Yousef Al-Mehdari

Ornamental Transfigurations - Two Chapels for St. Catherine in Malta and Istambul, 2008

Explorations into spiritual experiences of the body and religious rituals practiced in sacred spaces have been developed into Two Chapels for St. Catherine situated along processional routes in Malta and Istanbul.

The various designs attempt to investigate the possibilities of visual and theoretical representations of a collective ‘body’ in its abstract and figural form. By blurring the boundaries between the animate and inanimate a new form of ‘body baroque’ is achieved - where vortices of limbs ossify into Cathedrals; and overlapping anatomies become passages and valves. These ornamental transfigurations aim to rediscover a new figural ornamentation in contemporary architecture as a revived mode of narrative. 

Yousef Al-Mehdari is an architectural designer with both Maltese and Kuwaiti background. He studied architecture at the University of Greenwich before gaining his Diploma and Masters degree from the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL. His Diploma and Masters work was featured and reviewed in the American Building Blog and exhibited at the Dreamspace Gallery, London, ‘Perdidos’ exhibition at the COAM, Madrid and London Eight exhibition at Sci Arc in Los Angeles. He worked for CRAB (Peter Cook and Gavin Robotham) in London and is currently a project architect at LASSA Architects in Brussels. Yousef is also an assistant tutor at the Architectural Association in London.