The Vitrine City
"To make an atlas is to reconfigure space, to redistribute it, in short, to redirect it: to dismantle it where we thought it was continuous; to reunite it where we thought there were boundaries."
- Didi-Hubermann
The city is a museum - a curatorial reorganisation that showcase our art, sciences, history, artefacts and lives.
JOURNAL OF SILOPOTREBLA - TEMPLE OF DRAGONS
I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map, I would put my finger on it and say, When I grow up I will go there.
- Joseph Conrad
That was the motivation behind the Great Exhibition. The curiosity of the crowd that the exotic artefacts from afar or the past that we have little knowledge of. Albertopolis has remained its core function as an active site in producing and consuming knowledge.
The temple of dragons is an abstracted form of knowledge consumption - the way we worship knowledge, artefacts encapsulated by glass vitrines, observing these objects to search for truth in our universe.
The project asks whether the social ritual of museum-visiting can be an object of interest, and whether that can
AN INTER-DIMENSIONAL COMPASS
This is pataphysical device. Based on the exemplification of the gyroscopic precession, the device is met with an addition of a 3-dimensional zoetrope where the illusive 'dancing baby' would pass through the bicycle wheel if the optimal rotational speed and frequency of strobe light is achieved.
In the journey of finding true North, one will finally find 4th dimension.
FOUR DIMENSIONS OF THE VITRINE CITY
The Top dimension simulates Steeples of Albertopolis as Islands being travelled by Dr. Faustroll while the Lower Dimension unifies Albertopolis as a seamless interior.
The tetrahedral sandwich layer of vitrines is occupied in two levels, with the upper level being occupied vitrines of activity surrounded by corridors for the public; and the lower level being a sea of circulation separated by thin glass planes.
DISORIENTATION - PATAPHYSICS AND GLASS
One who has become all eyes cannot see
To try and understand us
to court misunderstanding
Not to know but to go on
Anything is a mirror
There are two endless directions
In and Out
Location
Status
Tutors
Reference
Albertopolis, South Kensington London
Academia | Denys Lasdun Award for Excellence in Architecture
Miraj Ahmed, Martin Jameson
Alfred Jerry
Andrea Branzi
Konrad Waschmann
Danteum, Terragni
Agnes Martin