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Throughout cycle 1 we have experimented and developed many different ideas and approaches surrounding what we call the site, a derelict building site that is situated near the Brighton station. By experimenting with the site, we have become familiar with the area and be able to see the area and the site with much more depth and layers of perspectives than superficial. What has caught my eye was what could happen if the site was not walled up with fences and left underused but be transformed into something else. This does not mean that I am particularly interested in the imaginary photos that the property management company was advertising or building new and modern premises but how could this land and spot be re-vitalised for the community through art. During the interview, I have discussed topics about urban sharing and cultural hubs.

Sharing the urban space is what I believe is an important concept since the issue of the modern urban space is that people are segregated and individualistic which loses the sense of community and involvement. It is neither sustainable nor desirable as the conventional urban design and planning aspect was focused on profits and many were determined market forces instead of what we feel, experience. Emotion, memory and historical heritage are important for the space and places we live in as well as social interactions to me.

The cultural elements, especially the use of art, music, graphic communication and fashion in a neighbourhood or area are very interesting ways to imagine the future of the site as well. All those cultural research and interpretation into the public domain will make our cities and living environment more vibrant and artistic where it can offer different experiences. I am interested in transport and public architectures such as metro systems, or posters, communicative works and public art that are designed to be placed on the streets for the residents and visitors not isolated in the art galleries. What I have been attracted to in this area was the tube maps design by Harry Beck, Tile designs and graphics as well as Brunel’s architecture for London Underground. I am also interested in the performances and arts that convey more character to the environment and area such as open gigs, cultural events, flea markets and their presentations and interiors as well as decorations.

Furthermore, the use of colour over the assorted digital and physically printed are what interests me. I tend to explore different colours and what is graphically eye-catching as well as communicative. This may come from my graphic communication background. Maps and locations are interesting to me as geographical importance and awareness are also what I am interested in and often result in travelling randomly to many different places.

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This week's text was bell hooks' "Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness" which the author was a well-known feminist and social activist theorist. The text proclaims many interesting aspects regarding the space of margin and the politics, discrimination and struggle of the people who live in the margins.

She defined the Margin as a radical opening where it is a ground for refusal and resistance as the language of defiance only exists in the margin. She also points out that a language is also a place of struggle as we can point out the locational background from the way we speak, the words and accents. What was thought-provoking was the concept of politicisation of memory as it highlighted how the practice of remembering can be a place of struggle. I could link it with the contemporary events and struggles that a lot of black population and feminists trying to demonstrate through a number of protests and manifestos. The concept of power was evident in the text as a force that distinguishes and influences how we view some territories that are easier to forget and some aren't.

Moreover, I could relate myself to the notion that the home is no longer just one place but it is 'locations'. It reminded me of the experience of being an international and settling in different in two different countries and the struggle and conflict that I had to face with being accepted and making myself comfortable. Such a concept can also be expanded to the refugees and immigrant struggles as well as the population and groups that are marginalised in our society and it helps us to communicate and think about their struggle on a daily level. Furthermore, it brought us back to Wise's concept of home and territory since it questions us who determines the centre and the margin.

On Monday we had to set up our own exhibitions with the objects that are gathered and curated from the site. I have taken the approach where the exhibition is combining the words or phrases from the hooks' text and its linkage between the objects that were found on site. It was laid out as a geographical representation of the site using the basic vacuum-formed model with pins and yarns reflecting where each of the objects was collected and they were laid around the desk so that observers can walk around the exhibition as I have done on the site.
Along with the objects, I have written short texts where the objects inspired me to think of, such as immigrants and refugees, location and hierarchy, or something as abstract as the flavour of cigarettes and the structure of the building. They were concerning a variety of subjects and scales from Brighton and Hove to Rust Belts in America and philosophical questions surrounding art and marginality.

What was interesting with this exhibition was that by connecting the keywords derived from the text and making my own connections of the objects, it made the items that would have been overlooked and marginalised in our daily lives started making connections and presented a profound sense of perspectives of the site where it is no longer limited geographically but is connected with the issues and ideas that are much grander than what we could have imagined before. In a way, we were unveiling and shifting focus on those marginal objects and suddenly they become their own realms of thoughts and feelings.

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Week 4: Ocularcentrism & Forms and Materials

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Week 4: Ocularcentrism & Forms and Materials

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Pallasmaa's text "The Eyes of the Skin" was a comprehensive and thoughtful piece in identifying, criticising and suggesting how we can evolve beyond the ocularcentrism in architecture. In the conventional perspective of Western philosophy, sense of vision holds the privileged position in our senses and architecture has also been often understood and practised with vision centric minds. However, since architecture "is our primary instrument in relating us with space and time as well as giving the dimensions a human measure, relying and focusing only on the sense of vision has failed to provide a satisfying result of the architectural practice. Since architecture is not an isolated and self-sufficient artefact, we should consider the multi-sensory experience throughout "different realms which interact and fuse into each other."

Analysing the concept of ocularcentrism in an architectural context has given me more understanding of why such a concept and criticising the visual hierarchy is important in architecture and urban design perspective. During my undergraduate years, I have studied ocularcentrism and Merleau-Ponty in the human geography module, but I couldn't fully grasp the importance or relevance in the practical aspect. However, the text allowed me to discover the importance of focusing on the interrelationship or the fusion of senses in designing the place or environment and how it can affect our experiences and happiness which is crucial in urban design.

