Charlie and the Mysterious Chocolate Factory by Kevin Leung
‘Twice a day, on his way to and from school, little Charlie Bucket had to walk right past the gates of the factory. And every time he went by, he would begin to walk very, very slowly, and he would hold his nose high in the air and take long deep sniffs of the gorgeous chocolatey smell all around him. Oh, how he loved that smell! And oh, how he wished he could go inside the factory and see what it was like!’1 It is this very impulse inside the head of Charlie Bucket which makes a person curious about the interior of a factory. That person could be a housewife on her way to buy groceries; could be a taxi driver picking up a passenger or an office worker just got off work. To them, knowing that their favourite hair gel, food or household appliances might be manufactured from the factory next door makes them curious about the place where the magic happened - origin and the manufacturing process of their products. This build up of curiosity is the reason that fuels the connection between manufacturing processes and curatorial spaces. Since the industrial revolution from 1760 to 18402, factory arose and became a space that housing machinery. Along side with the transformation from workshops to warehouse scale, they soon developed a dependent relationship with cities, where their assembly lines would connect with the city’s transport infrastructure and they became a necessary infrastructure in major cities - monumental silos and warehouses soon became familiar typology to people, but however remained as mysterious and unwelcoming spaces. To the majority of public, they were perceived as forbidden, even dangerous spaces, spaces that are filled with machines, company secrets and toxic chemicals.To start establish the connection between factory spaces as curatorial space, I will start from Roald Dahl’s fictional classic, Charlie and the Chocolate factory. With the spaces inside the factory articulated in a dramatic manner through the character Willy Wonka, the reader themselves are being brought on a journey curated by Roald Dahl himself. Through expanding on the fictional content of the book, I aim to unravel a new species of curatorial strategy by reviewing and analyse Dahl’s work with both existing and unrealised architectural projects.
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Roald Dahl, Charlie and the chocolate factory Industrial revolution, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
Prologue 50 years ago Willy Wonka re-opened the factory for a day for 5 chosen children to visit. To Willy Wonka, the real purpose of opening his factory was to find his successor. In his mind, with the unique spacial qualities of the collection of the rooms in his factory, he believes if the visitors are guided through them and provoked in the right time and right sequence, it will allow Wonka to reveal their personality flaw and judge accordingly who will be the right successor. With that in mind and with the help of the oompa loompa, he soon develops his own curatorial strategy, in other words a deliberate sequence of how he would guide his guests through his factory. Through the guided provocations throughout Wonka’s tour in the factory, Charlie Bucket finally emerged as the successor to the Wonka legendary factory with his pure curiosity in the factory’s production. Other than Wonka’s factory, there is also a factory in a mysterious land far far away, called the mysterious cosmetic factory and it has an evolved curatorial strategy compare to the one Wonka used years ago. Wonka’s curatorial strategy uses the existing spaces as materials for building his curatorial strategy. However the strategy, is only limited to the built infrastructure. On the other hand the mysterious cosmetic factory itself serves as a framework for prefabricated spaces, creating a flexible relationship between the curatorial space and the curatorial content. The stitching and re-stitching of the two hence creates possibilities of unlimited curatorial strategy. This mysterious cosmetic factory introduces the emergence of a second type of factory curatorial spaces. Itself and the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factory are examples of how corporation and nation uses the manufacturing spaces as propaganda and advertisement. Renzo Piano’s Fondazione Vedova is another example of a similar type of project, where the exhibition space he designed has the potential to produce different possibilities for curatorial strategy. The non-stop action of selecting artwork and exhibiting them create an unlimited combination of the curation sequence of the paintings. Renzo Piano’s Fondazione Vedova and Price’s fun palace kickstarted the transformation from a factory’s manufacturing space to a curatorial space for either commercial or political reasons, to a factory’s manufacturing process becomes its own curatorial project. Shifting from using the curiosity of audiences as a starting point, these two projects dwell on the idea of a factory that manufactures different curatorial strategies. Now 50 years later, it is time for Charlie, as the owner of the factory to host the golden tickets event once again for the Chocolate factory in order to determine his successor. With time short on his hands and lack of ideas for a curatorial strategy, Charlie decided to embark on an adventure to this mysterious land to seek for new ideas for his own curatorial strategy.
