Saturday 14 March 2009

Jerry-built construction





Hi Suzy,
Here are a couple of drawings for the construction.
I think that two of the decisions we need to make are how ordered and grid-like we want the construction to be and how dense or open the 'grid' will be. I collaged with various materials but i imagine the colour could be quite different and perhaps less dominant in the actual construction.

We talked about having the supports and beams visible as though we are inside the construction. On one of the drawings i've sketched in some cube-like shelving with objects on them. We need to think about how far we take the idea of this being an interior and using objects to suggest that it is a home.

The people living in the improvised housing you saw at the edge of Paris must be living very precarious lives and struggling for survival. The make-shift housing shows resourcefulness and an inventive way of avoiding the prohibitive rents in Paris, but the living conditions must be dire. Apart from the lack of hygiene facilities there is the incessant noise of the peripherique. I get the impression that these 'illegal' dwellings could be built because they are erected in neglected areas. But the people are also forgotten and overlooked by the rest of the city. I feel that these realities should be part of the piece of work we make.

Much earlier in our blog we talked about our relationship with social issues and although we've not interacted directly with people and politics I think the stories and issues we've stumbled across have shaped parts of this project.

catch-up




Hi Suzy,
I realise that I haven't been posting about the work that I've made/been making for a long time so will put up some images now.
The first image is a detail of the construction i've made with 332 pieces of mdf fixed together with hinges. This is closely related to the construction i made for 'sprawl/what gets carried by the river' as it uses a similar process and has a sense of order and randomness/chaos.
I am not quite sure why or how, but I became interested in the proportionate lengths of the A and B roads in Oxford in relation to the residential/un-classified roads in the city. I managed to get hold of data from the Oxfordshire highways agency about this and found that there are 272km of unclassified/c roads in Oxford as against 41km of A road and 19km of B road. I imagined the unclassified roads as a sprawling unruly mass and I think this feeling is coming over in the construction which has 272 grey blocks for unclassified roads, 41 red blocks for the a roads and 19 for the b road. I haven't seen it all together yet. It has been made in several parts.
We have talked a bit about the springs on previous posts, but here are images of the lasercut mdf.
R x

Sunday 1 March 2009

bed spring models



Hi Rachel,

Here are a few of the models to go with your bed springs.

Sx