riba bronze medal '15jpeg' submission (shortlisted)

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presidents medal entry
The project centres around the observation of tourist activity on the River Thames, the linear, non-diverging route of the tour boats promotes an experience of London lived through its icons and landmarks. Where once the Thames was the gritty, industrial artery of the City, there now exists a boundary to which industry has been forced beyond the immediate riverbank, opening a polished and well-kept landscape for the city’s millions of tourists. The Ministry of Subverted Restoration proposes that this old industry, the very thing that London was built upon should once again be revealed, establishing the Thames as a route for industry once again.

The Ministry exists to subvert a reminder of a very different London, one little more than 100 years ago into its current urban fabric, creating glimpses into an industrial past. The site, Victoria Tower Gardens itself used to house dozens of wharfs & slums, busy with the sound of industry. They stood alongside the Palace of Westminster, in opposition to its grandeur as a reminder of the everyday existence of the majority of Londoners. The Ministry building seeks to celebrate London’s rich industrial past, revealing its integrity beyond the ‘icon-centred’ fake image that ‘tourist London’ is experienced as.

The Ministry will house a process which will melt down scrap steel from the demolition of remaining industrial buildings imported on barges from further along the Thames, and cast them into objects that will fill the cracks of the everyday London Street. The cast objects promote intrigue to the common tourist as they are rewarded by finding more as they explore the city beyond its typical tourist routes.

The Ministry has been derived from the process of metal casting, it main spaces formed by function. The exhibition space, displaying the remaining cast-moulds hangs between two towering chimneys, a close encounter with a forgotten sight on London’s riverbank.

ping pong pavilion_LONDON FESTIVAL of ARCHITECTURE 2012

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pavilion blog
Dan Sweeting and Gang of Six won a competition for the design of a playful pavilion at Oxford Brookes University. The pavilion is based on the Ping Pong variant ‘Around The World’. Incorporating all the entries to the competition students from Montana State University and Oxford Brookes University finalised the design together and started building!

the ordinary: from the smithsons to sergison bates_DISSERTATION

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download dissertation

site device/concept model_MINISTRY OF SUBVERTED RESTORATION

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[concept model]
The concept model explores the many fluxes on site, as well as the historical attributes associated with it; concrete blocks represent the mass of industry once prevalent on the site / brass elements (4) represent the artefacts of history now left on the site & found at low tide / metal rods act as a physical connection between the fragments that are washed up & their previous locations upstream / an acrylic plate (6) is representative of the full site as well as the fluctuating tides, revealing & hiding the site.

[site model]
All along the banks of the Thames a rare & natural habitat exists in amongst the harsh urban fabric of the embankment. When the tide goes out a whole ecology is revealed, opportunistic plants & sometimes opportunistic animals. The device seeks to reveal this uncontrolled environment in stark opposition to the tightly controlled image of Victoria Tower Gardens. Harnessing the tide, the device floats up & down the surface of the wall, reflecting the habitat up to the lip of the wall, ready for anyone who peers over.

THE UNSEEN LANDSCAPE

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Through a brief concerned with rooting an “unseen landscape” into the physical, the notion of a digital landscape created by geo-tagged photographs was explored. Each day thousands of tourists pass through Parliament Square, their experience documented through photography. As is becoming more common, sites such as google earth and facebook collate these images onto maps, consequently giving an online representation of place.

Of those images tagged in and around Parliament Square, upwards of 90% of those are of Big Ben. The aim of the project was to put people back in touch with the physical realities of everyday life, of ordinary occurrence. In order to implement this, the scheme proposed was a camera obscura that would project seemingly random/everyday moments in the area, upload them to geo-tagging websites and begin to tilt the balance of icon vs. everyday

flaneur & tourist_THE UNSEEN LANDSCAPE

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The flaneur views the world, not through the modern ritual of sightseeing, but by digressing from guided and packaged tours, pursuing solitary walks away from prescribed routes along unpredictable avenues, continuously aware of the distinct reflective processes of his perception.

The touchstone sits as both object/concept as well as functioning camera. Through the use of the wooden box representing the collection of images in the conceptual rationale of the object, it also doubles as a pinhole camera, capable of capturing small images onto black & white photographic paper. The paper must be loaded in the dark through the hinged door as shown below, then the shutter lever is pulled back and exposure begins. Through a series of 1 month/6 month exposures I hope to show the permenance of the metal route respresneting the paths of a tourist, and the path of the flaneur through the temporary thread.