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Session 3Intimate Technologies

Interior Educators

BODY BECOMES BUILDING BECOMES DRESS: CONCEPTS OF THE GROTESQUE IN ARCHITECTURE + FASHION Stamatina Kousidi, Sapienza, University de Roma. Italy. Admittedly, the overlaps and interconnections of architecture and fashion design practices – as well as the dynamic interrelationship of their products with the corporeal human condition – has long been the subject of architectural discourse. Indicatively, in the mid-sixties, architectural critic Reyner Banham (1922-1988) coined the term “personal architecture,” in referring to the sequential material layers surrounding the human body “from vest to overcoat” and how they are meant to provide a fit environment for human activities – similarly to architecture’s objective (Banham 1965, A Home is not a House). Banham’s term partly brings the sartorial aspects of architecture, as well as the architectural connotations of dress design practices, into question: both fields seek to address essential corporeal needs, in terms of appropriateness, while enclosing the human body within. Yet, the association of architecture with dress had stemmed much earlier in the history of modern architectural discourse, since dress has had “a long pedigree as a metaphor in architectural thought (...); even Vitruvius mentions it when he talks about the fluting of the Ionic order as like the folds of matronly robes” (Forty 1989, Of Cars, Clothes and Carpets, 10). Indeed, in attempting to provide a better understanding of the built environment, dress has favoured the interpretation of the architectural object. The transposition of the body wrap idea to the house – as expressed in Gottfried Semper’s (1803-1879) “theory of dress [Bekleidungstheorie]” – not only led to the appreciation of architecture as object and as part of a continuous system including vestments, textiles, and upholstery (Payne 2012, From Ornament to Object, 64) –, but it also intensified the association of the body to the architectural detail and ornamentation, in means of adornment. This association is also found in the core logic of the grotesque, as its pictorial representations are often rooted in the corporeal, serving, at the same time, ornamental purposes. Depicting human figures fused with animal-like characteristics or hybrids of bodily parts combined with floral and vegetal elements, grotesque imagery mostly “emphasises on ridicule, surprise and virulence, through caricature, the deformation and distortion of salient characteristics” (Doty 1969, Human Concern). However, the notion of the ‘grotesque’ has also extensively served as literary tool, retaining the focus on bodily characteristics and properties. For instance, it was philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) who introduced a definition of the “grotesque body” – in his 1940 essay “Rabelais and his World,” while discussing the work of Renaissance writer François Rabelais – therewith touching upon social and political connotations of the physical. Embracing the aforementioned “transposition of the body wrap idea to the house” concept, the present paper aims to provide a critical commentary on the dynamic relationship between the respective fields – architecture and fashion – examining their alliance with alternative concepts of corporeal enclosure and adornment, as evoked through the theories on the ‘grotesque’. In particular, the focus on the last apartment of French architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965) in the Molitor building (Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, 1931-1934) will allow us to contemplate the inexhaustible ways of building around the body and how the architectural artefact may interact with the latter. Yet following the theory of “organ projection [Organprojektion]” – as defined by Ernst Kapp (1808-1896) in “Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Cultur aus neuen Gesichtpunkten” (1877) – clothes serve as mediators in the relationship between the body and its container, architecture” (Payne 2012, From Ornament to Object, 79). Drawing on this belief, selected creations of Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo (1942) will hold the role of mediatory elements – spatial membranes in closer proximity to the body –, which will prompt us to reflect on alternative ways of building upon the body and affecting its state. In both cases, the theories on the notion of the ‘grotesque’, and by extension on corporeal adornment, aim to elucidate the diverse ways in which spatial and sartorial design practices may constitute – through the notion of material application in space – projections of man and his bodily, or even spiritual, sense outwards.

