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This review will be covering Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's King Kong (1933), looking at how it portrays indigenous tribe... -
Script Clone Theory by on Scribd I'm not overly fond of the title, but I honestly cannot think of anything better at the moment.
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Once defined by Ancient Greek Philosopher Aristotle, the three act structure is a way of telling stories ever since stories have been a thin...
OGR 03/11/2018
ReplyDeleteMorning Terry, I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the writing in your travelogue. You've got some talent there! So, I think your artist is perhaps one of the trickiest offered up by the mysterious blue box because the 'junk man' uses 'junk' to create assembled objects. What you've done here is take that logic forwards so that we've essentially got a city on a landfill, but if you imagined the starting point of your project a bit differently, I think you might be able to open up a bit more 'design room' for yourself. So let's begin with the idea that the Junk Man and you are starting from scratch as architects; you have to honour his method, but you've been commissioned to create a building or buildings as an architect might be commissioned. Evidently, you and the Junk Man are going to want to use recycled or repurposed building materials - so originated form landfill, but not physically landfill:
https://www.dezeen.com/tag/recycled/
https://www.architectmagazine.com/tag/recycled-materials
If The Junk Man's work is highlighting social injustice and political inequality between rich and poor, would he be happy to create a city that stank, in which people lived, albeit happily, on a junk heap - or would he be more interested in creating something state-of-the-art - a living space or environment that elevated people's societal status, but which was made entirely from the junk they'd once been associated with? It reminds me a bit of Wakanda - in so much as we're so used to thinking about Africa as poor and 'backward', that a truly political act by the Junk Man might be to challenge that idea completely and turn 'junk' and social injustice into the very opposite message. Architecturally, you could consider appropriating the structures and appearance of slums and shanty towns, but transforming it into something more high-tech - so taking this:
http://www.eoi.es/blogs/imsd/replacing-shanty-towns-by-green-buildings-a-realistic-solution/
and thinking more like this?
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/habitat-67
https://www.dezeen.com/tag/modular/
So - in short, one way to give yourself more options is to perhaps discard the idea that your city has to be made in the same way as your artist makes work (so from actual junk!) and instead decide that he would be keen to reform social injustice and inequality, that the materials might be recycled and repurposed from junk (which changes things immediately in terms of appearance and style etc), but the design approach might nonetheless look at 'modular' approaches - i.e. 'large scale things being comprised from smaller individual units'. As your artist's work has a political and social dimension, you could also look at 'social housing projects' but also the sorts of buildings and spaces that are about community and lowering the boundaries between people. My instincts are these approaches will give you more freedom, will lift you out of having only 'rubbish' to work with, while also working closely with the themes and issues expressed by your artist's work.