CHRISTINE BJERKE

The Bartlett Summer School 2013: Porta-Place 

Teaching at this year The Bartlett Summer School 2013 with Graham Burn, http://gburn.tumblr.com/,  and Owain Williams, http://www.ow-works.co.uk/. 

Introduction to The FX Beauties Club

Final MArch project, The Bartlett School of Architecture, unit 12 2012-2013

    The FX Beauties Club explores the historical and contemporary link between women and money, power and mirrors. 

The study is based on a curiosity of the current phenomenon of the FX Beauties in Tokyo, established in 2007 as a virtual club of 36 Japanese housewives. From their personal domestic settings the women gamble money through the intertwined and ‘floating world’ of the FOREX web, outplaying the historical idea of the money market as being controlled purely by the male.

The FX Beauties Club proposes a physical women’s club of the 21st Century, inhabited by the Japanese women of the FX Beauties. Situated in the ‘in-between’, the women’s club critiques the existing and historical gendered ‘man-made’ area of London by being sited in the space between the gentlemen’s clubs of the so called ‘club-land’, St. James.

By using a palette of reflective and matte surfaces, the building begins to propose and invert boundaries between the clubs, the genders and the symbolic value of views crossing through both the feminine and the masculine clubs.

The specific reflections are used as a method of constructing spaces that begin to suggest an architecture that reflects the position of the FX Beauties as being ‘in-between’ two genders, cities and timezones. 

Building Details - The FX Beauties Club

5th year project, 2013, The Bartlett School of Architecture

24 hours of a FOREX (Beauty) trader 

5th year project, 2013, The Bartlett School of Architecture

  Mapping the FOREX trade of the FX Beauties in the area of the site, St. James in London. 

Blue: money

On the Floating World of the FX Beauties

5th year project, 2013, The Bartlett School of Architecture, 2012-2013

Unit catalogue from unit 12 online 

This Year's work from unit 12, The Bartlett School of Architecture, 2013 

Link:

Interface of the facade  

5th year project, 2013, The Bartlett School of Architecture, actual model scale 1:50 

'trying to fit in' 

5th year project, 2013, The Bartlett School of Architecture, actual model scale 1:50 

The gentlemen's club in the background with the feminine FX Beauties Club trying to fit into the form of the existing.

Entrance of The FX Beauties Club 

5th year project, 2013, The Bartlett School of Architecture, actual model scale 1:50 

The FX Beauties Club 

5th year project, 2013, The Bartlett School of Architecture, actual model scale 1:50 

The FX Beauties Club elevation from Stirling Square 

  5th year project, 2013, The Bartlett School of Architecture, actual model scale 1:50 

The FX Beauties Club elevation from in front of the Turf Club

5th year project, 2013, The Bartlett School of Architecture, actual model scale 1:50 

The FX Beauties Club elevation from Waterloo Place 

5th year project, 2013, The Bartlett School of Architecture, actual model scale 1:50 

The FX Beauties Club facing the historical Reform Club

5th year project, The Bartlett School of Architecture, model photo

The proposed FX Beauties Club is facing the existing club and takes parts of the facade by reflecting it onto itself. 

Fragment of reflections