Next Project

Spit & Bang

Part 2 Project 2012
Nicolau Faria
University of Greenwich | UK
Inspired by a short story by J. G. Ballard entitled “The Greatest Television Show on Earth”, the design thesis stems from the idea that we are more interested in an idealised image of our history, even if this is completely fabricated.

The inevitability of progress implies that we are often asked to make a choice between saving the old and creating the new. Nevertheless, there is an evident contradiction today in many urban environments, that we search for uniqueness and relish authenticity when, simultaneously, we allow the erasure of historical places and buildings within our cities. More recently however, we are increasingly inclined towards the simulation of an idealized image of the past to its minutest details, exaggerating even elements of shabbiness and decay.

Spit&Bang! considers the implications of hyperreality in the built environment, and how it contributes to the amplification of a sentimentalist production of physical memories of our past, exploring how the reliance on technology in conjunction with the misinterpretation of reality and its simulation can only result in the loss of our referential past, and trigger a desperate attempt to reassert the feeling of this same reality, which is being lost.

As we are enter a new age of three-dimensional replication, might our panic to simulate an ideal image of our past in combination with the ability to reproduce any physical object, result in the production of ambiguous references or styles that reinforces our loss of reality?

The Truman Brewery becomes a replication of itself, amalgamating elements from a local database of scanned three-dimensional samples to create an anti-entropic image of decay, which preserves a simulacrum of history.


Nicolau Faria

Tutor(s)


2012
• Page Hits: 5046         • Entry Date: 21 September 2012         • Last Update: 21 September 2012