Summer
Show
2022
Show
2022
24
November
18:00 SAST
November
18:00 SAST
The Plasticene
New Beachfront Supersurfaces of Reintegrated Waste Fragments
The Inverted Vivarium. Patel, M. Unit 18. 2021.
Meghana Patel
MArch 2021Supervisors:
Unit Leader: Naadira Patel
Unit Leader: Sarah de Villiers
Unit Assistant: Nothando Lunga
UNIT 18︎︎︎
Hyperreal Prototypes: Supersurfaces
“Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself? [We are] challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.”
- Rachel Carson
This project aims to speculate the hyperreality of the next era through the traces of plastic pollution. The near reality is there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050 (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2017:12). Climate change is happening faster than our ability to reverse the damage, we have a fast-approaching survival deadline. A new era that I term, the Plasticene, will look at an alternate way to view our imminent future by taking on the form of a Supersurface. It is created by hybridising a Theme Park, Aquarium, and Research Centre to enable architects to manage the effects of plastic pollution from a more fascinating and unique standpoint rather than the predicted dystopia. Italo Calvino uses Lightness, in opposition to Heaviness, as a virtue when writing his book, Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Thus, the representation style holds a baseline of fiction, imagination, and fun. It allows a multi-disciplinary of users to access this project and to have a more optimistic outlook on our present and future world amongst plastic. To visualise a hyperreal outcome, I will be using Durban’s Golden Mile beachfront, funworld and surrounding sea as a microcosm.
- Rachel Carson
Keywords:
Speculative, Particle, Cyborg, Worlding, Monsters, Co-existence, Plastic, Vivarium, Contamination
Speculative, Particle, Cyborg, Worlding, Monsters, Co-existence, Plastic, Vivarium, Contamination
Contact
Meghana Patel:
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