Review: Skin and Bones at Somerset House Embankment Galleries, April 24 until August 10 2008.
A controversial design for several towering blocks of flats on the seafront of genteel Hove in Sussex has been criticised with the memorable simile that they look like 'transvestites caught in a gale'.
Never mind that they are the work of renowned architect Frank Gehry, residents who live behind the local Regency facades don't want to be invaded by the new breed of structures that defy traditional ideas of shape and impression.
Whether you like Gehry's asymmetrical high-rises or not, the comparison to humans (presumably wearing dresses) is appropriate, as architecture and fashion are disciplines that have always been connected to some degree, being indicative of the zeitgeist and opportunities of the time.
The two branches of design are now interwoven in particularly new and exciting ways, with the help of innovative materials and the possibilities of computer aided design. This is what Skin and Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture aims to address, looking at how the daring shapes that characterise contemporary fashion and architecture inform and influence each other.
It's a cleverly curated show by Brooke Hodge of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, from where it has travelled to Tokyo before coming to the new Embankment Galleries at Somerset House, housed in the dramatically lit, subterranean vaulted space on the riverside.
It opens with a wall devoted to the media that emerged in the 1980s that began to present architecture in terms of a broader view of visual culture and style. Blueprint magazine in particular set the scene for the flourishing of independent and bold architecture informed by trends in popular culture.
Following on from this, some of the fashion/engineering cross-overs on display are quite obviously stated. Take Hussein Chalayan's 'Remote Control Dress' (1999) – made from aircraft material with moveable flaps and structural lines that echo the design of an aeroplane.
Other techniques that fashion has taken from architecture and engineering are more subtle. Cantilevering and suspension, usually associated with bridge building, have been used in rather space age type outfits from Yohji Yamamoto. A red example from his 2006 spring/summer collection involves a snaking tube attached to an unusual flat-topped bustle, while Yeohlee Teng has studied suspension bridges to create confections based on catenary curves.
It's not a one-way exchange between fashion and building. Architectural models and photographs aplenty show how new buildings borrow from the aesthetic and challenging shapes thrown up on the catwalk.
One obvious example is in the use of print – a traditional decoration for fabrics, it is also being used in new building design. A relief leaf motif used by Herzog and de Meuron on one building actually feels rather 1970s – like those concrete textures used on post-war concrete shopping centres.
Other maquettes covered in patterns also seem to demonstrate just why we paint the outside of houses plain colours and don't put wallpaper on them – fashion is disposable and once you grow tired of a print you can throw out that dress. Not so with a hunk of steel and concrete.
Nevertheless, other decorative techniques borrowed by the world of Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid from couture are more successful. Heatherwick Studio's 'Temple' (2001) uses the undulating, organic folds of a piece of cloth combined with a mille-feuille, stepped texture on the outside, and is beautiful and surprising. It was indeed modelled on a piece of fabric, scanned with hospital equipment.
The National Stadium designed for the Beijing Olympics, likewise, adopts weaving to provide an unusual surface. Like the London 2012 Olympics logo, though, you're not guaranteed to think it's that nice.
Prettier is Lars Spuybrook's Maison Folie in Lille, France, which recalls diaphanous contours of shimmering lamé in its metalwork wall, and the slashed 'pleats' incorporated into 'House in New England' by Office dA.
Aside from all these shared structural techniques between the human sized clothes and the human scaled buildings, one of the other things they probably share in common is their visionary, rather than realised, quality. That is, many of the building models and designs remain unbuilt, and the clothes are only really fit for the catwalk.
However, you are more likely to see the audacious on the street in the form of a building these days – think Birmingham's studded Selfridges building (Future Systems) and the somewhat frightening, twisting concertina of a bridge above London's Floral Street, connecting the Royal Ballet School and Opera House (Wilkinson Eyre Architects). For this, we might thank the world of haute couture for inspiring our architects to really put their imaginations to the test.
As Thomas Heatherwick puts it:
"I work in the world of three-dimensional design and couldn't care less whether something is called fashion, design, architecture, or art."
"In my thinking there is no separation between fashion and architecture; both are about methods of construction, manipulation of materials, functionality and aesthetics, but fundamentally about the user."
