Clothes Make Character

Buildings have character. Whether perceived as familiar backdrops, quirky scenery, or tasteless eyesores, this personification intensifies our relationship with architecture. This perception of character can impose upon the practice of architecture, as in neighborhoods deemed to have historic character, where architecture of a different style is unwanted or even prohibited. Furthermore, these impressions are often created within a preconceived collective architectural imagination – the house one imagines has the character of a house. Today we are working in an architectural afterlife, everything new we build must sit within the context of what was built before. What role does human craft play in this future? Artist Do Ho Suh, while crafting sewn architectural sculptures from fabric, has compared clothing to architecture. Both are habitable spaces formed, in some way, around the human body. What might it mean for buildings to be like clothes? What might it mean to craft architecture in the way clothing is crafted, full of delight and identity? “Clothes Make Character” uses the tools of craft to produce a characterful architecture that allows us to form closer relationships with our living and working spaces.