Research Catalogue

Design for a new house, scrapped 2002, reworked 2021 with bird observatories on mud landscape. Flipping the initial scaled sketches for the house, I selected the naturally lit staircase as the main sculptural and building element for bird observatories, spread on the mud landscape of a natural bird habitat. The sculptural structures are proposed to be installed on site following the parallactic model, which re-frames the site as the medium through the pieces.

Unrealised design for garden house in North London, 2002. An unrealised house commission prompted my preoccupation with the question of creative value, which for architecture largely relates to the local economy. Similar to, but not quite the same as authorial or intellectual property rights, the question of creative value for writers is not connected to local economies, although it is determined to a certain degree by cultural values.

Design, 1995-96, 2023. Design, 1996-97. Photography, 2010, 2011. Essay, 2015. Collage Text, 2022. The exposition serves as commentary and guide on the place of art, in a gradually environmentally and technologically challenged world. The re-design proposal, inspired by De Stijl, illustrates the modernist historical view that art appears to be regressive, rather than progressive: as soon as a movement or a school becomes established, reaching its culmination, it starts declining. Finally, I have included a graduate school architectural design project in the archaeological site of Eleusis accompanied by new commentary. With essay about experimental film making in the British avant-garde, published in "Architecture and Culture" journal, 2015. About how to navigate this exposition: Scroll from top to bottom, then from bottom to top, then scroll to the top right, then scroll to the bottom right.

In general, zoo architecture directs the attention towards the animals. The buildings create ‘frames’ around the animals, as John Berger (1980) states in his 1977 essay ‘Why Look at Animals?’. Following this premise, my work explores visual and psychological aspects of framing, relating to animal housing. Judith Butler (2009) explains how (visual) framings always create meanings and evaluations of what is enclosed within them. Therefore, the representation of animals in human culture affects how we treat animals socio-politically. Zoos generate and communicate ongoing conceptions of zoo animals. Zoo architecture, although often in the background of one’s field of vision, forms an important factor in the construction of these ideas.

Thesis / Research Document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023. Master Artistic Research (MAR). Designed by Faina Faigin Reflecting on personal experiences of being part of some groups and excluded from others makes me wonder how we connect when we are already clinging. Communities can be either chosen or forced, or both, which raises questions about how these bonds are formed and when we no longer belong.

Thesis / Research Document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2024. - MA Artistic Research This thesis is a fiction-based text which attempts to answer to the research question of how can art and archaeology contribute to the blending of the fictitious with the real, which has direct consequences on our understanding of (art) history.