Author: Gracie Thornham
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Week One Process
The snippet selected from Unit 1: Methods was taken from the Methods of Investigating brief. I started to collect a catalogue of Maker’s Marks within Somers Town in London. Within the context of this studio project, The Maker’s Mark was defined as an architectural feature that has a human-made quality to it, and displays a level of craftsmanship that is often overlooked in contemporary building practice. My process of identifying, collecting and cataloguing these Maker’s Marks lacked a rigorous system, therefore I wanted to return to Somers Town to analyse the area in more depth.
Fig. 1. Summary of Maker’s Marks in Somers Town collected during Methods of Iteration studio project. During Methods of Investigating, I explored a line of enquiry which focused on the tension between urban regeneration and the disappearance, and regeneration, of Maker’s Marks. After returning to Malcolm J. Holmes’s (1985) Somers Town: A Record of Change, I started to considered whether spatial history can be fully erased through urban regeneration, or if history becomes layered through the process urban regeneration. To explore this idea further, I shifted my line of enquiry away from The Maker’s Mark and toward the concept of architectural palimpsest.
Palimpsest is defined by: 1. a very old text or document in which writing has been removed and covered or replaced by new writing, 2. something such as a work of art that has many levels of meaning, types of style, etc. that build on each other (‘Palimpsest’, 1998). The term palimpsest has been applied to an urban context in recent architectural conversation discourse. In Arquitectura Viva (2022), palimpsest is defined as ‘evanescent traces, from the diachronic superpositions of buildings or streets to the faded remains of a sign or writing on a party wall, (that) tell stories about the lifestyles and concerns of past dwellers’.
To begin to untangle the layers of history within the urban environment of Somers Town, I returned to the site to observe examples of palimpsest. These phenomenons were indexed into seven distinct categories: signage, ornamentation, brickwork, metalwork, mural, addition, and fixing. Drawing inspiration from Robert Frank’s (2009) Seven Stories, the publication took the form of seven individual perfect-bound booklets which slotted into an open-ended sleeve. The publication amplified the indexed system used to categorise the examples of palimpsest within Somers Town.
Fig. 2. Positions through Iterating 100 page publication. Reference List:
Arquitectura Viva (2022) Ghost Signs. Urban Palimpsests. Available at: https://arquitecturaviva.com/articles/ghost-signs (Accessed: 15 April 2026).
Frank, R. (2009) Seven Stories. Gottingen: Steidl.
Holmes, M. J. (1985) Somers Town: A Record of Change. London: London Borough of Camden Libraries and Arts Department.
‘Palimpsest, n. 1’ (1998) in Cambridge Dictionary. Available at:https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/palimpsest (Accessed: 15 April 2026).
‘Palimpsest, n. 2’ (1998) in Cambridge Dictionary. Available at:https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/palimpsest (Accessed: 15 April 2026).
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Week Two Process
During the second week of the Positions through Iterating studio brief, I explored the degradation of the buildings in the west coast of Ireland, using image-making as a form of research. I mirrored the demise in the stone cottage structure through degradation of images of the space. To create a robust structure for these experiments, I returned to the cataloguing system used within week one. I had previously indexed the moments of palimpsest within Somers Town into seven distinct categories. I mapped these terms into processes of image degradation.
- Signage
As signage was not a theme directly relevant within the stone cottage structures of the rural west coast of Ireland, it demanded a re-imagination of the term. In the context of this experiment, signage was interpreted as a move to signal the area of interest within the image through a process of slicing and removing a part of the photograph.
2. Ornamentation
This stage of the iterative process utilised correction fluid to obscure portions of the building where ornamentation was apparent. This included the fireplace, tiling and window frames. Where ornamentation was not present, the correction focused on removing parts of the image that pulled focus away from the stone structure.
