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Spacial Magazine

Your Privacy

By: Emma Hanzlíková Photo: Lenka Glisníková, Getty images, archive
#Essays
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In the vir­tu­al world we usu­al­ly click on accept – accept­ing the sur­veil­lance over our own pri­va­cy with­out a sec­ond thought. In real­i­ty, how­ev­er, it is a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion – pri­vate liv­ing, ide­al­ly a place we can call home, is pro­tect­ed much bet­ter. At least we tend to con­scious­ly manip­u­late what oth­ers can and can­not see. How do dif­fer­ent cul­tures, archi­tects and visu­al artists treat the gaze in their artworks? 

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Despite being per­ceived by our sens­es, archi­tec­ture copies tra­di­tion­al paths trod­den for cen­turies. Woman stays in the house, she inhab­its the inte­ri­or whilst the man comes out to the exte­ri­or, looks from the out­side and comes back home. In 1975, Lau­ra Mul­vey opened the dis­cus­sion about the stereo­typ­i­cal male gaze in her film essay Visu­al Plea­sure and Nar­ra­tive Cin­e­ma. Almost twen­ty years lat­er, how­ev­er, the renowned Span­ish the­o­rist Beat­riz Colom­i­na stud­ied the gaze inside architecture.

Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
The col­lage blends three mod­els of Lasvit Art Walls – Cur­tain, Impas­to and Tapes­try. All of them serve to sep­a­rate the inte­ri­or and help to cre­ate an impres­sion of privacy.

In her paper The Split Wall: Domes­tic Voy­erism, she points out, inter alia, the the­atri­cal aspect that is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with inte­ri­ors made by the infa­mous mod­ernist archi­tect Adolf Loos. This aspect is the most remark­able in such inte­ri­ors where Loos inserts a the­atre box – a space meant for the lady of the house. Thanks to a Raum­plan she can sit at the heart of the house qui­et­ly and out of sight. Such an inti­mate space, which can be found also inside the Vila Müller in Prague (built between 1928 and 1930), enables the own­er to con­trol who is about to enter or leave her pri­vate space. And sud­den­ly the chased object becomes the hunter.

Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
The icon­ic scene from The Grad­u­ate movie by direc­tor Mike Nichols was also tran­scribed on the poster. Stu­dent Ben­jamin watch­es his par­ents‘ old­er friend Mrs. Robin­son putting on his stock­ings. How­ev­er, the scene is dom­i­nat­ed only by a frag­ment of the female body and Benjamin‘s male voyeuris­tic view.

As was proved by Adolf Loos, sur­veil­lance is pos­si­ble with­out any pun­ish­ment. On the oth­er hand, the con­cept of the prison panop­ti­con by the British philoso­pher and social reformer Jere­my Ben­tham from the end of the 18th cen­tu­ry might be regard­ed as the total oppo­site and com­plete with­draw­al of pri­va­cy, where noth­ing is hid­den from a guard’s sight. Yet prison and/or monk cells serve the func­tion­al pur­pose of a sim­ple split wall cre­at­ing a cer­tain illu­sion of pri­va­cy á la cham­bre séparée. Split wall as stud­ied by Beat­riz Colom­i­na is a his­tor­i­cal­ly impor­tant archi­tec­tur­al ele­ment for cre­at­ing a divi­sion. Zone demar­ca­tion des­ig­nat­ed for strict­ly pri­vate use does not have to be a per­ma­nent con­struc­tion from rein­forced concrete.

Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
The scenog­ra­phy of Loos‘s inte­ri­ors, which also includes Prague‘s Muller Vil­la, is fol­lowed by the­o­rist Beat­riz Colom­i­na from the point of view of female res­i­dents. In the text The Split Wall describes the lady’s room: “Zim­mer der damme — sus­pend­ed in the mid­dle of the house, this space assumes both the char­ac­ter of a “sacred” space and of a point of con­trol. Com­fort is para­dox­i­cal­ly pro­duced by two seem­ing­ly oppos­ing con­di­tions, inti­ma­cy and control.”

Already Got­tfried Sem­per start­ed to notice the trans­fer­able rugs used by nomadic peo­ple to replace walls, and also prim­i­tive nations work­ing with woven walls from grass. Its woven grid refers to the sight of the inhab­i­tant inside a pri­vate zone, who is able to over­see every­thing inside and at the same time, thanks to the back reflec­tion, not be seen. Dec­o­ra­tive wood­en walls that become more like win­dows with laced Islam­ic orna­ment called mashra­biya can be found in Arab archi­tec­ture since the Mid­dle Ages and remained in mod­ern vari­a­tions up to this day. Despite their first use in Cop­tic sacred archi­tec­ture they expand­ed to res­i­den­tial areas as well.

Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
The per­son or object hid­den behind the cor­ru­gat­ed Liq­uid­kristal wall, designed for Lasvit in 2012 by Ross Love­grove, looks blur­ry. Its con­tours dis­solve and remain unclear.

