design 3 - room + narrative - hopper automat concept

A moment of peace.
She gazes into her cup of coffee, staring past the reflection looking for something deeper.
She longs to escape from the city more often, to a place of reflection and relaxation…
…a place to prepare herself each day to face the world.

HOPPER - Automat - 1927

My character delicately traverses platforms constructed in her coffee cup, moving from a room of rest, to a dressing room, to a room of reflection in the pond below. She never finds a perfect reflection in the skewed mirror or the rippling pond in the constant search for herself.

design 3 - room + narrative - hopper nighthawks concept

Full cup of coffee…empty soul,
Warm pie…bitter cold streets.
The addict frequents the café, but feeds his body in the alley.
A woman talks at him while he stares into his food.
He longs to disappear into the cracks of the city,
Where he can exist in the infinite bliss of the needle.

HOPPER - Nighthawks - 1942

My nighthawk has constructed a dwelling within the crack of an inner-city pavement. Delicately placed atop stilts the structure is a place for him to escape and feed his drug habit. He would require storage for related equipment, a production area, and a 'use-room' where his ritual begins.

design 3 - room + narrative - vermeer concept

Her slender fingers slip below the wax seal, a stiff breeze cuts across her face, but she is numb to the world outside
The opening lines of the letter drop her to her knees, disabling her trembling limbs as she reads that her love won’t be returning.
She continues, but loses concentration to a mixture of letters and symbols screwn on the well travelled parchment.
She lifts her head, no longer does she feel loved
No longer does she feel wanted or needed,
She gazes at her skewed reflection in the window. The force of the rejection is dizzying as her descending spiral begins
No longer does she feel beautiful.

VERMEER - Girl reading a Letter at an Open Window Oil On Canvass - 1658

I envisioned a woman who due to a broken heart descends into madness becoming obsessed with her image. This could translate into a dressing room/boudoir where she could lock herself away from the world and meditate on her own image.
After descending a central spiral staircase she enters a chamber of mirrors all focused on her when she stands in the centre of the room. Beams of light penetrate the ceiling and refract off the mirrors to create a ultimate illumination for applying makeup, doing hair etc.

The space could also be a dome so literally in every possible surface she can see her own image. The beams of light can be thought of as a type of window, but transformed into merely a vessel of light rather than vision.
A different direction may be a more complex chamber of light where the user can only have a shattered reflection of herself, a reference to the skewed vision in the window of the original painting. Crystalline walls could create the architecture with furnishings of similar shapes all with the purpose of preparing oneself before facing the world...dressing table, stool for lacing shoes, clothing and makeup storage.

design 3