vienna AUSTRIA

suckerPUNCH: describe your project.

chi wai CHAN: The project examines various notions and typology of a religious building bringing it closer to contemporary requirements and sensibilities. Many feel that Catholicism is just a grandiose relic on the outside without much substance on the inside. This superficiality rather than spirituality becomes the main agent for the explorations.

The project manifests the notion and affect of an ‘Exquisite Corpse’ or a skeleton of fluid lines that flow together coherently to achieve the effect of ‘part becomes whole and whole becomes part’. The language is exuberant and excessive. It is dark and sinister like a cathedral in Gotham city.

The iconograpic typology of a Gothic Cathedral was disseminated with formal elements of a tower and base to remain. Animated formal attributes and surface tessellations reinstitute the ornamental and decorative affect of a Gothic Cathedral. The cathedral as an institution exists only in excess.

sP: what or who influenced this project?

cwC: Hernan Diaz Alonso, Steven Ma, my classmates in the Excessive program

sP: what were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?

cwC: Form by Greg Lynn, suckerPUNCH Daily /David Bowie, Nas, Coup /Batman, Blade Runner

sP: whose work is currently on your radar?

cwC: Xefirotarch, Steven Ma, SoftLab, Bureau V, Kokkguia, Biothing