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Terrain Vague: Shipton on Cherwell Cement Works as Pleasure Park

Part 1 Project 2006
Elaine Stephen
Oxford Brookes University Oxford | UK
The project is located on an abandoned site outside Oxford. It is a vertical pleasure park or ‘Parc Verticle’. It reuses existing built forms on site responding to Terrain vague or Junkspace.
Routes and paths were mapped out and used as key reference points for journeys across the new park. They established orientations for three new structures. These 250m high event structures swamp the already monumental existing forms.
The park explores the phobias of vertigo and photophobia. By forcing visitors to respond to excessive height and light intensity, it inflicts discomfort and forces them to overcome such for pleasure.

Elaine Stephen


This project has been nominated because it is ambitious and well executed. It has been produced by a young student with an unquenchable enthusiasm for architecture. From such, he has created exquisite representations of his ‘fearless’ utopian vision for a pleasure park in an abandoned cement works.

Inspired by the writings on terrain vague by Ignasi de-Solà Morales, the design appropriates the disused Shipton on Cherwell Cement works. High rise titillation towers hover over, and are supported by the legs of, the crumbling concrete structures underneath. The fantasy project both transforms and embraces the memory of the neglected site.

Tutor(s)
Dr Ombretta Romice
2006
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