Residency in collaboration with FIELDSTATIONS - "Fieldexplorer Programme"

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Stick-On Bricks and the Phenomenology of Flatness

Stick-On Bricks and the Phenomenology of Flatness is project inspired by the sensory bankruptcy of economically motivated contemporary architecture.

Description

The ever-increasing prevalence of digital technologies in processes of design and manufacture correlates with a growing flatness and artificiality in our lived experience of built environments. The dominant influence of these technologies – not to mention the AI – on our daily lives threatens erode our ability to create and represent our individual and collective identities through material culture. Instead, we face the imposition of culturally homogenising pseudo-immaterial ideologies upon societies across the globe.

Collaborating with artist and filmmaker Gloria Regonesi to combine the media of physical modelmaking and film, this project critically examines the pervasive flatness and the artificial experiences it imposes upon us. It aspires to inspire a re-evaluation of architectural design principles and encourage a more profound connection between making, architecture, nature, and human experiences in the face of the challenges posed by the Anthropocene era.

Through its interdisciplinary approach, combining art, architecture, and film, Stick-On Bricks and the Phenomenology of Flatness strives to contribute to the growing body of knowledge exploring the complex intersections between human activities, the built environment, and ecological concerns.

Methodology

Magnifying and manipulating the flatness, physical models are made to provoke contemplation about the impact of this flatness on our perception of space and place. By adopting the time-based practice of hand-made model making as the core of this project I aim to directly counter the industrialised banality that characterises the materiality and construction processes of the Anthropocene.

Film is used primarily as a research tool to explore the city, its materiality, movements and auditory experience. As an audio-visual media that extends beyond the static image and engages with the dimension of time, film is perfectly suited to emphasise the contrast between the physicality of the model making processes and the artificiality they represent. Physical modelmaking and film thus combine space and time to examine and critique the built environment which has static imagery at the core of its conception, justification and contrived aspiration, namely the architectural render.

References

-René Boer, Smooth City: Against Urban Perfection, Towards Collective Alternatives, 2023 (book)
-Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, 1996 (book)
-Rem Koolhaas, AMO, Fundamentals, 2014 (exhibition)
-Radu Jude, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, 2021 (film)
-Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, 1973 (book)
-The works of Lütjens Padmanabhan, Heinz Emigholz, Werner Herzog, Bêka & Lemoine

Bio

Sam Eadington is co-founder of Estudio ESSE; an architecture, design and art studio concerned with how ideas engage with the world. Themes in his work range from migration and liminal identities to spatial, material and experiential investigations, always with a connection back to architecture. His projects involve hands-on making, experimentation, first-hand research, and immersion in the contexts he hopes hope to affect. He is an Associate Lecturer of Architecture at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, and Tutor of Interior Design at the Open College of Arts, UK.

Gloria Regonesi is a filmmaker and film editor active across Italy, Germany, and the UK. Her poetry films and video essays delve into the perception of space and the emotional resonance of places, while also addressing broader themes such as language and perception. Her work often challenges a reconsideration of how we understand reality and how we interpret and interact with the environment. Observation of capitalism and capitalist society serve as a backdrop for her audiovisual pieces, characterized by haptic elements and an innovative and experimental approach to editing.