Archive of the body: exegesis

Abstract

Archive of the Body is a series of retail stores designed to heighten particular senses. This method is designed to engage the customer thoroughly with the product on a more intimate level. Progressing through the stores becomes a ritual of layering the body. The ritual begins with the customer undressing and putting on a robe in the Perfume store. From there, the experience progresses through to the Lingerie store, the Womanswear or Menswear and finally finishes with the jewellery for women and the cufflinks and ties for men. At each stage another layer of the body is added and another sense heightened. The Womanswear store becomes the central spine of the space that all other spaces connect to. The Architectural language used, the duality of ephemeral and solid, warm and cool, begin to intertwine and reverse qualities at this point in the journey. The Solid language, originally the programmatic changing spaces gradually becomes the experiential display spaces. The Ephemeral forms, originally experiential spaces become the more dynamically programmatic spaces. The Changing spaces gradually alter experience, from group changing spaces, to individual changing spaces, then finally, to social/ public changing spaces. At each end is the most delicate, most significant layer. Jewellery for women and cufflinks and ties for men. These spaces emphasize the dynamics of the ephemeral becoming the solid, and the changing spaces becoming social environments. Each space is designed to heighten a specific sense. The Jewellery store heightens the sense of touch through creating a highly textural display space. The archival jewellery store shaped as a labyrinth of bookcases and drawers, houses singular jewellery pieces in each while discretely stocking different sizes in each drawer below. The Warm texture and form of wooden element reflected more simplistically, in the vertical slats of the Robe changing space. The Perfume store heightens the sense of smell by isolating each individual smell as separate pathways through the space. The customer can experience each pathway to decide preferred scent: including: energizing, euphoric, relaxing, and sensual. The warmth of the Robe changing space in the Jewellery store is echoed in the original lingerie store overall colour and lighting. This gradually changes to cool as the display reaches further into the site, away from daylight. The Lingerie store heightens the sense of sight by focusing on colour, using a neutral colour palette and introducing colour through lighting and softy coloured glass sheets within the display space. The colours selected to become a focal point are primary colours that mix and change colour depending on how close or far away each display piece is from the next, and on what coloured underwear is displayed. Colour, softly defined through lighting and soft coloured glass of the Lingerie store, meets warm intimate lighting of the two unisex public toilets. The rotating display of the lingerie store intertwines with the solid structure of the domestic public toilet. Located deepest in the existing structure away from the street, where there is most control of artificial lighting, the Womanswear store is situated to heighten the sense of sight by focusing on different lighting qualities using cool lighting and warm lighting. Womanswear changing space and menswear changing space meet back to back. The same overall material is used yet the overall feel is different. The woman's spaces are separated from each other, small, with warm lighting and padded walls. The men's changing spaces are in one cluster sharing walls side by side. These are larger and the overall feel is cooler by Flurescent lighting. The final space of the journey through the archive of the body is the men's alternative to the Jewellery store. Here men try on ties and cufflinks in open public space. The Menswear store heightens the sense of sight by focusing on perspective, achieved by responding to and reproducing elements from previous spaces and altering scale and orientation. Ordered elements vs. disordered elements.