A sim­i­lar approach to pri­va­cy can be found in the Asian island cul­ture. Japan­ese archi­tec­ture can be regard­ed at first as rather open, even func­tion­al­ist. Yet thanks to its tem­po­rary struc­tures it can cre­ate pri­vate cor­ners in a sec­ond. Slid­ing paper screens and doors called sho­ji togeth­er with byōbu dec­o­ra­tive pan­els can dis­guise spaces that are not meant to be seen. The beau­ty of sho­ji lies in the absence of stark divi­sion thanks to the misty trans­paren­cy of light. Human bod­ies behind paper walls lack clear lines and shad­ow sil­hou­ettes cre­ate an erot­ic spark leav­ing much to our own imagination.

Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
Orig­i­nal­ly from Ire­land, design­er Eileen Gray was able to com­bine rare mate­ri­als with ordi­nary ones. Its room walls, inspired by Japan­ese aes­thet­ics, stand on the bor­der between sculp­ture, archi­tec­ture and fur­ni­ture. This four-piece screen from the 60‘s com­bines cork with light mahogany. But she also designed screens with a Japan­ese pol­ished lac­quer fin­ish in con­trast with metal.

Screens on the oth­er hand can cre­ate a non-trans­par­ent divi­sion albeit only to a cer­tain height. They became pop­u­lar again dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. With con­fer­ences and meet­ings hav­ing to move online, screens start­ed to appear fre­quent­ly as zoom call back­grounds. The archi­tect and design­er Eileen Gray, for instance, was inspired by the Japan­ese aes­thet­ics of screens as well as the tech­nique of lay­ered lac­quer, and her walls move between being mobile sculp­tures and a piece of furniture.

Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
Dec­o­ra­tive Art Walls com­bine mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy and a clas­sic archi­tec­tur­al ele­ment used in var­i­ous cul­tures. The design imi­tates the water sur­face and soft­ly breaks down the back­ground and iden­ti­ty of peo­ple. Can you find archi­tect Daniel Libe­skind behind one of the panels?

Maybe it would suf­fice to draw a pro­tec­tive cir­cle with sacred chalk to cre­ate a pri­vate space. But a line is not a wall. Since the leg­endary sto­ry about the foun­da­tion of Rome, where after cross­ing the groove sym­bol­is­ing for­ti­fi­ca­tion of the city Romu­lus killed his broth­er Remus, it is clear that bor­ders need to be respect­ed. The motif of pri­vate for­ti­fi­ca­tion a fence was explored by the artist Kateři­na Šedá in her project Furt doko­la (Again and again) from 2008 and pre­sent­ed at the Berlin Bien­nale. The event involved a num­ber of neigh­bours. With the help of var­i­ous tools, they were try­ing to over­come repli­cas of fences that the artist built to look like their fences in Brno, which enabled tak­ing down these mon­u­ments of pri­va­cy, at least for a lit­tle while.

Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
For a long time, Mar­tin Papcún has mapped the dual­i­ty of the inte­ri­ors and exte­ri­ors of the apart­ments in which he lived and cre­ates objects of var­i­ous scales – mon­u­men­tal and minia­ture – from the inter­spaces formed by the walls. The work, rem­i­nis­cent of an archi­tec­tur­al mod­el called Build­ings III (2013), is a sil­ver object that can also be used as a brooch for its wearer.

What can be read as a tru­ly mon­u­men­tal trib­ute to pri­va­cy are the con­crete casts by the British artist Rachel Whiteread. As con­tro­ver­sial and Bru­tal­ist form of mass, her work won the pres­ti­gious Turn­er prize in 1993. She man­aged to trans­fer the casts, often linked with frag­ile mate­r­i­al like plas­ter, and the smooth bod­ies of clas­si­cal sculp­tures into a dif­fer­ent mate­r­i­al, scale and the sphere of pri­vate home. Her sculp­tures cre­ate a stone trib­ute to entire hous­es, bath­rooms and bed mattresses.

Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
All design con­cepts of Lasvit Art Walls are mod­u­lar either in terms of size, pat­tern, col­or-scheme, or intend­ed inte­ri­or use as par­ti­tions, or dec­o­ra­tive walls.

As Sem­per under­scored the his­tor­i­cal mean­ing of tex­tile as a pri­ma­ry mate­r­i­al in the con­text of the­o­ry of archi­tec­ture, it has remained a tool sought-after by many to cre­ate inti­ma­cy and a feel­ing of pri­va­cy. Drawn cur­tains in a win­dow (incon­ceiv­able in the Protes­tant soci­ety) are a sig­nal that some­thing always stays hid­den from out­side onlook­ers. At the same time, cur­tains can become the final touch of the inte­ri­or and cre­ate an inner com­fort­ing shell, much like in the instance of adapt­ing the indus­tri­al pow­ers of a for­mer cement mill in Spain by Ricar­do Bofill. Be it as cur­tains, car­pets or tapes­tries, tex­tile is mak­ing a come­back to inte­ri­ors that were dom­i­nat­ed by pure func­tion­al­ism and cold min­i­mal­ism for most of the 20th century.

Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
How bet­ter to imag­ine the pre­na­tal stage than in the form of an egg? The shell chair called Egg was designed by Arne Jacob­sen in 1959 for a Copen­hagen hotel. He was prob­a­bly inspired by his 15-year-old Womb Chair, his Finnish col­league Eero Saari­nen, who believed that we had nev­er felt safe since leav­ing our mother‘s womb. In the 1960s, Eero Aarnio con­tin­ued this hunt for a real sense of pri­va­cy with the Ball Chair.

A bath­room and/or a pool is often con­sid­ered the most inti­mate space of the house, where one moves com­plete­ly naked. In both a pool and a bath­tub, a per­son can become most pow­er­less and vul­ner­a­ble. Let us recall the series of Hockney’s images A Por­trait of an Artist (1972) based on the icon­ic A Big­ger Splash (1967). On the back­ground of an idyl­lic Cal­i­forn­ian land­scape and a lux­u­ri­ous mod­ernist house we can see a swim­mer under water observed by anoth­er man stand­ing by the pool.

Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
David Hockney‘s icon­ic paint­ing Big­ger Splash was pre­ced­ed by a three-meter paint­ing A Por­trait of an Artist, which cryp­ti­cal­ly speaks of the rela­tion­ship between the artist and his then part­ner. The mon­u­men­tal work opened a series dom­i­nat­ed by pri­vate pools — noth­ing out of the ordi­nary in Cal­i­for­nia, but very unusu­al for painters from cold England.

Where do we then expe­ri­ence the per­fect feel­ing of pri­va­cy? Is it at all pos­si­ble to expe­ri­ence this dur­ing our life­time, after we leave the pre­na­tal stage of an embryo in our mother’s womb? If we are seek­ing this feel­ing of ide­al safe­ty, warmth and embrace­ment we will sure­ly find a num­ber of design­er approach­es that can replace the mother’s womb to some extent. There is the cos­mic-futur­is­tic mod­u­lat­ed shell chair in the shape of an egg by the Scan­di­na­vian design­ers Eero Aarnio or Arne Jacob­sen and also the new phe­nom­e­non of tiny hous­es – small self-suf­fi­cient hous­es locat­ed in aban­doned areas and yet evok­ing the feel­ing of safe­ty like the mem­o­ries of our child­hood hide­aways. To a great extent, pri­va­cy also rep­re­sents anonymi­ty. In times of the pan­dem­ic the need to keep social dis­tance and use only sep­a­rat­ed spaces plays into privacy’s hand. Yet we can­not for­get the rather thin and dan­ger­ous line between pri­va­cy and iso­la­tion. So, where do you find the pri­va­cy of your dreams? Psst, that’s a secret.

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Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
The collage blends three models of Lasvit Art Walls – Curtain, Impasto and Tapestry. All of them serve to separate the interior and help to create an impression of privacy.
Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
The iconic scene from The Graduate movie by director Mike Nichols was also transcribed on the poster. Student Benjamin watches his parents‘ older friend Mrs. Robinson putting on his stockings. However, the scene is dominated only by a fragment of the female body and Benjamin‘s male voyeuristic view.
Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
The scenography of Loos‘s interiors, which also includes Prague‘s Muller Villa, is followed by theorist Beatriz Colomina from the point of view of female residents. In the text The Split Wall describes the lady’s room: “Zimmer der damme - suspended in the middle of the house, this space assumes both the character of a “sacred” space and of a point of control. Comfort is paradoxically produced by two seemingly opposing conditions, intimacy and control.”
Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
The person or object hidden behind the corrugated Liquidkristal wall, designed for Lasvit in 2012 by Ross Lovegrove, looks blurry. Its contours dissolve and remain unclear.
Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
Originally from Ireland, designer Eileen Gray was able to combine rare materials with ordinary ones. Its room walls, inspired by Japanese aesthetics, stand on the border between sculpture, architecture and furniture. This four-piece screen from the 60‘s combines cork with light mahogany. But she also designed screens with a Japanese polished lacquer finish in contrast with metal.
Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
Decorative Art Walls combine modern technology and a classic architectural element used in various cultures. The design imitates the water surface and softly breaks down the background and identity of people. Can you find architect Daniel Libeskind behind one of the panels?
Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
For a long time, Martin Papcún has mapped the duality of the interiors and exteriors of the apartments in which he lived and creates objects of various scales – monumental and miniature – from the interspaces formed by the walls. The work, reminiscent of an architectural model called Buildings III (2013), is a silver object that can also be used as a brooch for its wearer.
Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
All design concepts of Lasvit Art Walls are modular either in terms of size, pattern, color-scheme, or intended interior use as partitions, or decorative walls.
Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
How better to imagine the prenatal stage than in the form of an egg? The shell chair called Egg was designed by Arne Jacobsen in 1959 for a Copenhagen hotel. He was probably inspired by his 15-year-old Womb Chair, his Finnish colleague Eero Saarinen, who believed that we had never felt safe since leaving our mother‘s womb. In the 1960s, Eero Aarnio continued this hunt for a real sense of privacy with the Ball Chair.
Your Privacy - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
David Hockney‘s iconic painting Bigger Splash was preceded by a three-meter painting A Portrait of an Artist, which cryptically speaks of the relationship between the artist and his then partner. The monumental work opened a series dominated by private pools - nothing out of the ordinary in California, but very unusual for painters from cold England.

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