ABSTRACT
I.1 PRELIMINARY DESIGN EXPERIMENTS The investigations on body and flesh discussed in this book were triggered by a set of preliminary design experiments entitled Deviant Bodies. These encompassed a series of photo-collages whereby multiple body fragments were recomposed to create new anatomical figurations. Rather than following the proportions of a classical figure, the body was reinvented as a deliberately transformable object. This in turn suggested reconsidering it in its common understanding as architecture’s most fundamental parameter and certainly its main raison d’être. These formal alterations of the human body echoed broader preoccupations – within art and cultural studies in particular – with what can be considered the search for a new contemporary bodily identity.
