Intent
Through the past generations of our society the male has been the caretaker, the builder of our dreams, he has been identified with the aspects of culture. The females’ position was to inhibit, bear children, and other domestic roles and she was seen to work in harmony with nature. The contemporary female of the 20th century has asserted herself with the goal to be acknowledged as an equal.
She is challenged by societies preconceived expectations, this is a test, a portrait of the female, and how she morphs into an existing landscape. The embodiment of what is female: soul and body, has been inserted into this masculine environment, into a space, where she is seen as embracing, powerful and also lustful.
Her beauty, and charm, her gentle, subtle gestures allure you to her glance. She appears to stand high with powerful thrusts of energy radiating from her delicate and almost porcelain envelope. Only to be fractured, by the strong masculine touch of her present surroundings. Her sensual stance and evocative gestures tease onlookers who are afraid of her emotional flux. She is the goddess Artemis Callisto, night watcher of the streets. Her bravery, battle, willingness, maternal instinct to protect, nurture and love represents the epitome of all that constitutes a woman.
Vesna Lazarevic
5th Year Design 1998
BBE/ B Arch at Queensland University of Technology
The President’s Medals Competition
This design is about the temporary and opportunistic architecture of the metropolis. It is not only concerned with conditions of mobility and exoskeletal exploration; it also exposes and calls to question the provocative, the sensual and symbiotic relationship between architecture and sexuality.
Bounded by the intersection of narrow inner-city streets, the "vessel" of femininity is wedged awkwardly off the ground plain. Surrounded and jostled by the familiar, yet nameless monotonous facades of everyday city buildings - 'the masculine', this vessel becomes a looking glass, a surgical instrument infiltrating its host to expose and manipulate its existential logic - structurally, functionally and aesthetically.
The resulting project addresses and reveals the all too hidden undercurrents of gender in architecture.
Through the use of translucent materials, sweeping dynamic structures the project reveals a vulnerability and strength of the feminine in architecture.
The vessel reveals and nurtures a response from its hosts as it creates a dialogue through structure, functional legibility and aesthetic pleasure. It informs its participants of the nature of spaces through anticipation, expectation, the evident and the mysterious.
Szczepan Urbanowicz
Partner of Murray Cox International
Gold Coast