Selfie Curtain / An Unfinished Encyclopedia of Scale Figures Without Architecture

MOS Architects (USA)

Studio-X Istanbul

“As architects draw buildings, they also draw, notate, or otherwise represent the human through their use of proportion, measurement, … and scale figures. This project began, simply, with looking at the inhabitants of architecture drawings without their accompanying architecture. Ultimately, using these multiple and varied figures, we produced an interactive Selfie Curtain, meant to intermingle people visiting the exhibition with the representations of people by architects, and An Incomplete Encyclopedia of Scale Figures Without Architecture, a comprehensive collection of various architects’ representations of human life… It might seem naively absurd, but as we stared at the countless figures in this book, it became hard to see them as anything but a kind of global citizenry. They are Architecture’s refugees.” –MM, HS

Selfie Curtain / An Incomplete Encyclopedia of Scale Figures Without Architecture is a study of the representation of humans in architects’ drawings. A printed silk curtain and a 1504-page hardcover tome bring together over 2,000 figures produced by over 200 architects. As architecture transformed over the centuries, so did the way the human figure was depicted in it. The resulting extreme diversity of figures is contrasted to a world “that seems to be ever more intolerant of difference and increasingly inhuman.”