The Notion of the Membrane and the Aesthetics of Trans‐Textuality

Abstract

The work featured here is part of an ongoing PhD research (bydesign at the Royal College of Art, London) project on the activation and rehumanisation of the urban environment through the intuitive exploration of the female flâneur, and the analysis of the notion of the membrane in relation to the perceptual image of the city. The field of action is defined between the social and architectural space of the urban environment. Exploration of the architectural, urban and social space and, consequently, the design of new forms and materials through this unique angle opens up infinite possibilities for new conceptual and aesthetic values.The membrane carries all the structural, tactile and visual values of a fabric, yet it can be used as an architectural element. It withholds the actual and suggests the potential. The spaces created by the membrane carry the qualities of Henri Lefebvre's notion of 'gestural spaces' perceived in motion. Trans-textuality expresses this very notion. A ubiquitous urban presence, architectural membranes metamorphose the perceptual image of the city, creating horizontal depths, interrupting the linear composition of the streets, and expanding the city's vertical borders to the horizon. They separate the public from the private, yet extend the private to the social space of the urban grid, ensuring spatial and social continuity.As an additional external layer of the skin of the building, the fabric is invested with a metafunction. It withholds not only the volume, but its living component as well, giving it form and making it recognisable as a 'distinct urban body' . As a transitory object, and whether full or empty, the membrane can be highly kinetically and semantically activated. Habitual and urban rhythms blur as they seem to merge into sculptural mobility. Their forms remind us of representations of virtual architecture and the overlaying of virtual space with physical space.The conceptual experiment here re-examines the possibility for a fluidity of form, of rhythm, of movement, of transformation, of time and space, and of the insertion of new sensations into the urban tissue. Its aesthetics are characterised by the aesthetics of temporality, of expenditure of energy, of transtextuality, and this is opening up new meanings and possibilities for aesthetic values. Textile design, and architectural and urban design merge with social practice and art. As such they transcend the concept of aesthetic autonomy, allowing the replacement of popular materials and shapes with more experimental refinements of form. Experimenting on the fluidity of form, a piece of fabric was stretched in a cubic-laboratory environment. The perforated sides of the cube allow an invisible thread to run through it and pull the fabric from different points in multiple directions. An electrical installation with computer fans attached to the exposed plane of the cube blows air on to the fabric membrane, causing it to vibrate, giving the impression of a living entity. The fabric, through its motion, has the capability of...