Charlie and the mysterious cosmetic factory It is 7:00 am sharp, and after 2 hours of travelling in this dirty train, I can see the image outside the window is finally coming to a full stop. I swiftly get off the train with my belongings and I am instantly greeted by two photogenic tour guides on the platform. I have been told only brave and curious souls come here for inspiration and enlightenment. With that in mind, I hope my visit today can give me the inspiration needed for establishing my own curatorial strategy. I follow the tour guides to a bus right outside the station and with almost no traffic on the road, after an hour I arrive at the final destination. Located in the middle of nowhere, the distant structure in front of me is framed by an entranceway accompanied by planted trees, smiling workers and and colourful machines. Looking through the shadow casted by the entranceway, you can barely see human activities lurking underneath. ‘An important place, this!’, The two photogenic tour guide exclaimed, ‘In this light industrial city, this is one of the most important light industrial facility and it represents our people in every way: the efficiency, the dedication and the beauty!We hereby warm heartedly welcome you to the mysterious cosmetic factory ,Mr Charlie Bucket’. ‘‘the mysterious cosmetic factory’ our people called it, the constantly evolving and changing product lines supervised by his greatness has recently became quite an attraction for tourists and foreign officials. The evolving manufacturing process is fuelled and supported by constantly changing technological demand. The purpose of the tour established for this infrastructure is to allow foreign visitors to fully understand the true image of the country and how light industrial infrastructure tied in with our people’s lives.’ The tour guide explained to us while we slowly walked through a road carved out from a patch of greenery. After a minute or two of walking, we stopped, and in front of us stood a mysterious structure. Looking through apertures on its outer skin, you can see smiling figures, adults and children playing and talking in a polished white interior. One of the tour guides opened the entrance door, and he pointed at the landscape that met my eyes inside the entrance of the building.
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I was looking down upon a snowy landscape inside a white interior. Inside the space, planted trees and grasses are covered with patches of snow. What is more, in the middle of the snowy landscape there is a shed half covered in snow. Along the sides of the entrance there were also two slabs of stone engraved with two roles of golden letters. What a grand entrance for a place this scale, it indeed reminds me of the chocolate room from my factory. ‘Mr Bucket, we see the factory is an ever evolving framework structure, supported by these constantly changing spaces that house scenarios suggested by the government. The landscape in front of you is just one of these spaces. These spaces are flexible, they can be reproduced, prefabricated, and rearranged at will in a short period of time. With the factory serving as a main framework for these prefabricated spaces, they allow the authorities to freely determine what message they are trying to convey. Through the positioning of these static spaces, our machineries can be reorganised around them and hence curate a route best for our visitors to experience our facilities.’ One of the tour guided explained. ‘These spaces are constantly changing throughout your tour through our facility, now you see a snowy landscape with a shed covered in snow, next moment it might be an army marching in a open ground, or a group of graceful children playing on a playground.’ The other guide added. The tour continued as the guides lead me through a white, spotless hallway. We stopped halfway where the guide suggest us to look at a glass shelf framed in the centre of the wall. Reflected against the fluorescent light in the dim corridor, you can see products in colourful packaging are exhibited in rows and accompanied by odd little plastic flower on their sides. The guide pointed at one of the product containing some brightly coloured liquid, ‘These are for the children, and the product is extracted from brightly coloured fruit so they appeal to them.’ The guide then point to a different product, appear to be some creamy liquid packaged in a semi-translucent package. ‘These on the other hand is for users with sensitive skin, the product is extracted from rare herbs and is our mainstream line of product. Now we are going to show you the top of the line product from our facility, please follow us closely.’ As I follow the first tour guide, I noticed the other tour guide is following right behind me, making sure I am behaving myself.
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We proceeded into another corridor where there is another glass box framed in the centre, but this time the inside of the box is more luxuriously decorated and there are more focus to the product itself. ‘This is our top of the line cosmetic face cream, extracted from the rarest high mountain ginseng. Thanks to the generosity of the government, it is only used as a gift for newly wed couple. Regarding our other products, in order to provide our people a high quality life, we provide them an essential pack of our products every month. All of the products are also on sale in pharmacies where tourists and locals can purchase if so desire.’ After the exhibition of their entire product line, the tour continued. Before we headed into the manufacturing room, I have encounter another static space next to some machineries. Inside the space, four military dressed men are standing in front of a wide cityscape. These men stood in silence and with pride, looking into the distance. On top of them flies a massive flag moving in the wind. ‘The man on the right is our leader, he has looked over our shoulders since the beginning of the empire. If you want to take a photo, please make sure you include his highness fully.’ We then proceeded to a hall populated with a line of machinery, leading into another one of those static spaces, but this time inside the space it consists of a red cityscape and on top stood a strong woman figure. This woman stood in her space and attempt to motivate the lifeless workers working on the machineries. The machineries occupy two thirds of the white interior where the rest is left as a foot path for visitors, divided out by a row of red carpet divider. The production cycle is shown linearly by having the machineries placed in line with each other, well fitted just like Tetris pieces. ‘Look alive Mr Bucket, this is my favourite room! Welcome to the heart of our facilities and where the magic happened! The arrangement of this room is deliberately so the entire process can be seen by our guests. The authorities of this facility cannot be more proud of our advance process, and that is why the machinery is arranged linearly in order to show the visitors the bare production process of our products.’