Body becomes Building The last apartment of Le Corbusier in Paris – in which he resided with his wife Yvonne Gallis and their dog Pinceau from 1934 until the end of his life in 1965 – is situated on the two top floors of the Molitor building, at number twenty-four, rue Nussenger et Coli, in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris. It bore such a distinct character to the rest of the apartments that the French architect was referring to it as “la maison sur la maison [the house on top of the house]”; given that his private residence was located within a collective building, the process of personalisation was unfurled within. The first part of this paper comprises a reading of the interior spaces of Le Corbusier’s apartment, through the notion of the ‘grotesque’ discourse, in seeking their interrelationship with the human corporeal counterpart of architecture – the parameters of occupying architectural space. Since 1929 – and after taking advantage of the time aboard the French passenger liner “S. S. Massilia” on his way to Brasil – Le Corbusier had been studying the framework of his private residence. This project was entitled “Ma Maison” and would refer to a house of minimum dimensions, which featured a clear distinction into two parts, situated at an unspecified location of Paris. Although this project was never executed, it informed the principal layout of his apartment in the Molitor building. Accordingly, the latter expressed two different types of spatiality, as it was rigidly divided into two sections, following the gender distinction of the couple (Figure 1). The masculine section – oriented towards the east – corresponds to the working space; it principally comprises the architect’s open-space atelier, therewith his private office and facility spaces. Whereas the female section – oriented towards the west – refers to the living space and appears more fragmented, as it mainly hosts the main bedroom, dining room, and kitchen of the apartment. In line with the introductory argument of Banham, architecture, in this case, is being defined as a practice meant to provide ‘appropriate environments for human activities’. Yet, in Leon Battista Alberta’s theory architecture is also the “art of the selection of appropriate details whose result is beauty” (Frascari 1984, The Tell-the-Tale Detail, 26). In combining two contrasting types of spatiality, this case study also provided – at the time of its realization – a new interpretation of the strict distinction between female and masculine spaces and consequent corporealities. Over the years, this distinction has been vividly discussed. For instance, Leon Battista Alberti in his treatise “On the Art of Building in Ten Books” (1443-1452) supported that “the husband and wife must have separate bedrooms, not only to ensure that the husband be not disturbed by his wife (...), but also to allow them, even in summer, an uninterrupted night’s sleep, whenever they wish” (Alberti 1988, Art of Building, 149). As expressed in a series of modern architectural paradigms – namely “Maison de Verre” (Chareau, 1928), “Casa Malaparte” (Malaparte, Libera, 1937), and “House VI” (Eisenman, 1975) – the two sexes in Le Corbusier’s apartment lived ‘by side’. Here, husband and wife may have been sharing the same bed – contrary to Alberti’s suggestion – but they held strictly separate living and working spaces. In materialising the couple’s habits – in architectural terms –, the decisions of the architect also suggest a respective distinction in means of spatial occupancy: the masculine body appears liberated within a room (atelier) characterised by openness, whereas the female one is invited to occupy space in fragments – sequentially moving from one room to another (kitchen, dining, bedroom), as in a cinematic space. And if the female domain was characterised by order – discipline, and precision – Le Corbusier’s atelier has been described as a “chaotic scene” (Burri 1960, Le Corbusier, 150). A scene, which was defined by shells from Cap Martin, “La Samaritaine” catalogues, nudes by François-Rupert Carabin, tarot cards with Napoleon figures, Kodak films, and an entrance ticket for “L’Exposition Coloniale” in 1931, white canvases and paint tubes (Sbriglio 1996, Immeuble 24 N.C., 57). In the vaulted-ceiling atelier, objects often concealed Le Corbusier’s presence, and his body was equated to another spatial component. Small passages allowed someone to make his way between the objects, in order to be able to eventually locate Le Corbusier’s body – standing (in space) ‘as another object’. Evoking the “reciprocal relationship” (Payne 2012, From Ornament to Object, 64) between the body and its surrounding objects, namely furniture, dress, and tools – which appear dependent upon the former –, as Kapp had stressed, a continuum, between space, containing objects and bodies, is being traced. The close juxtaposition of the body to the object also makes reference, here, to the fusion of the

