We welcome our very first resident, Alastair Howard!
Alastair is an architectural designer from Manchester, UK. Having worked at architecture and engineering firms in New York and London, his practice is aimed at breaking out of the professional silos that constitute the production of our built environment. Most recently he has worked with scenic craftspeople at the Royal Opera House, designing and managing the build of Opera and Ballet sets. He likes to study the histories behind a building’s conception, construction, appearance, and use.
Through the residency Alastair plans to test encounters between scenography and inhabitation, developed from his work in the fields of theatre and housing design. These experiments will first and foremost be tectonic: appropriating the concepts, techniques and fixings commonly found in scenic construction. This could include mechanical inventions using ropes, fabric, pulleys, and sandbags, or it could involve timber constructions that utilize standardized fixings for the aim of disassembly and reuse – a common concern when designing sets for rep theatres or touring shows. In keeping with the material aims of Vares Space, he will use found materials wherever possible, exploring how reuse creatively informs a design process and output. The exact function or form of these ‘scenographic’ constructions will be deduced during the residency, perhaps aiding the action of collective inhabitation, or acting as symbolic backdrops based on observations and conversations.
You can come and see the exhibition “Living Space” displaying Alastair’s inventions on February 24 and 25.
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