Body and Rock - Exploring The Pressing, Coalescing, and Layering of Bodies, Rock and Architecture

The project proposes a climber’s hotel and training facility in a disused quarry in Portland, Dorset. Cliffs and crags provide an opportunity for an architecture that hugs the cliff, mediating between the soft climber’s body and the hard rock face. Where architecture ends and cliffs begin is indiscernible. A selection of artificial cliffs allows climbers to train. What does it mean to have an artificial cliff that represents and transforms reality? The climber’s embodied memory of rock faces, an understanding of space through movement, texture, and specific geometry, is used throughout the work. Furthermore, the climber’s body provides the project with a spatial language.

The act of climbing shifts a largely horizontal usage of space to a vertical one. Ordinarily, the body relates to space through furniture and architectural details such as handrails. The project culminated in the design and manufacture of a dining table/climbing wall/architectural model that would allow the climber’s body to be used as a design tool whilst questioning our corporeal relationship to architecture.