ARCHITECTONS OF LONDON

Precedents & Premise: (subject to change) I am currently studying projects with a focused interest on social condensers and collective living through drawings, readings, animations, and renderings, looking to re-imagine the City of London in a ‘near-post-work’ future. The era of physically located corporate towers of business have migrated to digital platforms, turning the city over as a field of vestiges of a dense corporate past to be consumed, re-imagined, and re-inhabited. This takes root along the original path of the Londinium Wall, and utilizes an art of differences and delightful anxieties in order to test various potential architectural manifestations. This looks to question the model of a city as is currently understood, and offer a projective scenario of what could be, breaching vital discussions of individuality, masses, performance, freedom, utility, leisure, private, public, tradition, preservation, pleasure, ruins, past, and future, among other things.

My main medium of exploration will be the creation of moving images, animation and film. This form of media embodies a “…further insight into the necessities governing our lives by its use of close-ups, by its accentuating of hidden details in familiar objects, and by its exploration of commonplace milieux through ingenious guidance of the camera; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of a vast and unsuspected field of action [Spielraum].” (Benjamin, Walter) It embodies a sort-of bottom-up, Burroughs-collage spirit in means of production and conversation, which suits the desired architectural exploration. I began using moving image as means of narrative representation about a year and a half ago, and have been working towards a better understanding of the entire process of film-making and animation.

Software I am currently learning to produce visual content: Unreal Engine, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, ZBrush, Maya, Houdini.

Why the City of London? I have the unique opportunity of taking my thesis studies abroad, combining a traditionally non-thesis travel opportunity with the rigor and curiosity required of thesis research and development.

As my understanding of the City of London grows, so will the visual-narrative representation of my thesis project. I am looking to utilize on-site audio samples, photographs and film, as well as textures, in order to develop various representation.