organic with the inorganic – recurrent elements of the grotesque pictorial compositions; in Andre Chastel’s description, – when citing the ‘youthful Cellini’ – “our best artists embellish these floral patterns with handsome, fanciful ornaments known to the ignorant as grotesques” (Chastel 1968, The Crisis of the Renaissance, 81-87). Between the two sections, lies the living room, or what Le Corbusier so ostentatiously was calling “his living room,” as it measures solely 2,20 meters by 2,00 meters. In the heart of an apartment that measures 24 meters in length – including the balcony – a space of minimum dimensions had been reserved for social rituals (Figures 2, 3). Although, according to Le Corbusier, “light floods in on either sides” of the apartment and “sunshine creeps in from the courtyards and lingers, even in winter” (Sbriglio 1996, Immeuble 24 N.C., 39), the living room appears mainly shadowed. For instance, when the two central pivot doors that connect it to the rest of the apartment remain closed, natural light only comes directly through a narrow skylight – or from the fireplace, when this is in use. As André Chastel indicates, the term ‘grotesque’ owes its origin “to the fact that the first specimens of this type of decoration were found at Rome in grottoes [caves], (...) which had been buried by a rise in the ground level during the course of centuries” (Chastel 1968, The Crisis of the Renaissance, 81-87). In line with the etymological meaning of the ‘grotesque’, the living room of Le Corbusier brings a cavelike essence to the fore; semi-lit, compact, and barely furnished, it approaches the definition of an extended garment when the human body resides within. A place for mourning, contemplation, and retreat – one destined for alienation rather than for social affairs – the couple’s living room “pierces the veil of familiarity” and raises awareness to the “perilous paradoxical aspects of life” (Adams et al. 1997, Grotesque in Art, xi) and by extension, architecture. Arguably, the lower level of Le Corbusier’s apartment shares the same obsession with the ‘grotesque’ for opposite qualities and comprises a variety of contrasting atmospheres. For instance, the unobstructed views from side to side one acquires when the two pivot doors are open is succeeded by a fragmented spatiality when these are shut. In this context, a series of dipoles is being generated: vast – fragmented, open – closed, dark – lit, protected – exposed, and they all refer to the diverse, yet successive, qualities of space. As “we think of architecture in terms of corporeality” (Frascari 1990, Monsters of Architecture), this spatial transformation prompts us to think of the human body through architecture: of how it interrelates with the domestic, private space, but also how the body may interrelate with the latter. Feelings of homeliness succeed emotions of anxiety, whilst the body is being continually challenged – redefined and repositioned – within interior space. Whereas, its contours – as defined by the body’s position in space – are reciprocally altered; as if donning a different type of garment each time, the corporeal ease accordingly changes. In reference to the main bedroom of the apartment, the impression that “the beautiful with the repulsive, the sublime with the gross, the organic with the mechanical, the familiar and the hostile” (Kayser 1968, Grotesque in Art, xiv, xv) are fused together, becomes dominant. Feelings of surprise – or even repulsion – accompany the visitor, as s/he gradually discovers a series of transformations and paradoxical proximities after entering the room. In particular, the pivot door that separates the main bedroom from the dining room (Figure 4), bears on its rear side the principal closet of the room (Figure 5) equating it to a movable piece of furniture: an interior element in a state of transformation, in line with multiple definitions. In addition, the bed features a skeleton out of proportion, as its flat wooden surface is situated 85 centimeters above the floor (Figure 6). The bed is mounted on the adjacent wall with a metallic structure (Figure 7), while its exaggerated height contrasts with its thin legs, narrow width and thick wooden headboard, reinforcing its peculiar essence. Meanwhile, the preeminent position of the low, oval basin (bidet) (Figure 8) in the room, accentuates its grotesque character. The bidet is found in near proximity to the bed and vanity table (Figure 9) – occupying space in the bedroom, rather than in the bathroom section. An apparatus meant for the corporeal hygiene routine, which is habitually placed out of sight, acquires here prominent role. Meanwhile, it adds up to the abundance of bathroom installations in the main bedroom area, and evokes feeling of surprise as the ones incorporated in the definition of the grotesque. Similarly, one is reminded of the grotesque’s rejection of reason, the immersion in the subconscious and its offspring, the obsession with opposite qualities, and the emphasis on ridicule, surprise and virulence (Doty 1969, Human Concern). In this context,

