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Fac-T-ory : producing facts for a story

Part 2 Project 2009
Heidi Lee
University of Greenwich | UK
FAC-T-ory, producing FACTs for the story.

Hoo where Thames and Medway meet seems barely reachable, a dreamy scent. In place of the alien-landing-type of mass urban development/airports, Hoo has a FACTory manufacturing miniature histories.

Once the name of the space(noun) is imprinted on the products, the contour of the place may start to emerge. One will be able to taste the smell from Hoo, can drink the after taste of Hoo.
...
The half of ‘he’ was once obsessed with details, and the ‘I’ was obsessed with ‘he’s’ details. The black tailor-made suit, the left hand holding the cigar, the image that was to be flipped, spectacle that was on the edge of the lens: these minuscule details were absorbed with obsession like a stalker. Procured by the identity of the third person, ‘he’ was dissected by a sharp scalpel becoming ‘they’-made of 6 individuals, collaged together as a whole.

Prelude: dissection/dissociation, extraction & conversion of MiES
The Key –Entrance
The stalker –Archive
The smoker –Cigar–Spa
The tailor –Filter
The time keeper –Tea room & clock
The glutton –the Prefabricated/Pre-stuffed Turkey factory +Tea farm
The man who soliloquize poems –Cycling track carrying Hoo’s products to the outside

It is to turn a man into objects(a tea trolley), grown into a group of chimneys, a building that is diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. It is a system which would define such thing as ‘fac-T-ory’, a kind of building that would produce facts for a story, or reverse. The Fac-T-ory labyrinth entrapped Minotaurs of different functions. Branching out the choices of paths & directions it awaits for the entrances of individuals, senses became the key: from passages to spaces, outside to inside, shingle to copper. One is lost within to process series of tasks before unlocking their own door to exit.(1:24)

The position where the visitor would enter or leave the building governs the produce of this fac-T-ory, their journeys the previously undefined definition of the space. It is the foremost relationship between the man and the building. Greenpeace vs chimneys, work vs retreat/recess, Farnsworth vs Mies: Conflicting elements are brought together for Tea.

Heidi Lee


Heidi's project has a playful child-like presence, a unique individuality in a rich dense project, with beautiful crafted and collaged models and drawings. Some of her models were fortunate enough to find their way into this years Royal Academy 'model' Show.

The key to the building and site that Mies contemplates through cigar smoke, appears like a Duchampian reverie of his Farnsworth, tea with Edith period. His house represents the his and the her, the inside and out, craft and machine; and where despite appearances it is the craft that won. This reverie on Mies and the site is carried in to Heidi's remarkable FacTory

The site on the Hoo Peninsula is a forgotten part of the Thames Gateway projecting out northwards from the South side of the Thames. Heidi's project is set where the Medway estuary meets the Thames, it has been a focus of our Atelier for several years. Formerly the site of Queen Victoria's train to boat junction it is now inhabited by power stations and a container port.

The building the FacTory is an Andy Warhol inspired creative building or a machine. A place to fabricate with the imagination. Where the body is tested and tried and the special sense stimulating Hoo products are produced.

Responding to the control of the Farnsworth House battling between Edith and Mies, client and architect, which was studied as a starting point for the Atelier's programme, there emerged in Heidi's project FacTory: models, drawing and collage that crossed fact and fiction. Her reading of Walter Benjamin's work and life for her dissertation during the project reinforced both the seriousness and playfulness of her project, and the art of her architecture.






Tutor(s)
Ed Frith
Mr Patrick Lewis

2009
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