Visual arts and architecture are closely aligned: artists and architects cross-pollinate. For example, John Ruskin, polymath, an architectural critic, theorist and watercolourist; Le Corbusier worked with both disciplines; and Antoni Gaudì’s highly decorated Sagrada Familia, is both architectural and highly artistically sculptural. 

Visual Arts are often contained within the gallery or architectural structure. However, the ever-increasing blurring of boundaries now has architectural installations both within and extant to the gallery. A sort of hybridised notion of both aspects is Michael Rakowitz’s  “paraSITE” shelter (2000).  The art/installation pavilion is a prime example of this ever-leaching boundary: the Serpentine Pavilions (2000 onwards) have rarely been habitable structures. Instead, they have informed and crossed boundaries, reformulated and obscured the architectural spatial concerns within the parameters of art, by the creation of a temporary summer pavilion. 

This session is looking for papers that embody and manifest the blurring of the boundaries of visual arts with the architectural realm. How can art exist within the architecture realm, and how does this manifest? Can architecture exist within the realm of art?  When and how can they embody mutual inclusivity or are mutually exclusive – and why would this be the case? This session is looking at ways in which these discipline boundaries are broken down and evidence new ways of thinking.

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• Session convenor: Annabel Pretty, School of Architecture, Unitec Institute of Technology 
• Submit paper proposals to: [email protected]