Film-making becomes a prelude to thinking about architecture as an instrument of animation

This unit uses a brief for a double-house, studio and public screening space for identical-twin stop-motion animators, to investigate the possibilities of architecture itself as a device and object of animation. For us, our title ‘Animate Matter’ carried a double sense: while ‘animate’ was an adjective describing matter (matter is animate, it has force, it moves, it transforms), it was also a verb and became an imperative. And so, our challenge was to animate matter, to set it in motion, and to reconceptualise what architecture could be, thought in those terms.