Migrating Structures

Migrating Structures

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Research Question

How can architecture and design preserve oral storytelling?

Traditional oral storytelling is a

shared event wherein storyteller and audience gather, listen, and participate in “accounts of past deeds, beliefs, taboos, and myths” (Utley, 2009).

‘Oral history’ predates the written word as the oldest type of historical inquiry, and across several traditions and cultures, oral storytelling has been the primary mode through which history, knowledge and values have passed from generation to generation.

Oral storytelling, distinct from reading a story aloud or reciting a piece verbatim from memory, is retelling the story from memory, as vague or precise as it might be, and flavouring the story with one’s unique delivery.

The verbal nature of traditional storytelling means that much of the oral history passed down by the different cultures and communities that employ it has been lost or whitewashed.

However, Saxe (2012) suggests that culture naturally evolves as new ways of living are established. Culture is perhaps not a static model that can be ‘lost’, but flowing and dynamic, changing to meet evolving society and ways of living.

Trans-For-Man (8), Alicja Kwade

Young people construct new forms of knowledge (or of practice) in relation to ‘particular’ functions or “emergent goals” in the process of social activities (Saxe, 2012).

‘jack fell down’, Alison Lowry, 2012

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Precious Item

My Grandmother’s Voice

My

precious element is my grandmother’s voice. Through her unique retelling of our family history, which she conveyed employing dynamic speech, facial expressions and gestures, my grandmother shared stories of our culture in her own matchless way. Her voice is precious to me for the love and comfort it holds, but also for the deep wisdom and history it imparts.

We often bury items that are precious

to us to preserve them physically or symbolically. The digging of an underground vessel within which to ‘preserve’ a voice or story recalls themes of ritual and ceremony.

The gestures and expressions of an oral retelling are imprinted in the ground through markings during the process of digging an underground vessel for a voice. The echoes, hums or whispers generated in the pockets of earth within the vessel hold the same meaning.

Stack, white, Torbjørn Kvasbø

Lost in Thought, Tony Cragg

Sea of Memory 010, Noriko Kuresumi

Still Life with a Volume of Wither’s ‘Emblemes’, Edward Collier, 1696

Case study

“Junya Ishigami's architecture digs deep for house and restaurant in Yamaguchi, Japan”

Ishigami’s geological and organic

Yamaguchi grotto is fully sculpted out of the earth, its form owing to an inverted fabrication process which included earth pigmentation and colouring obtained during the ‘revealing’ of the structure from its concrete mould.

Model for Yamaguchi grotto house and restaurant, Junya Ishigami

The surrounding area of the site is renowned for its natural grottos and Ishigami honours the natural phenomena in the architecture of Yamaguchi grotto. The building structure was created by drilling into the earth and pouring concrete into the organically shaped cavities.

Following this, the earth around the moulded concrete was dug and scraped.

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Site

Margate Main Sands

A seaside town on the south coast of the Thames estuary in Kent. The site at Margate Main Sands, where the earth is granular and wet, created an interesting challenge in how an underground vessel might be dug in this geological context.

Margate Main Sands

Blean Woods

Blean Woods is a designated National Nature Reserve that covers 509 hectares, or

1,257 acres, of woods and heath. The vegetation and compact earth of the woodland provided a vastly different topography to the Margate Main Sands site.

Blean Woods

Blean Woods, Canterbury

51°17'51.8"N 1°01'54.9"E

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Practice-led Research

As the ‘migrating structures’ project

involved the digging of an underground vessel within which to ‘preserve’ a voice, experimental research involved the creation of a set of tools with which to dig the subterranean vessel. The experimental practice entailed the fashioning of tools that are anthropologically and ergonomically suitable to the storyteller, the ‘digger’.

Digging tools

Gestures Facial expressions Body movements Appropriate voices Speech patterns

Pointing Stare Slow smile Leaning in close Silence Dramatic pause Drawn out words Repetition

Rudimentary tools

Etchings in clay mould during practice-led research

As Saxe (2012) suggested, “Young people construct new forms of knowledge (or of practice) in relation to ‘particular’ functions or “emergent goals” in the process of social activities”. The adapted tool here demonstrates this.

A trip to Dakar, Senegal during the

December break provided an opportune occasion and location to continue practice-led studies and the manufacture of digging tools. As a West African country with an entrenched culture of traditional crafts practice, and a rich history of traditional oral storytelling, Senegal provided an immersive, inspiring and educational practice-led research experience.

Dakar, Senegal

Dibétou

Dibétou’s heartwood is yellow-brown to dark brown usually with a golden coloured sheen, sometimes with dark streaks or veined (called tigerwood).

Dibétou is native to West and Central Africa.

Dimb

Dimb is a compact, deciduous tree that is found across Western Tropical

Africa, from Senegal down to Nigeria. Dimb is generally yellowish, durable and suitable for carpentry and joinery. Trunks of large, old, hollow trees are prized for making drums and dug-out canoes.

Digging Tools

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Drawings

Plan NTS

Perspectives

Tools

Section NTS

Section NTS