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In-between the machines you can spot workers dressed in identical white uniforms, monotonously administering the production cycle. Followed by the guide, we walk through the space, watching the production cycle almost like a curated short film in the Biennale, looking at the automated machines hum and turn, while the products are being manually packaged at the end. In the room, artificial lighting is replaced by clean openings on the wall, decorated with oddly placed flowers. ‘There!’ cried the tour guide, pointing his finger at the end of the conveyor belt. ‘These are the top quality products we showed you just now! Every drop of the face cream is freshly extracted from rare high mountain ginseng. And just look at the workers! These white uniforms ensure the most hygienic manufacturing process possible in order to keep all the goodness inside those ginseng face cream.’ We slowly exit the factory while the guide continue explaining the importance of the factory. ‘The supreme commander Kim Jung Il has visited the factory seven times, because him the greatness view this factory highly as a symbol of the quality of life of North Korean citizens and that is why it is necessary for anyone that visits our land need to come and witness for themselves the greatness of our government. Here please take this ginseng face cream as a gift and wish you a pleasant stay in North Korea.’ After Charlie’s visit to the mysterious cosmetic factory in the far away land of North Korea, he is fascinated at how the factory uses the combination of static spaces inside picture frames and the manufacturing space to carry out their own political curatorial strategies. vHe realised every moment of his experience in the mysterious cosmetic factory is unique, because these pre-fabricated spaces are always temporary. The framed static space can be treated the same as plugged in modules, using the factory and the machineries as a major framework to help the curator to curate their desired political message. The North Korean government claimed that this is the realisation of Le Corbusier’s idea of ‘machine of living’. I believe it opens a whole new curatorial perspective. From this curatorial perspective, the changing nature of the space is a whole new curatorial project. They believe using the factory as a framework for producing curatorial space is itself an expansion on Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood’s early ad hoc improvisational street theatre project - the fun palace. Similar to the You can read the intention of the organisers and the users just from the spacial arrangement, put aside all the content, fun palace becomes a factory that produces space, and its process becomes a self curated project.
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Conclusion From Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, to North Korea cosmetic factory, and eventually Cedric Price’s Fun palace, these projects each discuss the role of curatorial strategies in a fictional space, a real factory and also an unrealised project. In common, they possess the same characteristics: mysterious, bit scary, patronising, extreme and serious. With their own curatorial strategies, these spaces manipulate their audiences in order to perceive what they are meant to perceive. But does that mean architectural spaces are endangering into treating everyone the same, just like the North Korea cosmetic factory. The idea of looking at factory as curatorial space highlights the importance of the relevance of architecture to different audience groups. Learning from several factory curatorial projects, they have the tendency to treat their target audience the same. The curatorial model of the North Korea cosmetic factory treat everyone as a foreign tourist, on the other hand Ben and Jerry’s factory’s ‘Disneyfication’ of their interior treat all their audience like a children. Cedric Price’s fun palace even have a more general target audience, as he believes the palace should adapt to the demad, like Joan little wood’s idea of an ad hoc theatre. This generalisation of curatorial strategy raises a red flag of the generalisation of architecture. If a space is designed to adapt then it looses its space identity. Learning from this, curatorial projects should abandon this linear projection of their content, instead seek for a multiple approach and how a space can accommodate that multiple approach. We should revisit the specificity of spacial program and how that can incorporate into a non-linear curatorial strategy. Perhaps the question to ask ourselves is how would Wonka’s curatorial strategy apply to the Kardarshians?
Img 5: Fun Palace by Cedric Price, http://www.leoniewelling.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/funPalace_impressie.jpg
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TVB, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea - North Korea, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXvV8h V9ALs&spfreload=10 Stanley Mathews, The Fun Palace: Cedric Price’s experiment in architecture and technology Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 1964 Tim Burton, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 2005 Kengo Kuma, Anti-object
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TVB, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea - North Korea TVB, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea - North Korea TVB, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea - North Korea TVB, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea - North Korea Fun Palace by Cedric Price, http://www.leoniewelling.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/funPalace_impres sie.jpg