Intensifying the Real: Architecture and the Construction of Experience
William Feuerman (Office Feuerman and University of Technology Sydney) talks about his recent work in a brown bag lunch seminar on Tuesday, May 22, 12:30-14u, in room KAST 00.29 [directions & access info]
William Feuerman’s research in architecture and visual perception stem from his own experience of an acute, isolated stroke causing a disorder that affected the coordination of his eyes.
Current work examines spatial and architectural opportunities that transformatively recondition environments, in order to disrupt, defamiliarize, and redirect accustomed behaviors. The work explores how the built environment can instantiate situations of intensified sensation and phenomenal perception, with a beneficially transformative effect on its inhabitants’ insight into their own subjectivity.
Varying methodologies and prototypes constructed using multiple fabrication methods create measurably interactive relationships between our senses and the built environment. Projects examine architecture’s relationship to space, the observer, the intangible mechanics of perception, and the role the visual experience plays in manipulating and reconditioning our visual perspective of the environment.
The seminar is organized by the Research[x]Design group in the context of ‘How do disabled architects design?’, a research project supported by the KU Leuven Research Fund.
For any further practical inquiries, you can contact Ann Heylighen.
Bio
William Feuerman is an architect, academic and writer working in Australia and the US. He is the Director of Office Feuerman (OF), a Sydney-based design and research office, founded in New York in 2007. Before starting OF, William worked at several leading international architecture firms including five years at Bernard Tschumi Architects in New York.
William’s research interests in architecture and visual perception stem from his own experience of an acute, isolated stroke causing a disorder that affected the coordination of his eyes. With an emphasis on the construction of experiences and the mechanics between the mind, body and environment, he examines how new ways of seeing can be translated into dynamic environments that generate active and responsive spaces. In 2010, he began teaching at the University of Technology Sydney, where he served as the Course Director for the Bachelor of Design in Architecture program from 2012-2016.
He has coordinated and taught in graduate and undergraduate architecture programs in Australia and the US. At Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) he coordinated and taught design studios in the New York/Paris and Introduction to Architecture programs. He taught in the graduate architecture program at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design as well as the undergraduate interior design program at Pratt Institute’s School of Art and Design.
William studied at Columbia University GSAPP and at the California College of the Arts. He came to Sydney in 2010 via New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. He is a contributor to the New York-based website Untapped Cities, where he writes about architecture and the city of Sydney.