I’mmutable

‘I’m mutable’ is a wordplay on the word ‘immutable’: what if everything thought to be unchangeable is changed? Architecture as a theatrical play on stage with temporary decors. We are the actors, and use our combined soft gazes to create shared inhabitations within the hard architecture around us.

I’m/mutable was a performative installation workshop at the 2022 Summer Assembly of the European Architecture Students’ Assembly (EASA, easanetwork.org) under the theme ‘1:1’ in Calarasi, Romania.

Originating in a play on words, I’m/mutable radically questioned the often presupposed near-immutability of the built environment (cfr. the motto ‘we cannot do anything about it’). Distinguishing hard architecture from soft architecture allowed the workshop to explore not just how space is experienced but also how that experience can be shaped. Hard architecture contains those spatial qualities that make up the space’s core, structural qualities and thus form the foundational spatial experience. The actual end appearance of that space is what I’m/mutable calls its soft architecture, a negotiated inhabitation within the hard architecture through objects, textures, inhabitation, and so on.

I’m/mutable set out to give participants a framework in which they could explore the experience and creation of soft architectures within their surrounding hard architectures in a 1:1 scale.

Workshop type:

Design/Theoretical/ Deconstruction /Performance /Pedagogical

The workshop combined architectural, theatrical, performative and artistic methods in a transdisciplinary approach to architectural creation and critique.

Over the following days, participants were taught different methods of exploration through the use of their senses; sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.

These explorations were then translated into action: after understanding how different senses impacted spatial experience, the workshop guided the participants through multiple performative exercises and initiated several spatial interventions focusing on evoking sensorial experience. The following images show a selection of the installations made and performances done throughout the I’m/mutable workshop.