Competition entry for 2021 Antepavilion Competition in London's Hoxton Docks. Collaboration with Dominic Walker.
A madness in which occupants and buildings live and die. A spectacle... A tragedy... the City.
If the city is a theatre, then the architect is often viewed as one of its key protagonists. In reality however, the construction and destruction of the city is largely beyond the control of any one individual. Rather, it evolves sporadically according to the many powers and accidents that are simply outside of our influence.
We wonder then why we continue to feel frustrated and disappointed by the challenges of building, and why we don’t instead take pleasure in the theatricality of the world of construction, of the madness of building buildings.
“If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses... he and his sane compositions... are utterly eclipsed by the inspired madman.” Socrates.
What if, like the masks of the Greek tragedies, from destruction we carved our own persona, from demolition... we erect theatricality!
In light of this: we propose to create a veil, a dressing that will entertain a theatre of its own; it is a scaffold mask that both sanely conceals, and yet artistically reveals, the true nature of what is hidden beneath the surface.
Our mask takes its inspiration from the persona of the temporary and incongruous structures that populate the urban stage of the city. We find a sense of the ‘bartizan’ in these delicate structures that disguise a world of change beneath them as the city evolves. The ‘General Permitted Development Order’, allows for these structures to be installed for the duration of works and demands their removal as soon as it is complete.
The veil is therefore a decoy. It is a defensive structure of distraction. It suspends disbelief and creates wonder. We liken it to wartime tactics of defense, like the glowing miniature cities that averted bombing runs in the Second World War, or the inflatable tanks on the Russian Front.
The transformation of the Potemkin Theatre into its next guise as a portable stage will take place on site, concealed behind the curtained walls of our mask. At night, dancers will perform shadow theatre on sections of this ever-evolving stage set. A sense of curiosity will be developed from the outside as passers-by wonder what might be the next daring Antepavilion construction.
And yet, like the workings of the soul behind any mask, transformation is inevitable. As it begins its new life as a mobile space, our delicate bartizan veil will be dropped, revealing nothing more than a flat bitumen roof.