interior space – in this case – reveals obscure parts of the designer’s/occupant’s subconscious, ‘the darkest aspects of man’s soul and activities’ (Ibid.); it appears unified with the human spirit, in addition to the body. Regardless of the motivation behind the diverse elements of the apartment – for instance, the height of the bed, which fulfilled Le Corbusier’s wish to gaze at the city of Paris unobstructed by the balcony’s rail (Figure 10) –, one is reminded of the paradoxical character also involved in the grotesque. And if this can be compared to anything, it is to paradox, as the latter has the ability to “break the rules, penetrate to new and unexpected realms of experience, and discover relationships syntax generally obscures” (Harpham 1982, On the Grotesque, 19). The combination of open, vast, and naturally lit spaces with rooms of minimum dimensions and limited access to sunlight, as well as the presence of distorted furniture, equally reinforces the notion of spatial relationships, which architectural syntax often oversees. Yet, paradox, in the discussed interior spaces, scratches the surface of appropriateness. Overall, the metamorphic qualities of Le Corbusier’s apartment, prompt us to contemplate on the gap – or the metaphysical interval – occupied by the grotesque and the field of “inward possibilities” (Harpham 1982, On the Grotesque, 15) involved in its juxtaposition to architecture. After having explored the spatial territory of the ‘house’, the focal point will subsequently shift towards a closer to the body range: the ‘body wrap idea’, as an alternative means of application in space, also seeking how one entity may inform another. Body becomes Dress The deviation from canonical beauty stemmed early in Rei Kawakubo’s portfolio, as her designs – the ones which address envelopments for the human body – convey messages of imperfection, exaggeration, and, at times, even monstrosity. In retrospective, Kawakubo’s debut collection for Fall-Winter 1981-1982 – shown in April 1981 – included “trousers with sweater cuffs around the ankles, tunics that transformed into shawls, oversized overcoats and shapeless boiled knitwear constructed with holes” (English 2011, Japanese Fashion Designers, 71). In addition, the Fall-Winter 1983-1984 collection – shown in March 1983 – featured “coat dresses, cut big and square with no recognisable line, form or silhouette; many had misplaced lapels, buttons and sleeves, and mismatched fabrics; and more calculated disarray was created by knotting, tearing and slashing fabrics, which were crinkled, creased and woven in unusual textures” (English 2011, Japanese Fashion Designers, 71). In their majority, Kawakubo’s designs appear unfinished, irregular, and asymmetrical, whilst bearing accentuated folds and pleats, therewith contrasting shapes, textures, and fabrics. Similarly to the spatiality produced by Le Corbusier’s apartment, Kawakubo’s creations suggest direct references to the notion of the ‘grotesque’, as they “embody distortions, exaggeration, a fusion of incompatible parts, in such a fashion that it confronts us as strange and disordered” (Kayser 1968, Grotesque in Art, xiv, xv). But from where does this confrontation of strangeness and disorder spring – and how does it interrelate with the human body? Arguably, it is the Spring Summer 1997 womenswear collection of Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons, entitled “Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body,” which interferes with the human anatomy the most – for it comprised garments that “exaggerated or entirely deviated from feminine anatomical form” (Wilcox 2001, Radical Fashion, 32). The collection’s title highly alludes to the transformative character, as expressed by the ‘grotesque body’; one that is “in the act of becoming; it is never finished, never completed, it is continually built, created, and builds and creates another body” (Bakhtin 1984, Rabelais, 317). Yet considering the structure of the collection’s garments – and the fact that goose-down padded sections lie underneath the external surface (Figures 11, 12) of translucent chiffon garments, thus resulting in the fragmentation of the corporeal silhouette – dress not only ‘meets’ (the female) body, but also becomes it. The extreme modern corporeal silhouettes, conceal pads at specific parts of the body, echoing the eighteenth century women who wore bustles and pads to fit the feminine ideal of their time (Fukai 2010, Future Beauty, 165). In this context of corporeal fragmentation, the body resembles an organism in a state of evolution and transition from one state to another. If in Le Corbusier’s apartment the body was surrounded by different types of liminal spatiality – from intensely ample (atelier) to highly dense (living room) spaces – here, the body is being defined by the garments’ exterior contours – that appear equally diverse and ever

