As a fashion design graduate, I enjoyed diving straight into Week 1’s task of designing a piece of wearable architecture. When I initially heard the brief of choosing a place that we have experienced personally as the inspiration, my mind immediately was drawn to the British Museum. I grew up in museums around London, and therefore wanted to look to somewhere where I had such great memories growing up.
The glass and steel roof of the British Museum is fundamentally beautiful and has so much detail. This feature lets in an abundance of light and truly highlights the Great Court’s magnificent space. Designed and constructed by Foster and Partners in 1999, the glass and steel spectacle use 3,212 panes of glass, of which no two are identical due its curvature.
Observing the detail within this space led me to use origami to convey the triangular panes of glass. My intention was to fold long strips of card to then manipulate around the body. My design process was very fluid, as I started by creating the origami before I knew where I wanted to situate the wearable on the body. I used my dressmaker’s mannequin for this process and to experiment with different looks, where I ultimately landed on creating a headpiece. I achieved my final look by curving the origami strips around a wire wreath, which I attached to a headband to make it functional. Creating a headpiece truly delivered the beauty of this roof by imitating its round curvature detail.
On reflection, this project was a great way to combine my two areas of education, fashion and interior design, and is a process I would love to experiment more with in the future.
References
Image 1 – Dunn, A. (2005) British Museum Great Court Roof. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:British_Museum_Great_Court_roof.jpg (Accessed: 29 September 2022).
Image 2 – Keeble, G. (2022). Wearable Architecture Front View [Photograph].
Image 3 – Keeble, G. (2022). Wearable Architecture Back View [Photograph].
Image 4 – Keeble, G. (2022). Wearable Architecture Experimentation Front View [Photograph].
Image 5 – Keeble, G. (2022). Wearable Architecture Experimentation Back View [Photograph].