3. Brickwork
The brickwork iteration reflected the traditional palimpsest techniques where scrolls were scrubbed to partially erase the script, allowing for the parchment to be reused. The photographs were scratched to deteriorate fragments of the image where the brickwork of the homestead had also deteriorated.
4. Metalwork
During this step, further segments of the image were removed, highlighting metalwork within the building. This is a direct contrast to where metalwork would have been located when the building was inhabited.
5. Mural
Pen drawing reestablished the form of the building which was beginning to become indeterminate through both the degradation of the building and the image. This process constituted the mural stage of the experiment and harked back to the examples of hand drawing and painting that were observed within Somers Town in London.
6. Addition
During this iteration, unaltered images were added to the collage. Some of the experiments reintroduced parts of the original photograph, whereas others affixed contrasting imagery.
7. Fixing
The final stage of the degradation of the images reintroduce a technique previously used in the earlier six iterative steps to fix or enhance aspects of the form of the structure.
During each stage of the iterative process the image was scanned and reprinted. This aided the degradation of the building as the resolution was reduced and the colours of the stone structure morphed into a textured landscape. This reaffirmed the notion that the derelict homestead buildings of the west coast of Ireland are exposed to contingency and are slowly returning to the land. This process was repeated on seven different images to create a total of 49 iterations.
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Written Response
A short statement that articulates your line of enquiry. What questions are you exploring in this project, and how are you exploring them?
Position: a particular way in which someone or something is placed or arranged.
Palimpsest within the built environment will be employed as both a subject matter and a method for investigation to uncover the layers of history embedded within our urban fabric. I will explore the tension between the degradation of the image and the degradation of the building. When does a structure become so degraded that the landscape and the built environment become indiscernible?
Position: a place where someone or something is located or has been put.
My line of enquiry will initially investigate the rural west coast of Ireland and the derelict homestead dwellings that populate the land. I intend to create a system of understanding the past and future of these structures, using palimpsest as a lens.
Position: a person’s point of view or attitude towards something.
The acknowledgement of my ethnographic positionality is essential as I disentangle the history of the west coast of Ireland, and my own personal relation with it. Drawing inspiration from Georges Perec’s (1999) ‘Species of Spaces’, I will explore the experience of ageing through place, memory and writing. Although my research starts at the west coast of Ireland, my work will not be limited by geographical location. Can palimpsest (as a subject matter and method) be applied to other built environments to glean insight into the history of the place? And how can this research be circulated?
A small annotated bibliography of 6 references that
help you to situate this project in wider contexts.Crow, T. et. al. (2003) Gordon Matta-Clark. London: Phaidon Press Limited.
(reference that is specifically related to your project in its topic (theme or subject matter))
‘I think Gordon’s were also a reaction against the overbearing use of architecture as an icon’ (Crow, 2003).
My positions through iterating studio work mirrors the themes and methods explored by Gordon Matta-Clark. Throughout Matta-Clark’s work there is an impetus to disentangle architecture as an icon; instead understanding space as a reflection of the people that have once existed within it (Crow, 2003). During the first week of investigation, I observed the buildings of Somers Town exclusively from the outside. Gordon Matta-Clark’s process guided me away from analysis of the building’s facade and deepened my enquiry to reveal the exposed fabric of the building from within the space. This shift from external to internal yielded more insight about the layers of history that are present within architecture, and repositioned my work with the context of the west coast of Ireland.
Gordon Matta-Clark employs collage as a key method to understand the workings of a building. The process of image manipulation and collage remained central within the second week of positions through iterating as I overlayed, distorted and degraded photographs of the stone cottage structure. This technique allowed me to speculatively imagine how the buildings could return to the landscape and what may become of them over time.
Perec, G. (1999) ‘Species of Spaces’, in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. London: Penguin, pp. 46–56.
(references drawn from the course reading list that situate your project in a broader discourse or conceptual domain)
‘What I hope for from it, in effect, is nothing other than the record of a threefold experience of
ageing: of the places themselves, of my memories, and of my writing’ (Perec, 1999).