becoming. Yet, the exaggerated parts of the garments, apart from distorting the human anatomy, reinforce its dynamic character; they seem to verge on its vulnerable counterpart. As the undergarments bear generously sized lumps, they magnify the shape of the shoulders, back, and hips, and participate in a “free play with the human limbs and interior organs” (Bakhtin 1984, Rabelais, 347) (Figure 13). Indeed, in resembling corporeal organs that has been projected outwards, the sections manipulate and reform the physical contours, while underlining the ‘liminal nature of the grotesque’. Having been compared to ‘tumours’ by the fashion critics – at the time of the collection’s launch – the sections reveal notions of bodily sickness and disease. Similarly to the grotesque art, which “takes the most familiar and intimate object, the human body, and re-forms it as a vulgar and ugly prison,” Kawakubo’s discussed creations reinforce “the fears of decay and disease, which are so carefully suppressed” (Doty 1969, Human Concern) in the fashion field. In the same way that Le Corbusier negates the idea of the harmonic disposition of domestic spaces and objects, recurrent phenomenon of modern movement architecture, Kawakubo gives way to the idealised female silhouette, as employed in contemporary fashion. In Kawakubo’s affirmation that “the human torso might have two arms, but there is no reason why a jacket cannot have none or three (sleeves), of uneven length, amputated and reattached elsewhere on its body” (English 2011, Japanese Fashion Designers, 59), her tendency to deviate from the original bodily contours is evident. And as the undergarments in “Body Meet Dress, Dress Meets Body” do not respect the corporeal limits they embody – but, on the contrary, “they transgress, merge, overflow and destabilize them” (Connelly 2001, Modern Art, 32) – one is reminiscent of the notion of the ‘grotesque dismemberment’: the process of anatomization, as described by Bakhtin. Dress, as often imagined by Kawakubo, equally alludes to concepts of “bodily tortures” – suffering and pain. If in “Body becomes Building” interior space echoed images of the subconscious, then in this part, garments externalise corporeal emotion, as “this has to be mediated by an object” (Papapetros, On the Animation of the Inorganic, 45). In both cases, a ‘phychological understanding’ of interior space and dress, respectively, is being implied; both entities correspond to “a body of mixed parts” and allude to “the strangest anatomical fantasies” (Bakhtin 1984, Rabelais, 347). Besides its metaphysical allusion, the discussed collection of Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons, also touches upon concepts of monstrosity, surprise – and at times repulsion –, challenging at the same time the perception and definition of the idealised female shape. Given that the ‘grotesque’ notion, particularly as a bodily category, is defined as a “deviation from the norm” (Russo 1994, Female Grotesque, 8), then the garments appear as vivid manifestations of this deviation. Given that the fashion discourse is orientated towards the rendering of the human body more beautiful, the discussed work of Rei Kawakubo approaches the definition of beauty from an alternative perspective. Through her distorted creations – and the respective deformed notions of the body – Kawakubo stresses that “fashion can invest the plain, the mundane, and sometimes the unattractive with aesthetic power” (Koda 2001, Extreme Beauty, 8-13). Following the character of the grotesque body, the garments reject the symmetrical, sleek and static bodies – as expressed in classical aesthetics – and suggest a less finite physical representation. In this regard, the female anatomy appears to be irregular, multiple, and changing; it is identified with the ‘carnivalesque’ notion and thus with social transformation (Russo 1995, Female Grotesque, 8). Admittedly, principal intention of the designer was to introduce a set of different aesthetics and values, so as to prompt people to “question their being” (English 2011, Japanese Fashion Designers, 79) and by extension, the world surrounding them. In line with the fact that the grotesque body appears as a world “turned upside down,” the aforementioned garments not only call into question the nature of corporeal boundaries, but also the sociopolitical systems involved in the definition of beauty. To the same extent, the Fall-Winter 2012-2013 collection for Comme des Garçons comments on the natural boundaries of the body and touches upon the notion of the ‘carnivalesque’. In this case, the featured garments were made of thick fabrics, such as felt wool, and deviated entirely from the human silhouette, while concealing great part of its contours. The majority of garments in this collection were made of two over-sized patterns – corresponding to the front and back sides of the body – that were sewn around their edge. Here, the transformative character of the grotesque lies in the succession of the three-dimensional shape of the body by

