-
Putting the "I" back into Architecture
Charlotte Erckrath's work. The inspiration of this piece is a photograph that Helmet Newton produced in 1981 "Self Portrait with Wife June and Models" This photograph resonates back in time to Las Meninas of Velázquez and it's theoretical content has been sketched out by Victor Burgin in 1992 (2). Erckrath has identified the various modes of observation illustrated by the picture and the act of viewing it. These are The Spectator, the Photographer, The Mirror, The Voyeur and The Backdrop. She has then taken these ideas and included herself and her body in the act of viewing and interpreting in her architectural work. Perhaps, unsurprisingly her work can be seen in comparison to Duchamp's Large glass but here are no illusions to masturbatory, vibrating bachelors divided from an unobtainable mechanised bride - no sexual binary opposites, more personal synthesis of architect, body, space and view. This conclusion should be the aim of all architects and their work not the impersonal taxonometrically similar designs that so many of our profession pervade as inspired, earth shaking architecture. The earth never moves for me unless "I'm" involved.
