Imprisonment & Remedy: Surrender, Conform & Be Cured Jason Tam Supervisor: Dr. Peter Brew
Architecture is the physical manifestation of the synthesis between two distinct realities: the preexisting context; as the reasoning for design, and the consequence of the envisaged place. Humans hurl themselves into the endless political quarrels. Contrived skirmishes, ruthless incarcerations, biased educational systemizations, and whole genocides are the results of disparate social misconceptions and corruptible authority. Inevitably, governmental autocrats realize new totalitarian states, supplanting the petrified by their power and architecture. Buildings are diminished into governing tools as though their exertion of power cultivate loyal subservience. As civilization adapts with the expansion of the cold and tasteless infrastructure, the land is claimed and legitimized by the newly supreme-power, as though it will never cease control or protract its ownership of the domain and its inhabitants. All that can be changed within this governmental system, is the rejuvenation of the infrastructure, followed by the re-establishment of economy, culture and a new threshold of emancipation. The project revolves around manifold counterfactual realities, that are facilitated by various architectural environments which interrogate the discrepancy between chance and probability. Ultimately, the amalgamation of the distinct realities sought after new and unpredictable social occurrences within predictable geographic and programmatic changes. Does hope exist in Architecture beyond the plight of humans? Architecture is the physical manifestation of the synthesis between two distinct realities. Thus, the project reiterates itself, until we finally discover the best version of the new reality.
Peter Corrigan Medal Semester 1, 2020 The Leon van Schaik 25th Anniversary Peer Assessed Major Project Award Semester 1, 2020 Supervisor Statement In the circuit board like diagrams that outline the schema of this project, at the intersection line of the Belt and Road Initiative and as it passes through a territory occupied by remote isolated rural communities, is the word HOPE. The overall schema of these diagrams is familiar enough. Lefaivre and Tzonis titled their study “Architecture of Regionalism in the Age of Globalization: Peaks and Valleys in the Flat World”: regionalism establishes boundaries (‘peaks’ and ’valleys’) while globalisation removes obstacles of interaction and communication (‘flattens the world’). A classic analysis of hope takes hope to be a compound attitude, consisting of a desire for an outcome and a belief in that outcome’s possibility. The project is a study of seemingly incommensurate scales; that of global trade and local commerce, of time and duration, of infrastructure and habitation, things that are constructed materially, capital and by pact and agreement society and culture. What is being sought in this project are moments where difference is suspended, where there is a break in the obvious oppositions. The views presented are of unscripted moments demanding and challenging the viewer to interpret where the story goes. _Dr. Peter Brew