Vicky Patsalis

Arcade for Sacred Relicts at the Museum of Anatomy, Turin 2009

The Arcade for Sacred Relics at the new Museum of Anatomy in Turin is located in a small urban void behind the Piazza del Vittorio Veneto. It reflects a rich lineage of ‘passages’ that were inserted in the urban fabric of Turin during the late 19th and early 20th century. This not only extended the previous grid of street arcades, but also created a new network of internalised and hidden urban spaces for the emergent Italian Bourgeoisie.

In this context, the project became concerned with a new relationship between the figural body and architecture, challenging the understanding of harmony and beauty in Bourgeois terms - proportion, balance and symmetry - with bodily expressions (the scream) of a conspicuous grotesque beauty. The proposed arcade reflects such body aesthetics as it builds upon a spatial and material exuberance that is both visceral and topological: a neo-architectural body of Sublime Flesh.

Vicky Patsalis is a Greek-Cypriot British architectural designer who studied architecture at Central Saint Martins and the University of Westminster where she was nominated for the RIBA Bronze President's Medal before graduating from the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL in 2009 with works published in Icon Magazine and in the current issue of AD - Architectural Design. She has been working for Make Architects in London since 2006 where she has recently completed her role as project leader on a commercial refurbishment in London and is now working on a refurbishment project in Geneva whilst studying for her Professional PracticePostgraduate Diploma and guest critiquing at the University of Westminster.