My research is practice-led and focuses on processes of casting through ongoing and hands-on experimentation at full scale. Set within the workshops of Grymsdyke Farm, it engages with materials in a direct and intimate manner. Photography is employed as a practical documentation tool but also as a physical and theoretical counterpart to casting, and with the photographs becoming design works in themselves. Casting and photography share tactile and spatial relationships with architecture, yet little discourse exists around them. This thesis studies the individual properties of both practices and how they correlate, bringing to light new observations about how they overlap with architecture. It examines works by different practitioners, such as the inventor of photography William Henry Fox Talbot, architects and builders Pier Luigi Nervi and Mark West, and the artist Medardo Rosso, to show how the synergy of shared properties in casting and photography can deepen our understanding of architecture in terms of time and preservation, fluid and solid form, copy and reproducibility, positive and negative space. As digital processes prevail in contemporary architectural practice, inspiration taken from nature through mathematical and abstract constructs often lacks a necessary relationship to the physical realities of making. How can an intimate knowledge of material processes be relevant in architectural practice today? How can situated modes of craft be integrated meaningfully into ever-evolving forms of design production? At Grymsdyke Farm the realms of inspiration, execution and place are not distinct but inseparable. All research projects presented in this thesis are integrated into the physical reality of the place. In addition Grymsdyke Farm hosts a number of site-specific works built with visiting architecture students and other practitioners. Grymsdyke Farm is a living–working environment that aims to establish a diverse collective. Through the constant exchange and sharing of ideas, experiences and expertise it becomes a place moulded over time, capturing individual and collaborative design in the making.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:626108 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Lee, K. G. |
| Publisher | University College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1411109/ |
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