An Appian Imagination

In 1909, the Swiss scenographer Adolphe Appia retreated to a rented room at the Château de Glérolles amongst terraced vineyards on the shore of Lake Geneva, the Swiss Alps rising in the distance. Inspired by the burgeoning music-movement practice of eurythmics, here Appia furiously drafted a series of drawings he titled Espaces rythmiques. Composed of stairs, ramps, and platforms, these perspectives are devoid of human figures yet capture a profound state of expectancy; they are empty architectures waiting for the body. To activate these latent spaces, this project reaches forward in time, employing Viewpoints – a postmodern performance pedagogy that trains performers’ sense of embodiment and awareness – as an analytical lens. An Appian Imagination is a speculative design project that extracts Appia’s rhythmic spaces from the page and composes them into a singular architectural topography. Situated in the very landscape outside the château where Appia conceived the drawings, the project transforms historical scenography into a dynamic, physical environment, collaborating with Appia and Viewpoints to design an architecture of embodiment.