ABSTRACT
Section II focused on the inhabitable qualities of architectural flesh by describing phenomena which were termed inhabitable interfaces. The exploration of bodily engagement and intimacy in such spaces implied an investigation of flesh mainly from within architecture. But what about an architectural flesh from without? What are the qualities of the outer flesh, that is to say, the skin, this metaphor that is so often (mis)used by architects? While developing the research project Hyperdermis, the term ‘neoplasm’ started to apply to objects and spaces that had not only a rather autonomous and self-enclosed dimension, but also a figural – rather than figurative – dimension.1 The term implied concepts of the Cyborgian Body touched upon in the Introduction and, most of all, the aesthetics of disgust analyzed in Section I, along with the impact of a new materiality in architecture, consisting of a mixture of artificially grown skin and inert architectural materials. Neoplasms became the subject matter of what I here call neo-biological flesh, mirroring a more general discourse on a new thrust of biologically inspired architecture. There are obviously hardly any real examples that I can refer to when putting forward the argument of this section. As conventional architecture is still far from embarking upon a real biologicalization of its practice, Section III resorts to fictional cases of neoplasms. The project Fabric Epithelia (2002), undertaken in collaboration with the molecular biologist Orlando de Jesus, developed the idea of a living fabric that was produced for an exhibition at the Textile Museum in Toronto. Although it remained unrealized, this collaborative experience sparked an interest in tracing the conceptual origins
of neoplasms, along with their manifestations in art and film, and the implications of such scenarios on future architecture.
