The Evaluation of space Part: 9 (E.S.: 9) – part db ‘The University of Plymouth: A survey project’ 2010-2011 Or: ‘One years Psychogeographic adventure into the alien environment of Academic facilities, bureaucracy and failure that turns into my personal fiction.”
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E.S.:9d /sect. b ‘Flora & Fauna (of The University of Plymouth).’ Or: “There is so much wildlife and flowers that there is no point in researching it all with this institutions grounds.”
By Oliver Griffin
E.S.:9 db / Fig. 1
The campus buildings have been renamed mid 1980’s with change to a Polytechnic from descriptive/functional names to positions of importance with historical (Mary Newman, Francis Drake’s first wife) to literature (Babbage Building, formally called the General Teaching Block) titles. Mostly taken and reprobated from local figureheads thought-out history: Davy Building (formally science block), Brunel Laboratories (workshop Block), Cookworthy, Davy (Science and Commerce Block), Fitzroy, Hawkins, Issac foot, Robbins, Scott, Smeaton (Engineering block), Reynolds, plus all the various hall of residents named after individuals (preferably female) throughout the last century connected in some lucrative way to the area. Giving these newly clad building ‘character’ and giving the brutalist architecture a pretty face within student and staffs short term & long term memory of the campus. Never really loving their concrete heritage, just dealing with it and exploring opportunities with indoor fountains with failure. With the costly experiment of air pressure and water jets, never realizing that decrease in air pressure within effect the direction of fluids within a glass shard (or what inhabitants call it “their Manhattan office”) creating only more work for the humble & loyal cleaning staff at some ungodly hour in the morning. Within these names you realise that the repatriation of satellite sites that were under the sovereignty with the University of Plymouth have been given space with the campus within buildings named after there old sites (Rolle, Seale-Hayne, etc.). I do personally realise that there was indeed more fauna within these campus and there rural locations. You can’t really blame the lack of wildlife from this plot of land. Surrounded by a motorway that resembles Los Angeles, more than a English town, with only the Drake Reservoir as a sanctuary for Gods perfect creatures.
E.S.:9 db / Fig. 2-3
E.S.:9 db / Fig. 4-6
E.S.:9 db / Fig. 0
E.S.:9 db / Fig. 7-8
This series of pychogeographical adventures within the University of Plymouth, U.K, explores the t o p o g raphy through the typologies of the everyday objects and elementary architecture that clutters Oliver Griffin’s educational environment between September 2010 to November 2012. Though this transplantation into an alien environment for the purposes of education, these publications are records of mundane points of interest accompanied with observational notes and a crudely research history of the site. This is set of documents evaluates and archives a point in time where the United Kingdoms educational at a graduate level is changing within a political landscape along with the psychical environment of this particular academic environment.
Copyright© Oliver Griffin 2012 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission of the publishers.
Borist Press
Life is boring, why make it interesting?
available
Borist Press
Life is boring, why make it interesting?
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