its two-dimensional derivative, following the application of the garments. As the curved female silhouette is being reshaped to a flat surface, it does not exemplify canonical beauty any longer – in part or whole; on the contrary, it is transformed or transmuted to another state, in both imagery and form (Wood 2007, Surreal Body, 45). Just like their exaggerated, nearly two-dimensional, form, the bright colours of the dresses reinforced their playful character and remark on the notion of the ‘carnivalesque’. Bright red and blue nuances were juxtaposed to leopard, floral, and polka dot patterns, thus evoking the essence of spectacle costumes. In correspondence to the bright painted elements in Le Corbusier’s apartment – as seen in the blue entrance wall, the yellow shelves, and the animal-skin carpet –, colour accentuates a carnivalesque essence. Considering also “how the format of the fashion show, understood as ‘ritual spectacle’, and in its relation to performance, favours the carnivalesque” (Granata 2012, Deconstruction Fashion, 184), one is additionally reminded of “the parodying of the language of authority embodied by religion and medicine” that featured recurrently in Mikhail Bakhtin’s reading of the Rabelaisian carnival. Arguably, the aforementioned “transformation to another state in both imagery and form” has its seeds in the exaggerated scale of the panniered gowns that were in vogue in the eighteenth century, and which revealed a monstrous deformity and the faintly restructuring of the natural body (Koda 2001, Extreme Beauty, 113). In between the ‘panniered gowns’ of the eighteenth century and Kawakubo’s creations, fashion designers, such as Cristóbal Balenciaga (1895-1972), Charles James (1906-1978), and Roberto Capucci (1930), have also touched upon the deformation of the natural bodily contours. For instance, Cristóbal Balenciaga approached clothes as autonomous substances that did not hold tightly on the body but rather cocooned it, framed it, or floated around it (Polan and Tredre 2009, Great Fashion Designers, 79), as in “Le Chou Noir” (1967) or the wedding dress for María del Carmen Martínez-Bordiú (1972). That said, the extensive reference to Rei Kawakubo’s design practices may have not been explicit, but it has allowed us to reflect on the relevance of the theories on the grotesque body to contemporary design practices, but also to sociocultural, phenomena. As Bakhtin had stressed that “the grotesque body is not separated from the rest of the world; it is blended with the world, with animals, with objects” (Bakhtin 1984, Rabelais, 27), the discussed garments have called our attention to their association with the liminal – yet, proximal – character of the notion of the ‘grotesque’. Body becomes Building becomes Dress One of the main characteristics of the ‘grotesque body’ is the notion of metamorphosis, as the grotesque figures – in their majority – demonstrate the potential to change form or nature into a substance of contrasting properties. The case studies of this paper – belonging to the fields of architecture and fashion, respectively, – have elucidated the permeable boundaries between the body and its indirect (spatial) or direct (sartorial) envelopments. Moreover, they have drawn attention to the significance of the theories on the grotesque notion to the interpretation of the relationship between body and space, our living and intimate environments. The element of dress, due to its direct interaction with the body, has served as a medium to understand spatial qualities; whereas, interior space, as another means of habitation for the body, has prompted us to think of the body through spatial dispositions and components. In rephrasing Adrian Forty, the better we understand fashion, the better we shall understand architecture (Forty 1989, Of Cars, Clothes and Carpets, 14), and vice versa. Through their association with the concepts of the ‘grotesque’, the discussed case studies have raised awareness on how the dynamics of fashion may converge with the architectural ones; as seen, in addressing the needs of the human body, they “appear to be a part of, while contradictory to, the natural, social or personal worlds of which we belong” (Kayser 1968, Grotesque in Art, xiv, xv). From within the theories on the ‘grotesque’, the laws of statics, symmetry, and proportion seize to be valid; accordingly, the examined design paradigms – and consequently, its relation to the body – are subject to change. The body incessantly ‘becomes building becomes dress’, while incorporating its ability to adapt and to become part of other entities and forms. In Bakhtin’s description, the grotesque body belongs to a state of constant transformation: it is neither finished nor completed, but incessantly created and built. In this context, both case studies appear multi-layered; they hold “impossible split reference,” in reference to which, “multiple forms inhabit a single image” (Harpham 1982, On the Grotesque, 13). And as the body reaches

