Dip Unit 17 Yr 4: Jessam Al-Jawad, Samantha Cheong, Maria Fulford, Sarah Izod, Jack Newton, Dean Pike, Kirstie Smeaton, Andrew Walsh. Yr 5: Hans Johan Berglund, James Daykin, Sarah Earney, James Harper, Alex Mok, Phillip Obayda, David Ogunmuyiwa.
Emerging and Dissolving Places Cities, buildings, experiences and ideas emerge while others dissolve. Places are never still. They are dynamic environments that are being constructed again and again throughout history. Formed by continuously changing natural and cultural forces of all kinds, places are partly 'becoming' and partly 'vanishing'. In this respect, the area stretching from Canning Town to the London City Airport along the Thames is particularly interesting. Environmental, economic, social and chance factors have created a heterogeneous collection of fragments, a disorienting territory between land and water, transportation knots and nature reserves, new manufacturing and abandoned industry, conference halls and flats, people, airplanes, trains and cargo ships, strange sounds and smells. Each fragment of this uncanny environment certainly embodies historical and cultural significance, yet the identity of the place as a whole is currently unclear. Unit 17 explores the forces of this site, understand its complex material and conceptual state as an 'emerging and dissolving place', grasp the atmosphere of the 'becoming city', and conceive novel ideas for its roles and edifices.
Niall McLaughlin and Yeoryia Manolopoulou