Stage Design
(Hypothetical Project)
Concept
Throughout time, humans kept evolving and the natural landscapes become more manmade. Those landscapes become more and more manmade until the Earth is destroyed. Eventually, the Earth is reborn and natural landscapes flood out once again.
Iris Van Herpen “Ludi Naturae” is the fashion show I chose to design a stage for, for a course project. The collection talks about seeing the landscape from a bird’s eye view and discusses the natural and manmade landscapes, and their order and chaos.
Research
Case Studies
Azzaro 2022
The concept is to mix masculine and feminine codes and introduce new language for the future. The stage design is made of tree trunks, drained of color, with lopped off branches, and metal structures to represent the future and the timelessness. The models walk between the trunks as if lost in a maze, and the mirrors help.
Iris Van Herpen - Aeriform
This collection studies the anatomy of air, its lightness and darkness, and floating materials. As for the stage, the models walk between water tanks not in a specific line, their movements are also spread and more free. The ceiling is so dark that it seems as if the space of the stage is infinite, like how it feels when being in air or water.
Es Devlin - Memory Palace.
A new sculpture which fills the gallery space with a vast chronological landscape mapping pivot shifts in human perspective over seventy-five millennia.
Es Devlin - Mask in Motion
A kinetic sculpture that catches the viewer between model and shadow maps, writing and erasing the viewers shadow in and out of the work as it turns. The map records the layered millennia of marks made by thousands of unseen human hands.
Sketches
I started by tracing the lines from natural and manmade landscape to see the patterns and figure out how to use them in my stage. Then, I started combining these shapes to represent the four phases in the story of the rebirth of Earth. I want to focus on the user experience in my design and show the audience what it’s like to go through these phases and experience the freedom and the restriction.
After the 2D sketching, I started experimenting with 3D shapes. I also started experimenting with topography. The topography I tried to create looked manmade, and I also extracted natural topography. As for the materials, I found out that the natural landscapes which I traced in the beginning are all bodies of water. Therefore, I want to have running water with structure of glass. As for the manmade, I also looked back to traced images and they were all concrete jungles.
Phase 1: Natural.
Phase 2: Natural and manmade.
Phase 3: Manmade.
Phase 4: Extreme natural.
Phase 2: Natural and manmade.
Phase 3: Manmade.
Phase 4: Extreme natural.
Phases 1 and 4 are made of glass and water. The models walk up and down the structures. Phase 2 is only glass, and phase 3 is concrete. The models in phase 3 stand between the maze walls to make the audience walk through specific lines.
Final Product
Prototype
Rendered Images
