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Developed as a three-act play sited between Bucharest and London, the places the student grew up in, the theatrical set aims to define the female psyche as a tangible way to inhabit domestic architecture. The project deals with lack of belonging in familiar spaces, using ‘ficto-critical’ narratives as a medium to visualise the alienating experience. The set analyses lived situations in which women felt confined by their homes as observed in three Romanian and British contexts. Through the chosen creative language, it combines transformative structures with accurate site portrayals that allows female interventions. In addition to the architectural depiction of these spaces, the project reveals a visual reinterpretation of the female body as an othered alien, experimenting with inflatables to contain a personal sense of body through large scale designs. By choosing the kitchen, the bedroom and the bathroom, it questions whether buildings can respond better to specific psychological needs of a woman/alien. Together, the spatial components propose an architecture which does not confine or alienate, but instead embraces the feminist celebration of soft material language.
The theatre play is digitally presented as a film which navigates three acts of bodily struggle for female inhabitants within domestic spaces. Playing upon magical realism and mechanical movements, each set is constructed through spoken narration.
As the focus shifts between spaces of domestic relevance, it also looks at different socio-political contexts of different times, from Romanian communism in Bucharest to modern day London.
The short film explores what it is like to be a woman in a place you call home. A spatial transformation connects the rooms and brings forward the autobiographical relevance of the project.
Inflatable elements contain the visual translation of female forms and subjective experience of the body as an Alien. The resulting costumes of both architectural and personal scale bleed into the transformative set components.
Easing the public into autobiographical specifics of childhood, the chosen Romanian poem uses anthropomorphic imagery to depict romance. The short film draws upon the home as a wider universe, thematically driven by its familiar inhabitants.