Familiar Matter,Strange Assembly

FAMILIAR MATTER, STRANGE ASSEMBLY is a collection of material and spatial design experiments, developed through an exploration of re-contextualising found material as architectural matter.

Methods used within these design experiments have been inspired by the sculptural gesture of re-assembling found material to produce new form, an approach to design famously mastered by artists Marcel Duchamp and Rosalie Gascoigne.

The process considers unwanted building material as found material and underutilised architecture as found space. Focusing on the reuse of found materials, sourced from local marketplace and demolition sites, the work encourages a reinterpretation of the familiar to produce an architecture that is strange and experimental but resourceful.

Initial experiments are based on the abstraction of a pink pedestal basin, a familiar domestic object that is sliced and broken up into pieces. The pieces are re-collaged and then scaled up to form spatial condition and enclosure, inspiring further experimentation with an expanded catalogue of found material.

Simplified elements of architecture are combined to generate unusual architectural assemblies, within the bounds of an individual car park space. Individual elements within these modules are fabricated from strange assemblies of found material. When combined, these form textured and layered compositions that challenge architectural convention.

These experimental outcomes are tested in the context of James Birrell’s Wickham Terrace car park, to form a proposition for its future reoccupation.