During the positions through iterating brief, I reflected on Georges Perec’s (1999) ‘Species of Spaces’. I was initially inspired by the notion of observing to decipher a small part of the city. This is apparent in my work during the first week, as I critically explored Somers Town and collected moments where layers of history are apparent within the urban environment.
Throughout the second week of the studio brief, my work expanded into a process of image-making as a form of research. This investigation used speculation as a critical tool to understand how the building may evolve over time. Perec (1999) denotes the relationship between place, memory and writing as effective record of the experience of ageing. These themes are inseparable as they all are dependent on one another. Through my initial work I have investigated the theme of place, with the intention of interrelating this to my own person memory of the west coast of Ireland through a writing practice. Introducing my own positionality and relationship with the location will further strengthen my line of enquiry and ground the project within contemporary discourse about the derelict homesteads in rural Ireland.
Suh, D. H. (2018) Robin Hood Gardens, Woolmore Street, London E14 0HG [Film]. V&A Storehouse, London.
(wild card reference (identify another type of relationship, or re-use any of the above prompts))
Do Ho Suh’s (2018) Robin Hood Gardens exposes the interior of the iconic building prior to it’s demolition. The film utilises 3D scanning and photogrammetry to piece together inhabited sections through the building (Suh, 2018). The artwork acts as an important thematic reference for my studio enquiry as it explores the life that sits exists the walls of the building (Suh, 2018). Suh (2018) highlights the individual personalisation of space, and investigates the relationship between the architecture and identity. The theme of identity is inherently apparent within my project thus far through my investigations into Somers Town in London and Easkey in the west coast of Ireland.
Till, J. (2009) ‘Contingency’, in Architecture Depends. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 45–61.
(references drawn from the course reading list that situate your project in a broader discourse or conceptual domain)
‘Architecture is dependent on others at every stage of its journey from initial sketch to inhabitation’ (Till, 2009).
Jeremy Till (2009) introduces the concept that architecture is not complete at the conclusion of construction, as it is exposed to contingency and will metamorphose during inhabitation. Architecture is merely a reflection of that moment in its life as people will continue to designate their own mark onto their urban environment. This reinforces the notion that architecture does not move in a linear fashion, but is cyclical or layered as it weaves together a tapestry of the threads of its history.
Throughout ‘Contingency’, Till (2009) does not acknowledge the life of a building after inhabitation. Arguably, this is where contingency is most apparent. During the studio brief, I explored the life of a building post-inhabitation, whilst also reflecting on the form of the structure whilst it was in use. Contingency is an implicit line of enquiry throughout my work as I play with the temporality of the building through speculation of it’s past and future form.
Whiteread, R. (1992) House Study (Grove Road) [Correction fluid, pencil, watercolour on colour photocopy].
(reference that is specifically related to your project in its medium or method)
House Study (Grove Road) by Rachel Whiteread (1992) utilises analogue methods of image manipulation to conceal and reveal parts of a building mid-demolition. Whiteread’s (1992) studies further heighten the sense of palimpsest within the architecture, as the buildings due to be razed are portrayed as ghosts of the city.
Analogue image-making was my primary method of investigation as I iteratively altered, scanned, and printed photographs of the derelict stone cottage structure. This drew direct inspiration from Rachel Whiteread’s (1992) process, in particular the use of correction fluid to hide and expose elements of the photograph. The degradation of the images mirrored the degradation of the building, and the visual language began to reflect the landscape of Ireland in the final few iterations. The concept that the building returns to the land is a theme that I intend to explore further through the subsequent briefs.
Wyld, F. (2016) ‘The Moving City as Palimpsest’, Landscape Architecture Australia, (151), pp. 65–68.
(reference that demonstrates a critical position in context of your specific topic, medium, or method)
‘The city is a palimpsest; it moves within time as a collection of layers for those who read it as a textured landscape. I love this city, but it is not mine. I am living on stolen land’ (Wyld, 2016).
