Completed as a part of a second-year studio paper, the work presents the top-floor of AUT Spatial’s Mount Street Studio as an apartment constructed as an homage to Dan Flavin. Flavin was an architect of shadow, developing an authority over something as ubiquitous as light. Crafting spaces through light within ‘drawings’ as he described them, any gallery or studio space to Flavin was seen as a three-dimensional canvas, rather than a construct of plaster and ply. Within this context, the speckled alabasters or Spanish whites are mediums akin to paper spreads of varying texture, weight for an illustrator or architect. These paper walls are illuminating ornaments, constructed from perishable and familiar tubes of fluorescent light. These are used to section and slice the composition of the existing site; deconstructing walls, passageways and thresholds, with little to no physical alteration.

The project aims to translate these qualities to the apartment design, hoping to capture the character of Flavin within a series of lived, spatial drawings. The apartment itself would become exposed, removing all existing ornament and furnishing, revealing only the existing architecture, evoking imagery of the alcoval spaces of a gallery. Within are scattered moments of touch, both intimate and familiar. They elicit a sense of comfort in habit or convention, acting as instruments of grounding the protagonist. Some operate function such as the filtering of light, involving conscious decision towards the composition of space.

Division of space is also driven from the floor, finishes of polished stone and tiles of varying viscosity capture light, heat and sound in ways that inform the viewer of the spaces intention. Some of these conditions adhere to the use and repetition of familiar elements, while others are less traditional and more specific in their intent to harness light or other atmospheric condition.

As a critical piece of Flavin’s toolkit, deliberately vacant or void space extends to the connective passageways between set pieces. These corridors both exclude and invite, a notable quality of the typical Flavin exhibition. The very edges of his works are often both the most critical and inviting elements, while their partially hidden forms are exclusive by nature. These exclusive sections form moments of practicality in continous and parallel blocks. Isolating the viewer from them entirely when not in use, and pushing the protagonist deep into individual moments of function and interactivity when operated. These techniques combine to create, what I hope to be a nuanced and engaging narrative constructed around the master of light and division. One which involves the protagonist as a participant of spectacle and artist of their own illustration.