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Project 02 - Decay and Development
This project presents a juxtaposition of two different areas, a mountainous location under a gradual decay, and a coastal area in rapid development. Even though in objective terms one can see that a new residential area is starting to grow in the coastal area, and the buildings in the mountainous area have been almost reduced to rubble, I wanted to impose a more subjective question into which area is really developing and which area is really decaying. There are 3 central sources that served as inspirations for this project. First there was the video game series “Silent Hill” where one of its key features is the way their designers toy with the rules of repulsion and attraction to give a seemingly run down abandoned town an aesthetic tangibility despite its uninhabitable nature. The second inspiration came from Dan Graham’s “Homes for America” where I felt a vibe of melancholy that was coming from the pictures of those houses hinting that the penultimate outcome of that new housing plan was really just a gradual breeding ground for urban decay. But the biggest inspiration came from the location themselves. I have been familiar with the locations for all my life and both of them are very close to me and I wanted to capture how they are changing as time takes its toll. On one hand you have an area which is filled with uninhabitable buildings, yet those buildings have a vibe of uniqueness excreting from them, and perhaps the way they decompose complements the environment as if the mud and stone that forms their structure is peacefully returning to its source. On the other hand you have an area which is implanted with identical modern constructs, all of them in high demand and therefore in premium prices, yet their identical “factory sealed” nature offers very little in terms of uniqueness, and the speed that those houses came into existence leaves debris which one might say are unnatural to the environment. |