extreme, nearly paradoxical, limits; it stands against conformity, and evokes confusion. Any serenity that may align with images of absolute symmetry, perfection, and balance, in reference to the grotesque body is entirely abandoned. In this regard, the grotesque notion may embody distortions and exaggerations, but it also suggests a field of inward possibilities – regarding the appreciation of beauty, our being in the world, and so on up to the relationship of our body to its direct and indirect surroundings, to private and social space. Through this prism, we may be reminded of concepts of alienation and individualism, reinforcing the relevance of the grotesque concepts to contemporary design practices. The aforementioned design experiments “could thus be read as an attempt to destabilize the normative body and metonymically a range of social systems, since the body constitutes ‘the ultimate order of things’ against which categories of what constitutes norm and deviation are articulated” (Granata 2012, Deconstruction Fashion, 188). Indeed, next to issues of metamorphosis, irony, and paradox, theoretical discussions on the ‘grotesque’ have provided a lens through which, awareness towards new and unexpected realms of experience and understanding is being raised; as such, these discussions have been employed in the precedent interdisciplinary discussion. Yet, even more important for this study has been the re-positioning of the body within the continuum of surrounding spatial entities and the relevance of the theories on the ‘grotesque’ to contemporary ways of design and current sociopolitical contexts – thus pertaining to physical ideologies. References The Grotesque in Art and Literature: Theological Reflections. Edited by James Luther Adams, and Wilson Yates. Michigan: William B. Eerdman, 1997. Bakhtin, Mikhail M. Rabelais and His World. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1984. Baron, Denis. The Mutant Flesh: Fabrication of a Post Human. Paris: Dis Voir, 2009. Burri, René. Le Corbusier. New York: Magnum Photos, 1960. Modern Art and the Grotesque. Edited by Frances S. Connelly. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Doty, Robert. Human Concern/PersonalTorment. The Grotesque in American Art. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1969. English, Bonnie. Japanese Fashion Designers: The Work and Influence of Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo. Oxford: Berg, 2011. Forty, Adrian. Of Cars, Clothes and Carpets: Design Metaphors in Architectural Thought: The First Banham Memorial Lecture, Oxford: Journal of Design History, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1989, pp. 1-14. Frascari, Marco. Monsters of Architecture: Anthropomorphism in Architectural Theory. London: Rowman and Littlefield 1990. Frascari, Marco. The Tell-the-Tale Detail. VIA 7: The Building of Architecture. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania, 1984 pp. 23-37. Granata, Francesca. Deconstruction Fashion: Carnival and the Grotesque. Oxford: Journal of Design History, Vol. 26, No. 2, 2012, pp. 182-198. Fukai, Akiko. Future Beauty: Thirty Years of Japanese Fashion. London: Merrell, Barbican Art Gallery, 2010. Harpham, Geoffrey G. On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. Kayser, Wolfgang J. The Grotesque in Art and Literature. Massachusetts: P. Smith, 1968. Koda, Harold. Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Papapetros, Spyros. On the Animation of the Inorganic: Art, Architecture, and the Extension of Life. Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 2012. Payne, Alina. From Ornament to Object: Genealogies of Architectural Modernism, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Polan, Brenda, and Roger Tredre. The Great Fashion Designers. Oxford: Berg, 2009. Russo, Mary. The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity. London: Routledge, 1995. Sbriglio, Jacques. Immeuble 24 N.C. Basel: Birkhäuser, 1996. Wilcox, Claire. Radical Fashion. London: Victoria and Albert Museum Studies, 2001. Wölfflin, Heinrich. Classic Art: An Introduction to the Italian Renaissance. London: Phaidon, 1968.

