THESIS: Sprezzatura

Sprezzatura

Dennis Tang

The dramatic spectacle is dazzling, alluring, and seductive. Glimmering, it draws you into a maze of turns, distractions, and clues. The sparkling veil conceals objects of desire, while displaying them with pride.

Slits entice desiring glimpses revealing moments of clarity ina shimmering cloud. These glimpses paint a picture of the world beyond, with your imagination finishing the partial image. Never is everything apparent; a centrefold would destroy all illusions.

As your interaction continues, however, alluring images carry on growing. Sensual portraits expose swathes of tantalizing inner layers. Before long, these pictures establish a rhythm. The tempo is now guiding the experience, like the marching of a drum. With each moving surface, the edges once united and connected split, like the parting of a kiss.

In its finale, the performance exposes your grandest desires The elongated experience rewards an intensified and satysfying climax. You care not for curated, edited, or designed moments. For the dramatic build-up was enough, regardless of omitted or concealed details.

Through architecture, searching the spectacular, the dramatic, and the seductive uncovers a diminishing language. One created with a corporeal reading of space. The investigation favours an elongated flirtation over a full-frontal exposure.

The proceeding passages are analogous experiences, known as Fragments. They engage an arousal with viewers and users of building. Interspersed throughout the tome, descriptive Elements provide a method of interpretating these experiences. Elements are clues of a mystery, deciphering enigmatic expderiences of an erotic architecture. The combination of Fragments and Elements coalesce to create this nostalgic journey.

Supervisor

Robert Jan van Pelt, University of Waterloo

Committee Members

Anne Bordeleau, University of Waterloo

Donald McKay, University of Waterloo

External Reader

Gregory Beck Rubin

The Defence Examination will take place:

Friday December 16, 2016

at 2:00 PM in the ARC Loft.

A copy of the thesis is available for perusal in ARC 2106A.