Frances Wyld (2016) astutely introduces the idea that ‘the city is a palimpsest’. In this context, palimpsest is used in reference to the evolution of the urban environment. The development of the city is not linear, but layered. Layers of history, architecture, people and stories are embedded within the urban fabric of the city. Palimpsest formed my initial line of enquiry as I documented how layers of history can be observed within London. Wyld (2016) writes of ‘the city as palimpsest’, which ignited my interest in considering how this may be translated into a rural setting, and whether a ‘textured landscape’ of layers can be observed here too.
Wyld (2016) adopts an ethnographic viewpoint of the city as she reflects on her own position within the history of Indigenous culture and urbanism within Australia. This sparked me to reflect on my own positionality within the context of the rural west coast of Ireland. Despite spending a large portion of my life there, I am still an outsider. Due to the clash in the culture between where I grew up in the south of England and the realities of life in agricultural Ireland, I will never be able to understand rural Ireland in its entirety. My acknowledgement of my ethnographic position is pertinent to fully contextualise my work and the critical narrative I am trying to convey.
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Positions through Contextualising 
Positions through Essaying 
Positions through Triangulating (1) 
Positions through Triangulating (2) 
Positions through Triangulating (3) -
Week 3 (& Week 4) Process
To ground my speculative worlds in the current political climate, I thoroughly researched Green Party’s and Reform UK’s political manifestoes. In this blog post I have mapped how this has translated onto my speculative world illustrations.GREEN PARTY:
Circular Economy: ‘Green MPs will advocate for a circular economy that reduces the waste of resources’ (Green Party, 2024).
Minimise Waste, Maximise Recycling: ‘Volumes minimised and recycling maximised. Prioritise reduction of waste and maximise recycling’ (Green Party, no date).
Deposit Return Schemes: ‘implementing an all-in Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) for recycling and reuse’ (Clarity, 2025).
Opposes construction of new waste-to-energy incinerators: ‘Greens say “no more incineration” of waste’ (Green Party, 2024).
Ownership to Usership: ‘The Green Party is committed to the public ownership of public services, so they are run to serve us all, rather than to increase the wealth of shareholders’ (Green Party, no date).
Waste Export of Plastic Ban: ‘Alongside this, commit to a complete ban on all plastic waste exports by 2027 at the latest, and ending approvals for new incineration facilities’ (Green Party, 2024).
Decreasing Single-Use Plastic: ‘We will also increase the scope of bans on the production of single-use plastics’ (Green Party, 2024).REFORM UK:
Government and Council Spending Cuts: ‘Deputy leader Richard Tice said the party would need to cut “wasteful government spending” and “useless regulations” (Chartered Institution of Tax, 2025).
Prioritise Energy Security: ‘Reform UK will prioritise energy security, expand domestic energy production, and scrap policies that drive bills higher while making Britain more dependent on foreign energy’ (Reform UK, no date).
Net Stupid Zero: ‘Reform would scrap ‘net stupid zero’ policies’ (BBC, 2025).
Manifesto void of Environmental Policy: ‘Our Policies’ (Reform UK, no date).
Net Zero Alternative: ‘They state that instead of net zero, we can protect our environment with “more tree planting, more recycling and less single use plastics”’ (Greenpeace, no date).
Accelerate North Sea Gas and Oil Licensing: ‘Start fast-track licences of North Sea gas and oil’ (Greenpeace, no date).
Repeal EU Retained Laws: ‘Legislate to Scrap EU Regulations with Immediate Effect. Britain still has over 6,700 retained EU laws, which we will rescind’ (Greenpeace, no date).
Reference List:
BBC (2025) Reform would scrap ‘net stupid zero’ policies – Tice. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62k75qp1edo. (Accessed 3 March 2026).
