We need to build such places not with stones and concrete, steel & wood, but plastic materials that can change at a moments notice. We need to create stage-sets in which we can appear and see at least one version of the world making sense, if only for a moment 2000
Betsky & Adigard
---------------------: plastic space in the suburbs
Content En-trance
how to re-think the banal and why bother
Past Placeless
‘thinking in cinema: poetically’ (Pallasma, 2007, p.9)
Imagination
plastic pageant arrives fabulous architecture frenzied architecture tame architecture
Culture
temporary leisure: recreating the past
Territory
the distruption
Findings
what is left behind
Once
there was a grain Silo, positioned next to a rail line, later two intersecting roads and a car park joined its remote position. It remained there, well used, watching the housing encroaching and the farmland receding; until it was no longer required.
Suburbia exists in the repetition of day-to-day. In this semi-autonomous, banal state, Public Space is a non-place where production has been overcome by consumption. The environment is isolating, modes of communication are internalised.
People represent themselves to themselves by what they are lacking or believe to be lacking. In this relationship, the imaginary has more power 1996, p.80
HENRI
LEFEBVRE
RECREATION:
ACTIVITY
DONE
FOR
ENJOYMENT WHEN ONE IS NOT WORKING
Origin: ‘create again, renew’
LEISURE: TIME WHEN ONE OCCUPIED: free -time Origin: ‘to be allowed’
with the monuments of place, these, like our dreams, can present false -or at least multiple -realities 2013b, p. 96 ALAN MACE
Public space has always been where we come to appear in finery, to participate in rituals and to loose ourselves in a fantasy world where we have a role beyond ourselves 2000 Betsky & Adigard
IS NOT WORKING OR
power
the imaginary has more
‘create again, renew’
our dreams, can present false -or at least multiple -realities to loose ourselves in a fantasy world
‘to be allowed’
Park Fiction
‘thinking in cinema:
poetically’
‘Every year during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and kettledrums they would display new inventions.’ (Marquez, 1995, p.2) Its about escape from the banal of sprawl. It aims to engage fantasy and reality to realise the possibilities for pursuits of leisure within a predominantly private realm where leisure has come to mean something else since suburbia’s inception. The research will develop a series of events, revealing histories, pealing back the internal - even if only for a moment.
Ryan Schude
We live in a culture that fabricates and mass produces images ... 2007, p.9
Pallasma
‘thinking in cinema: poetically’
Cedric Price
Exploring the site through film offers a time-based exploration, opening up the imagination through the process of editing. Drawing out moments that develop into Posters - these propose the events that might occur.
This emerging ‘architecture of resistance’ a verb more often than a noun, celebrates dreams and the imagination without forgetting that it is made for the other, and aims at revealing depth not as homologous to breadth and height (3D), but as a significant first dimension that remains mysterious and reminds us of our luminous opacity as mortals in a wondrous morethan-luminous world. From Models
Perez-Gomez
to Drawing, 2007, p.22
Forgotton Places Non-places Police Headquarters Housing Estate Elephant bones lie interned beneath VW estates and Ford Focuses. A Menagerie now processed paperwork about petty crime. Campsfield House The immigration centre is a place ignored through ignorance or indifference by the suburban dwellers. Here men [once there were families] can be found waiting extradition, in enclosed spaces for extended periods of time. Oxford Parkway Where the story began, with the disused grain silo, now mounds of rubble and earth pile high, awaiting the arrival of concrete and steel. A structure aiming for permanence, destined to fail. Thus the arrival to the village from the city has irrevocably changed. London Oxford Airport Some places are re-branded and thus their ownership shifts - ‘this is no longer yours, it is ours’. Cul-de-sac Carparks Playgrounds in the street are now filled with cars, from front lawn to curbside. Horses don’t feel so safe here anymore. Car Showrooms Shiny new vehicles abound the tarmac, a small node of consumerism. Car Showroom High Street Once a bandstand and tennis courts graced the space, now a prominent sales position opposite the High Street; graced with generic shop units and hard paved.
Kidlington Airport London Oxford Airport
Campsfield House
Car Showrooms
Car Showroom High Street
Horse-riding Cul-de-sac Carparks Zoological Gardens Police Headquarters Housing Estate The Silo Oxford Parkway Rail Station
Ice captures a moment, encapsulating the temperature of the air, the wind, movement of the earth. Experiments with ice work in a plastic way, capturing a moment in time then melting away leaving little trace.
2 1
3 2
Copy of AXO AXO
Copy (2) of AXO Copy of AXO
3
4
5
Copy (3) of AXO
Copy (4) of AXO
But The Pageant remains in the mind of the TAME, dogs wonder the street after being abandoned to the moment. INNUMERABLE items were strewn or wandering about. Footprints of the spaces are pressed in the earth and scratched on the tarmac, plastic sheeting caught in the trees.
The moment has passed ET CETERA...
The Village of Kidlington is one such place where this exists. The TAME were waiting for something to happen. On a still afternoon, as the FRENZIED pulsate through the village, Sound, Colour, Chaos, suddenly fills the streets and Animals and People crowd in. A PAGEANT ARRIVES.
The Village of Kidlington is ‘dressed’ in a fine array of spaces that hark back to a recently forgotten past; of dreams, of the unexpected. A Theatre, Lido, Petting Zoo and FABULOUS other things. The TAME consumes the PAGEANT for 3 DAYS 4 HOURS and 49 MINUTES. And then it left.