I am an architect and artist and my practice occupies a space between these two disciplines, exploring mechanisms by which to explore, express and propose spatiotemporal qualities of the built and natural environment. Primarily focused on the impact of light and shadow my work utilities techniques from art practice, namely artists’ film and cyanotype printing, using duration to record light and shadow in existing and propositional spaces. My work is responsive to existing sites and found objects, and my methodology of critical practice – informed by and informing critical theory – follows a design process of testing, reflection, iteration, drawing upon external references, and responding to existing conditions.
As both artist and architect I work from within the subject of architecture, acknowledging Jane Rendell’s positioning of architecture as subject as well as discipline: ‘if we define a field of study containing a number of disciplinary approaches but with a shared object of investigation as a recognized subject, then we could define architecture as a subject’ (Rendell, 2004: 143).
However, my critical practice operates in what Elizabeth Grosz terms a ‘third space […] a position or place outside of both [disciplines], that they can be explored beside each other, as equivalent and interconnected discourses and practices’ (Grosz, 2001: xv-xvi). Hal Foster emphasises the importance of grounding for interdisciplinary working: ‘to be interdisciplinary you need to be disciplinary first – to be grounded in one discipline, preferably two, to know the historicity of these discourses before you test them against each other’ (Foster, 1998: 162)
My practice is transdisciplinary in nature due to my equal ‘grounding’ in the disciplines of art and architecture – in transdisciplinary work neither discipline is primary, and transdisciplinary practitioners ‘work in and contribute to both [disciplines] and generate unique conceptions and artifacts as a result of an emergent transdisciplinary perspective’ (Bremner & Rodgers, 2013: 11).
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