FAR FROM IT
“A young woman recalls some of her last encounters with her father.
Through a fragmentary landscape of memory, she unravels a chronicle
of nostalgia, as preceived by two different generations.”
Looking at objects as carriers of nostalgia, and at material waste as part of our human nature, I speculate on whether a hoarder's room could possibly constitute a Wunderkammer of the future; a cabinet of curiosities destinated to re-introduce life on earth to human. I examine nostalgia as performed in the domestic space; through the collection and display of beloved objects as personal artefacts. The things we surround ourselves with are usually nostalgic traces, not only of past experiences, but also of general periods of time that we ourselves may never have known. When it comes to hoarding, a habit of compulsive accumulation of things, often accompanied with feelings of guilt, can tell us a lot about our society and how we learn (or not) to deal with inner needs, such as processing a trauma or mourning a loss.
Within the setting of a fictional post-apocalyptic scenario, wouldn't there be a shift of value around a plastic cup, if we realised that it might be the last one in the universe? Or around an empty packet of food, a jar filled with soil, a broken tv screen, and so on? This seemingly contradictive notion of treasure-looking trash indicates that value derives from the context, and thus, for a deeper comprehension and personal engagement in urgent matters, fictional storytelling can sometimes be a very powerful design tool: as a conversation starter, it adds new layers in the existing discourse, making it ever more accessible and inclusive.
Therefore, conceived as a short sci-fi story, FAR FROM IT attempts a zoomed-out view of earth as home that, we humans, are destroying; urging the audience to reflect on the topics of nostalgia and migration through the broader lens of the current climate crisis, and the inevitable end of the world as we know it. It is an installation that hovers between a theatre play and an audio book. Placed on a small stage, it is a set frozen in time; filled with traces of a performance that has already happened.
[duration 15min.]
photo by Athina Botonaki
photos by Sara Francola
photos by Athina Botonaki
photos by Erik de Vries
photo by Sara Francola
photo by Athina Botonaki
Guiding tutor: Nasim Razavian [ Studio Ilinx ]
Graduation Show exhibition / Royal Academy of Art, The Hague / Master Interior Architecture INSIDE / June 2024
MOERWIJK
MODEL MUSEUM
(hi)stories as a conversation starter for the community.
This project attempts to playfully question the role of the Museum, by presenting a part of heritage which would be most probably excluded from the official historical narrative of The Hague: stories of Moerwijk and its people.
Moerwijk is a neighbourhood in The Hague, part of the Escamp district. Mainly built after the Seond World War, it was developped for residential use from low to middle income families. Today, a big part of the neighbourhood is consisted by social-housing appartments, which means that, in many cases, its residents stay for a short/temporary amount of time. Now, speaking of a post-war neighbourhood, that hosts many temporary habitants today, how can one embrace -or even create anew- a sense of belonging? What role could a museum play, towards the appropriation of space and memory from short-term residents? Can the representation of local (hi)stories become a conversation starter for today’s Moerwijk community?
Focusing on the collection, curation, and exhibition of all the little fragments of memory, that have been revealed to us through research in old newspapers, photo archives, and interviews, we conceive a local pop-up museum, decentralised from the historic centre’s official spaces of knowledge. We create nine models; nine imaginary rooms, in scale 1:20, each one connected to a specific location, telling a story from the past. Altogether -either as parts of one entity or spread in the urban fabric- shape a space of shared memory.
You can watch the video presenting the developement of the idea behind the project HERE.
photo by Nika Dundua
The Map: nine stories, attached to nine different locations in the neighbourhood and the surroundings. Each one of them is a blend of fiction and real facts, with a common purpose to stimulate curiosity and dialogue around the history of the place, and to embrace a feeling of belonging to today’s residents.
Guidance: Studio La-di-da, Gerjan Streng [The Cloud Collective], Neeltje ten Westenend
Theory tutor: Anne Hoogewoning
Master Interior Architecture INSIDE, June 2023
HOUSE FULL OF FEATHERS
Tigh-na-sleubhaich (project location), on the hicking path of the West Highland Way
photo credits: Kathryn Streeter/The Washington Post
photo credits: Kathryn Streeter/The Washington Post
Located in a remote path of Scottish Highlands, the ruin of an old traditional long-house passes in the possession of Thomas Craig through his grand-mother’s testament. Mr Craig, my client, is a writer and translator who lives a wealthy yet solitary life in London. He decides to convert the old property into a contemporary country house where he can also have a separate space for his writings.
A few days after our first meeting, Mr Craig writes me a letter in order to confess an untold secret of his: an intense, irrational fear of birds, for which the wider area of the project constitutes the primal scenery. This is the place where one traumatic experience of his childhood -the encounter with a dead raven- was weaved with several symbolisms and connotations stemmed from the Celtic tradition, where ravens are depicted as foresighted carriers of bad omens.
Mr Craig’s decision of going back and renovate the old family cottage, is a bold gesture towards his reconnection with the place, the overcome of his fear and, in the end, the reconciliation with his own identity.
pages from the essay
* the full short-essay text ‘Intimate Spaces and Feathers; or how the design of the present can be an attempt to re-design the past’, can be found HERE.
The design must embrace the client’s own pace, towards the building of a connection with the ravens, as well as with the place, and for this purpose, the key word is time. The middle stone wall goes away, and, in its place, a young Scotch elm tree is planted, providing the time frame of the reconciliation process; at the beginning, birds may come to the enclosed yard, attracted by the insects, the flowers and the seeds of the tree, but slowly they will get familiar with the place and the human presence. It all depends on the little gestures Mr Craig might do in order to keep them close, providing water, food or plants for their nutrition. As the years will go by, the tree will grow, and the ravens will keep coming -individually or in flocks- to build their nests, maintaining the relationship.
stills from the video
Guiding tutors: Nasim Razavian [ Studio Ilinx ] , Jillian Chen [ Superuse Studios ]
Theory tutor: Anne Hoogewoning
Master Interior Architecture INSIDE, December 2022
HOW TO HIDE
IN PLAIN SIGHT
‘How to Hide in Plain Sight’ attempts to playfully explore and understand my inner, intuitive need, as a woman, to be invisible in public places. Presented as a two-channel screening, the film unfolds a sequence of text and images in which individuals are looking to the camera lens.
[...]
I thought that if during the mutual glance, the observer surrenders themselves to the observed, then durring a photoshoot, things can get more intense: from the moment you start taking your position into the frame, until the awaited click, the other has the time to notice your movements, the way you pose, your awkwardness, your ‘god, how stupid I must look right now’.
Taking this footage put me in a position of social interaction with strangers -something i hate- when simultaneously, having the footage of me being taken, exposed me to all the curious, indescrete nosey eyes I always tried to avoid. I chose to perform the process and to reverse my comfortnessl to reproduce the act of hiding, by doing the act of surrendering.
[duration 6min. ]
photo credits: Anđela Brnas
Guiding tutors: Michou-Nanon de Bruijn [ Studio Makkink & Bey ] , Guy Livingston
Theory tutor: Anne Hoogewoning
Master Interior Architecture INSIDE, October 2022