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Set in Amsterdam, this project looks at the city through the lens of womanhood. Despite the exquisite role of the motherly figure in Dutch art, time spent out on leave often affects female creatives, as they lack recent exposure to the field of work.
The aim is to encourage both the return of women to creative arts and the performative quality of domesticity within an adaptable design. Inspired from elements historically associated with feminine bodies, such as culinary techniques and hosiery, the design celebrates maternity through the expanding motion of inflatables. The project is centred around the kitchen, where it changes the narrative of domesticity through a cyclical routine for childcare which allows women to take turns in duties. The proposed academic schedule offers 6-month courses for returning artists and performers; for one month at the end of the course, a pop-up space appears on the edge of Rokin Bridge to showcase the students’ work.
The design explores ways for architecture to use the female body as its key user, inhabitant and builder, denying the often male-focused process. Judging accessibility and light materiality, it curates a woman’s spatial requirements.
Process for a female design, looking at three major points of progress: firstly, placing inflatables in the city centre; then creating zoetrope movements within a bathroom area; finally, an investigation curating a pop-up performance space.
A research-based approach to construction helped develop ways for the proposal to occupy existing architecture and change previous male-driven narratives of the build process, thus providing tangible aid to mothers.
The project presents an opportunity to highlight women’s work in construction; however, its feasibility lies in facilitating actions such as weightlifting through the use of a steel framework, which helps lifting inflatable plastics into place.
Inflatable elements are used throughout the studios and performance space to emphasise the strength of apparent fragility through pressurised air. Acting as a parasite system, they borrow exhaust air from neighbouring buildings.
The final film proposes a female reclaiming of Amsterdam as it offers a glimpse of its expected future influence on the city during a 50-year lifespan, thus overturning historical spatial limitations that the female sex has dealt with.