- Design Practices
About me
At the heart of Alessandro Ayuso’s work is an exploration of the figure: the limits of the body’s intelligibility, its (in)capabilities as a container of both viscera and subjectivity, its propensity to be framed— and in some cases, become— architecture. Schematic drawings, fictional accounts, and historical research give way to models, sculptures, mixed media images, and animations.
Alessandro’s research is the subject of his book, Experiments with Body Agent Architecture: The 586-year-old Spiritello in Il Regno Digitale, published by UCL Press. Alessandro’s drawings and constructions have been exhibited in the UK, Italy and the US, and were included in Drawing Futures, published by UCL Press. His writing on Body Agents in Baroque architecture has also been included as part of the new anthology The Material Imagination: Reveries on Architecture and Matter published by Routledge.
Teaching
Alessandro is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster, where he leads DS25 on the MArch course, teaches design on the BA Interior Architecture course, and acts as a PhD Supervisor. He is also an MArch Thesis Supervisor at the Bartlett, UCL, and sits on the editorial board of the journal Il Quaderno. Alessandro has taught design at several universities in the US, including Virginia Tech and Marywood Universities, as well as in study-abroad workshops in Mexico, Italy, and New York. He has been an invited lecturer at numerous institutions, including Parsons the New School for Design and the University of Antwerp.
Research
Alessandro’s work exploring the condition of the embodied subject falls into three interrelated categories.
The ‘Body Agents’ series engages the representation of figures as actors in architecture. The body agents are personae charging space with points of view. The models and drawings shown here are products of historical research, narrative writing, and architectural design processes.
‘Agent Bodies’ are intuitive mixed-media drawings which could be thought to present the interior of fantastic posthuman bodies (or, put another way, ‘organs-without-bodies’).
‘L.E.A.P.s’, or Leaky Embodiment Alter-ego Personas consider the body as a type of architecture itself; these three-dimensional paintings and portraits are provocations, presenting tragicomic and monstrous subjectivities. They are figures inscribed with layers reflecting the circumstances of their making, incorporating autobiography and the place and process integral to their creation.
Publications
For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.