Monday, April 19, 2010

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.

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