play with him but she has too much to do.

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Architecture is a gesture. Not every purposive movement of the human body is a gesture. Just as little as every functional building is architecture.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Culture & Value

This studio was propositional - based on the idea of an architect who ‘sets in train’ societal and productive direction through their critique and questioning of what is already happening. This critique and questioning happens through design.

(The use of the word productive here refers to the way the built environment/things/architecture perhaps even people is/are ‘produced’ i.e., made.)

This studio addressed an architectural approach that is gestural, i.e., the idea that minute observations of human life and situations can lead to convincing architectural responses to the human condition (in all its forms), responses that need not be of a large scale or even permanent to be effective.

Design begins with observation: We have learnt from photographers such as Nigel Henderson, Tish Murtha, Daido Moriyama and architects such as Wajiro Kon, Mark Pimlott, Anne Lacaton and Jean Philippe Vassal, and the various ways that they closely observed, documented and designed for human life and inhabitation, in order that we might do the same in the metropolitan areas of Sheffield. We have sought to forge authentic encounters through creative adaptations of and augmentations to, the existing-built environment of Sheffield city centre.

Design is choice: Your observations have lead you to select a specific part of the city; a building; a corner; a street, for your proposition.

Like Wittgenstein and Moriyama, it is hoped that you have gravitated to an observed and ‘felt ‘form of life’ which ‘speaks’ to you. Feeling is a justification. Perhaps the only real one.