Today we are kicking it old school with a project from a few years back, with yet another investigation into the Baroque style. However Yousef Al-Mehdari exploration into the ornamentation of the Baroque style is haunting, grotesque and amazing. Check it out after the jump!
SCHOOL: Bartlett School of Architecture
STUDENT: Yousef Al-Mehdari
YEAR: 2009
“Explorations into spiritual experiences of the body and religious rituals practiced in sacred spaces have been developed into Two Chapels for St. Catherine situated along processional routes in Malta and Istanbul.
The various designs attempt to investigate the possibilities of visual and theoretical representations of a collective ‘body’ in its abstract and figural form.
By blurring the boundaries between the animate and inanimate a new form of ‘body baroque’ is achieved – where vortices of limbs ossify into Cathedrals; and overlapping anatomies become passages and valves.
These ornamental transfigurations aim to rediscover a new figural ornamentation in contemporary architecture as a revived mode of narrative.
Yousef Al-Mehdari is an architectural designer with both Maltese and Kuwaiti background. He studied architecture at the University of Greenwich before gaining his Diploma and Masters degree from the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL. His Diploma and Masters work was featured and reviewed in the American Building Blog and exhibited at the Dreamspace Gallery, London, ‘Perdidos’ exhibition at the COAM, Madrid and London Eight exhibition at Sci Arc in Los Angeles. He worked for CRAB (Peter Cook and Gavin Robotham) in London and is currently a project architect at LASSA Architects in Brussels. Yousef is also an assistant tutor at the Architectural Association in London.”
All Text via sublimeflesh.blogspot.com
All Images via Yousef Al-Mehdari
