February 8

A HOUSE FOR LADY GAGA. ICARCH
Gallery Competition

Filed Under architecture, design, ideas, news 

(Special thanks to ICARCH Gallery)


Image from “Bad Romance” set, © Lady Gaga official site

Sometimes speaking half in jest produces the best results ever. Down from its ivory tower, architecture speculation stll creates for the sake of creating despite times to remain aloof from economic systems, bureaucracy and democracy are almost reduced to none. Unprofitable ideas and designs spread among every studio. We all need to disconnect and, who knows? The weirdest trick could change into a profitable project and find a client…And if not, who cares? We invite you to visit the Chicago-based ICARCH Gallery – deliberately inspired by Ephimeteus (literally “afterthought,”), Titan brother of the most reknown Prometheus, openly “confused, imperfect, hungry, anti-business, passionate” and, most of all, provocative. Since 2003 ICARCH has launched competitions like: “The House of War”, “A New Facade for Florence San Lorenzo”, “The House of Pi”, “The House of Oxymorons” and others themed on a series of personalities like Eric Rohmer, Federico Fellini, Albert Camus or Friedrich Nietzsche. Now ICARCH goes pop and it’s time for Lady Gaga, the flamboyant singer brought to the fore for her spectacular mise-en-scène and outfits.

Lady Gaga, Bad Romance video

Here follows ICARCH’s announcement for A HOUSE FOR LADY GAGA COMPETITION:

The more she hides, the more she exposes. And vice versa. We reflected on the strange dialectics between hiding / exposing, as illustrated by Lady Gaga. Quite often she seems to want to hide away… her hair, her masks, her veilings betray a very high interest in hiding, in concealing… Even her use of umbrellas, when outside it is sunny…!? And the fact that quite often she hides her face behind her hand, when photographed (as if she is guilty of something, almost like Adam in the famous painting by Masaccio “Adam and Eve banished from Paradise”), does show the same thing… and the meaning of her video Paparazzi seems to be the same: an intense almost neurotic questioning of the violation of privacy that contemporary life seems to be unable to avoid. She probably does not want to end like Princess Diana or like the main character of Das Parfum. But the price of fame is high, quite often! Sometimes tragically high!

Lady Gaga wearing a Giorgio Armani creation at 2010 Grammy Awards

So we are tempted to believe that she displays her legs, and sometimes even more intimate parts of her body in order to detract attention from “the other side,” her head, her eyes, her thinking and her feelings, and by extension, her mind and her soul… a strange duality / dichotomy. But the incredible inventory of her facial expressions does testify about an unending attempt to hide away, as if she is ambivalent about her relationship with society. We are reminded of that strange short story by Albert Camus where the main character, a famous painter, leaves to society his last painting, a visual testament consisting of a single word, written with his own blood: Soli ary, (an ambivalent linguistic construct meaning either solitary or solidary depending on what letter – “t” or “d” – the viewer chooses to fill in the empty space with).
And perhaps for a pop artist it is even more difficult, this dilemma. Not to speak about a “star.”
Let’s explore this dilemma in

A HOUSE FOR LADY GAGA.

