V&A Study Trip

This is the first thing that captured my attention after we met up in our group. It is an old staircase. The metal structure used to reconstruct the staircase created a completely new sculpture in my eyes. An interesting blend of ancient architecture ruins and contemporary conservation effort.

Then when I got to the architecture wing of the V&A, I saw the staircase in its original state with the rest of the structure in this architecture model.

This glass sculpture by Stanislas Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova took my breath away. It is luminous. The hole is the focal point of the light which invites you to peek through to see the space on the other side.

The simple and effective pattern of these window grilles is a very different from its elaborate neighbors in the gallery. I was immediately drawn to them and according to the wall text, window grilles like these can still be seen in places in Italy. Simple overlapping lines created the shape and volume of shape at the same time. Very clever design!

When I got to the Japan section, I saw this contemporary piece used same idea to create new pattern with overlapping lines. An interesting connection formed across time and culture.

All the objects in this display case are so perfectly place in their spots. The frame those openings created complement the shape of the object so well. I was trying to mentally swap the places of some of the objects, composition wise, it just does not work as well as this configuration on display. It feels like every objects are customized for their particular position within the case. Obviously, I was responding to the whole display as one object instead of responding to a particular one within the whole composition.

Drifting in the museum, I was not thinking about any particular connections between all of the objects that I picked. But looking back, they are all connected somehow. The common theme seems to be that I am interested in objects that either interact with space, interact with people or interact with each other. I am very interested in investigating how to stimulate interesting interactions between human and space, human and human through objects.