Designers scoop Prague festival costume and architecture awards

Performance design graduate Emma Ransley has joined spatial design student Ana McGowan as a winner at the international theatre design exhibition the Prague Quadrennial on Performance Design and Space.

The festival, which is held every four years in the capital of the Czech Republic, this year features at least six Massey University staff from the College of Creative Arts, as well as spatial/ performance design students.

Despite being only an emerging designer, Ms Ransley, won the Best Costume Design Award for her project “inhabiting dress’- ahead of established professional designers.

Her work explores how garments can become performative. “The word ‘clothing’ suggests the opposite of ‘costuming’ as it is something we wear and inhabit every day,” she says.

Professor Dorita Hannah from the College, who has been actively involved with the Prague Quadrennial since 1995, described Ms Ransley’s win as “truly remarkable.”

It was a double celebration after spatial design student Ana McGowan was presented with her award for winning the theatre architecture section ahead of more than 180 other entries from 44 countries.

Emerging from the field of interior design, spatial design is the practice of imagining, forming and building environments that consider space, time and what is referred to as ‘sensory inhabitation.’

The theatre architecture competition is run by OISTAT (The International Organisation for Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians) with entries displayed at the festival. Competitors were asked to design a theatre space for a particular type of chosen space within St Anne’s, an ancient deconsecrated church in Prague.

Ms McGowan, who receives around NZ$10,000 for her prize, opted to design a flexible structure made of scaffolding and with towers erected as the performance was happening. The Prague Quadrennial 2011 ends on Sunday.