Wood, Ghislaine. The Surreal Body: Fetish and Fashion, London: Victoria and Albert Publications, 2007. Images

Figure 1: Plan of Le Corbusier’s apartment on the seventh floor of the Molitor building, featuring a clear division into a masculine and female section. Image courtesy of the author.

Figure 2: View from the dining room towards Le Corbusier’s atelier. The intervening space and furniture correspond to the living room of the apartment. Image courtesy of the author.

Figure 3: The living room – following Le Corbusier’s ostentatious description – of the apartment, which measures 2,20 meters by 2,00 meters. Image courtesy of the author.

Figure 4: The pivot door that separates the main bedroom from the dining room. Image courtesy of the author.

Figure 5: The principal closet of the main bedroom is attached on the rear side of the pivot door, equating it to a spatial element in a state of transformation. Image courtesy of the author.

Figure 6: The bed in the main bedroom of the apartment, which is lifted 85 centimeters off the floor. Image courtesy of the author.

Figure 7: The metallic structure that linked the bed to its adjacent wall. Image courtesy of the author.

Figure 8: The bathroom appears to be dissolving into the main bedroom section, as the bidet, shown here, and the shower cabin are found in close proximity to the bed. Image courtesy of the author.

Figure 9: In the foreground, the vanity mirror of Yvonne Gallis is shown, and in the background, one may distinguish the enclosed part of the bathroom. Image courtesy of the author.

Figure 10: The view of the city of Paris from the main bedroom of the apartment that Le Corbusier aimed gazing at unobtrusively, whilst lying on his bed. Image courtesy of the author.

Figure 11: Dress designed by Rei Kawakubo for the Comme des Garcons Spring-Summer 1997 collection; lining, interior structure of dress (front side). Image courtesy of The Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of New York.

!Figure 12: Dress designed by Rei Kawakubo for the Comme des Garcons Spring-Summer 1997 collection; lining, interior structure of dress (rear side). Image courtesy of The Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of New York.

Figure 13: Dress designed by Rei Kawakubo for the Comme des Garcons Spring-Summer 1997 collection. Image courtesy of The Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of New York.

BIO Dr. Matina Kousidi, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) − Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETHZ) Matina Kousidi is postdoctoral researcher at ETHZ, fully-funded by the Swiss government, where she carries out her individual scholarly work on the metaphor of dress in modern architectural discourse. Previously, as DAAD fellow, she visited Humboldt University of Berlin and taught at Dessau Institute of Architecture. She has explored the interrelationship between interior and personal architecture, through the prisms of appropriateness, embodiment, and representation. Her work has been presented internationally, as she has contributed to various publications, conferences, and lectures. Matina received a PhD from Sapienza University of Rome, following an extensive research stay at University of the Arts London.