We are kicking off the week heading back to the University of Westminster with a project that we came across this weekend by Rosie McLaren. As architects we are always told to look at the past to design for the future, or in some cases show no regard to the past and design however you want, like Ghery, because he is a boss. However in the world of art one must learn how to copy the techniques of old to be able to understand their style, and Rosie has designed an academy that will in fact deconstruct the trompe l’œil fresco. Check it out after the jump!
SCHOOL: University of Westminster
STUDENT: Rosie McLaren
PROFESSORS: Jeanne Sillett and Mark Rintoul
YEAR: 2011
COURSE: DS12
“Two chapels sit side by side in north-west Madrid ‑ identical but for a double-take. One was built for King Carlos IV, with its ceiling painted by Francisco de Goya in 1798. A luminous trompe l’œil fresco, its perspectival representation is also captured in fragmented form by a series of tilting mirrors.
The other chapel is an extravagant copy, unremarkable but for the absence of Goya. Further reduced, a flattened souvenir booklet allows anyone to make their own chapel, the walls and frescoes reduced to a cardboard cut-out; construction tabs, fold marks and scissor cuts.
Documenting the unique fresco process reveals an unparalleled level of preparation both compositionally and technically. Goya’s invoice to the king is evidence of the pigments, large rolls of paper, and lion brushes he used. I propose an academy for duplicating the original fresco in celebration of the process in its deconstructed state. The marking out and mistakes – all those things missing from the finished piece, despite its magnificence – are manifested in five stages in the academy workshops.
One full copy of the fresco would be produced each year and subsequently destroyed, to the delight of visitors. The proposal for the academy hovers between the state of presence and absence of the adjacent chapels, dedicated to a continual recycling of the experience of the incomplete.”
-Rosie McLaren
All text and images via studiotwelve.wordpress.com