A HOUSE WITH VERVE / NERVE. A FRAGILE HOUSE. A WHIRLING HOUSE. A SINGING HOUSE. A DANCING
HOUSE. A SUICIDAL HOUSE. A HIDING HOUSE. A REVEALING / EXPOSING HOUSE. A BAROQUE HOUSE. A TRAGIC(?) HOUSE. A BI-SEXUAL HOUSE. A LACED HOUSE. A MUSICAL HOUSE. A RED HOUSE. A HOUSE WITH A COIFURRE. A VICTORIAN HOUSE. A BLOODY HOUSE. A PLASTIC HOUSE. A HOUSE NAKED DOWN BELOW. A BURLESQUE HOUSE. A HOUSE DIFFICULT TO PIN DOWN. A HOUSE OF UNENDING FASHION STATEMENTS. A CHAMELEONIC HOUSE. A HOUSE CONTINUOUSLY REINVENTING ITSELF. A RHYTHMIC HOUSE. A VEILED HOUSE. AN EXUBERANT HOUSE. A CRYING HOUSE. A HOUSE ON CRUTCHES. A HOUSE WITH DARK GLASSES. A HOUSE OF LEATHER. A HOUSE WITH PROSTHETICS. A CHIC HOUSE. A LONELY HOUSE. A BLUE HOUSE. A HOUSE IN THE CROWD. A SHINING HOUSE. A HOUSE WITH A STRANGE HAT. A GREEN HOUSE. A HOUSE WITH TATTOOS. A HOODED HOUSE. A HOUSE WITH WILD HAIR. A MASKED HOUSE. A MODERN HOUSE LOOKING BACKWARDS. A HOUSE WITH HEAVY MAKEUP. A TENT HOUSE. A NOSTALGIC HOUSE. A SCREAMING HOUSE. A HOUSE NOT YET A HOUSE. A HOUSE MORE THAN A HOUSE. A HOUSE FOR A NOMAD. A TENTACULAR HOUSE. A SCRATCHED HOUSE. A SCRATCHING HOUSE. A HOUSE ON THE RUN. A HOUSE UNFINISHED. A WILD HOUSE. A SCENTED HOUSE. A HOUSE ON HIGH HEELS. A FRIGID HOUSE. A SENSUAL HOUSE. A HERMAPHRODITE HOUSE. A HOUSE WITH A PENIS. A HOUSE WITH A VAGINA. A HOUSE UNABLE TO SAY EVERYTHING IT WANTS TO SAY, THIS IS WHY DANCING AND SINGING AND PARADING UNENDINGLY, FASHIONABLY, GLAMOROUSLY, CRAZILY, CONTRADICTING / OPPOSING EVERYBODY AND EVERYTHING. A PRIMITIVE HOUSE. A SOPHISTICATED HOUSE. THE HOUSE OF THE FUTURE…? THE HOUSE OF THE PAST…? THE BEGINNING OF A HOUSE…? THE END OF A HOUSE…? AN ELECTRONIC HOUSE…? AN EARTH HOUSE…? A HANDMADE HOUSE…? A PREFABRICATED HOUSE…? A GALACTIC HOUSE…? A BUBBLE HOUSE…? A PINK HOUSE…? A FREAK HOUSE…? A MONSTER HOUSE…?
A HOUSE FOR LADY GAGA.

Please send icarchgallery@yahoo.com ANY work, ANY size and ANY format that responds to the theme. You can send your work to this e-mail address. The deadline is June 1st, 2010. There is an entry fee of 50$ (25$ for students) payable by PayPal to admin@icarch.net. We will display all the works received on our website: www.icarch.net. We will also forward them to Lady Gaga, for her consideration. And we hope that if one proposal matches “her essence and her spirit,” (as apparently the dress that Armani designed for her did), she will build it! We are almost sure of it! We suggest you choose a real location for your proposal, since we think that this potential client will be quite able to build anywhere in this world. Let’s get Lady Gaga interested in architecture! We think she might enjoy our provocation very much, since architecture is supposed to be “frozen music.” So let’s bring together Dance and Music and Architecture through an adventurous, forward looking and exciting house for the ever changing Lady Gaga!

Thank you,

ICARCH Gallery

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Comments

2 Responses to “A HOUSE FOR LADY GAGA. ICARCH
Gallery Competition”

  1. michelangelo on February 8th, 2010 19:15

    Big compliments to Icarch Gallery and its attentive founder Dan Coma for this idea! Now we will see, if it will unleash the right spirit and raise a storm! mic

  2. a is for architecture » A house for… on February 15th, 2010 16:06

    [...] one for Albert Camus, another one for Anton Chekhov… Then the brilliant idea: why not design a house for Lady Gaga, [...]

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