During Monday's class, we had the opportunity to present the artworks we have been working on last week. I have produces a number of pieces, ranging from the carpentered work of artistic interpretation of the building, bench as well as plaster casting in different shaped trays.

The wooden pieces were designed to show the ruggedness and the sense of rawness of the site into a crafted artwork, with raw wooden planks from the industrial materials and nailed them together. What was interesting was that on the bench I tied ropes around the bench which went well with the colours of the timber but also could represent the social connection and interactions happening around the bench. It was inspired by both the site and the pub nearby where it had benches for people to sit down as well as the first week's text where it talked about the milieu. I tried to express both the artistic elements of the site and construction but as well as what people do next to the site, in this case, the pub, can create a milieu that involves the site and the place can become special and meaningful. The other work was an avant-garde style wooden model of an imaginary building inspired by the site, to which I have attached 2D photos from my video and near the site. It also has multiple scales as the bottom photos of two men are large and the figurines I put on top of the work were small which can represent the distortion of vision as distances are different. This can also be related to the criticisms of ocularcentrism as it relates the social connection, hearing and touching elements as my work can provide both meanings and physical senses that can remind us of the site.

I have also produced plaster castings that were inspired by both the pub and the site. I have focused on the shapes of the ceiling where it had moulded patterns which I have recreated with a meatball tray. Coloured inks were dropped and let it dried with plaster which was inspired by the graffiti from the site.
For the other plaster castings, I have used food dye which ended up resulting in a marble-like pattern on their walls. The initial idea was to bring the taste, touch and experiences of food as it can be enjoyed in the pub, which I believed how the building can be lived inside us.

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The text we have read last week was "The Agency of Mapping" by James Corner. He points out that mapping is often perceived as something neutral and true but in reality, it is less about displaying the landscape and remaining impartial but actively engages in re-shaping the world we live in. Maps also have an interrelationship that can reveal what is hidden beneath our eyes as well as enabling to take action to deal with such issues, for example, cholera mapping. Moreover, it emphasised that it is not only reflecting (analogous) the landscape but also inevitably carries abstractness, which can create a bias and therefore subjective. It is why mapping can be highly subjective and the world view penetrating such piece can construct our views and perspectives as the makers or cartographers have created/focused.

This didn't come to me as a surprise since I have studied Politics and Geography modules during my undergraduate and the boundaries and borders as well as the historical narratives can be formed and be based on our understanding of the map, especially during the centuries of colonialism and imperialism. Especially as someone who loves maps, it was obvious that certain maps were better for certain purposes and it was reinstating my discovery in more academic and sophisticated ways.

On Monday, we had a chance to get inducted to the workshop in Dorset Pl, where we can experiment with different types of machinery and tools to deal with a lot of different materials. We could try to use the vacuums to cast shapes, spot welding the rods and saws for carpentering. Such equipment allowed us to experiment with a lot of different materials that we couldn't do before. I have experimented with the vacuuming machine to cast shapes on plastic films and did some joinery to produce forms with scrap timber.

It was aimed as a response to the plywood that was part of the wall for the building site and the forms of the building. I have tried to recreate the benches at the pub nearby and the building in a very rough form, which could emphasise the ruggedness and raw feelings that the building site has. I would like to add some metals and ropes to create a piece that can be both represent the feelings from the site and surroundings.
Materials that I am considering are timber, plaster, styrofoam, ropes, metal rods (or foils) and cardboard boxes which will be put into different compositions and possibly painted with either acrylic paints or some dyes.

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This week, we produced the response video to Wise's text "Home, Territory and Identity." Wise argues that by making presence and interacting with the space, we create a milieu that is something resonant and something we can feel though not visible. Thus he emphasises the notion of space, which is described as "the simultaneous co-existence of social interrelations," has a strong relationship with how people use and dwell in such space and the memory that people build in it. Furthermore, he builds on his concept of territory and home. The territory is an action that is expressed by territorialisation effects, whereas home is a collection of milleus that is not just the space itself but the way of inhabiting that makes a home. It is interesting since he picks out the identity and unique social and personal effects that the dwellers have on physical and emotional space, therefore the home and the house should be understood separately.

On the 4min33sec response video, we had to produce a documentary film including the topics that we adopted in relation to the reading and what can this bring about our experience and concepts on the building site. The specific remain of the building is located at 80 Buckingham Rd near the Edinburgh pub.

I have focused on the idea of interaction between the building site and the people &cars passing by, the noise and silence, the lights going on and off, and the compositions of the building that I could observe with different shades. During the filming, the lack of lighting made the camera quality drop, but the grainy texture added has given the videos a unique quality and feel to it. It was unforeseen but effective since it matched well with the raw and rugged sense that the site radiated.
The interaction between the building, graffiti and the people walking past was quite powerful as it captured the moment where a human directly interacted with the building which added a very strong milieu, I believe.
It also occurred with cars passing next to it how the lights can change the shadows on the ceiling, how street lights reacted to motion which all symbolised interaction.

Furthermore, I have added the Quebecoise artist Cœur de Pirate's piano piece "Intermission" as the video's background music which turned out very effective and it suited the atmosphere and vibes. The slowed-down version of her piano piece has given continuity throughout the disconnected scenes and also made the observers more susceptible to the emotion that can arise from watching the video. The title intermission also can reflect the state of the ruin as it can be considered as something unfinished and in-between.

We then moved on towards making subjective mapping via techniques including collage and dérive, to reflect how our perspectives and understandings can creatively affect the mapping procedure. This work still needs further research on the topic and mapping areas that I will have a look.