Exquisite Cores: 501 Studio Exhibition at the ICA

This series of projects is an architectural investigation into vertical circulation using the surrealist game ‘Exquisite Corpse’ as a model for evolving design. Students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design developed a series of vertically stacked rooms connected by a staircase, or what equates to a portion of a circulation core.  Architectural cores are the backbone of tall buildings and typically comprised of elevators, staircases, vertical duct runs, plumbing risers and other functional spaces that travel through the building vertically. In this project students were asked to design a stair and set of rooms but also asked to connect vertically with neighboring students’ projects in a manner similar to the surrealist game ‘Exquisite Corpse’. That artistic game was a creative and communal exploration that had participants sequentially draw various portions of a single body without knowledge of their fellow participants’ bodily designs. The results were revealed at the end of the game, displaying curious Frankenstein-esque creations. In this architectural version of the game, Exquisite Cores, students had knowledge of their neighbors’ designs but the diversity of aesthetic approaches between projects offered exciting opportunities for new types of connections.  This balance of creative individual expression with collective suturing has yielded innovated ways of considering the architectural core.

Students: Arshia Alenaddaf, Tony Chen, Seo Yeon Choi, Eric Feng, Bruce Gong, Yixuan Gu, Edward Liang, Yuwei Lin, Chenxi Li, Aunnop Peters, Xinyi Qiu, Hailey Quinn, Veronica Helena Raga Widell, Vila Shao, Evelyn Tan, Zina Uzor, Cindy Wang, Zhurong Zhang
Instructors: Daniel Garcia, Andrew Holder, Daniel Markiewicz, Laia Mogas-Soldevila, Ryan Palider, Danielle Willems