Chartered Institution of Tax (2025) Reform UK: Party drops radical tax cut commitment. Available at: https://www.tax.org.uk/reform-uk-tax-nov25. (Accessed 3 March 2026).
Clarity (2025) What are the Main Political Parties’ Stances on Packaging EPR?. Available at: https://clarity.eco/environment/what-are-the-main-political-parties-stance-on-packaging-epr/. (Accessed 3 March 2026).
Green Party (no date) Creating a Fairer, Greener Economy. Available at: https://greenparty.org.uk/about/our-manifesto/creating-a-fairer-greener-economy/. (Accessed 3 March 2026).
Green Party (2024) Greens say “no more incineration” of waste. Available at: https://greenparty.org.uk/2024/10/15/greens-say-no-more-incineration-of-waste/. (Accessed 3 March 2026).
Green Party (2024) Manifesto for a Fairer, Greener Country. Available at: https://greenparty.org.uk/app/uploads/2024/06/Green-Party-2024-General-Election-Manifesto-Long-version-with-cover.pdf. (Accessed 3 March 2026).
Green Party (no date) Torridge Green Party Local Manifesto. Available at: https://torridge.greenparty.org.uk/about-us/883-2/. (Accessed 3 March 2026).
Greenpeace (no date) Reform manifesto: a contract with the polluters. Available at: https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/resources/reform-manifesto-analysis/. (Accessed 3 March 2026).
Reform UK (no date) Our Policies. Available at: https://www.reformparty.uk/policies. (Accessed 3 March 2026).
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Prompt Five
PART ONE
A statement that articulates how your group’s explorations helped you to reflect on, deepen, or shape your own position as a practitioner in context of climate justice and the UAL Net Zero plan (being as specific as possible).
The group project has been an equally reflective and expansive personal exercise in shaping my own position as a practitioner in the context of climate justice. Following the end of the group project, I have pursed an individual investigation to deepen the critical commentary with an impetus to reach a greater level of cohesion and conclusion within the body of work.
The exploration concerns itself with the critical question ‘Who can affordable to be sustainable? And at what cost?’. Through experimentation focused on world-building, the group iteratively developed speculative scenarios which reimagined UAL’s infrastructure for waste management in the future. The project sat at the intersection of architecture, place-making and communication design. The process has strengthened my own comprehension of the practical ways in which I can translate my architectural skillset into the field of communication design to promote social, political, or in this case, climate justice.
I currently work for Boehm Lynas, a small architectural practice rooted in environmentally conscious design. In my daily work, I regularly encounter the language used within the UAL Climate Action Plan, but exclusively within an architectural context. The group project has consolidated my understanding of the jargon surrounding climate justice, and expanded my application of the terminology outside the field of architecture.
Within my professional work, I have a nuanced appreciation of the social, political and climate implications of urban design. Environmental concerns guide all aspects my architectural work, yet I had not extensively considered how this ethos may apply to my practice within graphic design. This oversight is arguably due to the disparity in the tangibility of environmental impact within urban versus graphic design. The discipline of architecture is confined within the parameters of environmental policy, whereas graphic design requires self-initiated adherence to Net Zero Targets.
The project has been an act of contextualising in itself; not merely in terms of the representation of the UAL Net Zero data, but as a critical reflection on my position as practitioner. The work has expanded my perception of my responsibility as a designer, as I transition from an architectural context into a interdisciplinary practice.
PART TWO
An annotated bibliography consisting of 6 references that shaped your response to the brief, including:
2 texts from the reading list
2 texts that you find outside the reading list
2 design practices/projects.
Berners-Lee. M. (2022) The Carbon Footprint of Everything. London: Profile Books.
Although The Carbon Footprint of Everything (Berners-Lee, 2022) did not directly influence the outcomes of the group project, it was a vital text to develop our understanding of the wider theme of carbon emissions. Berners-Lee (2022) succinctly contextualises carbon emissions within everyday life, creating a robust foundational knowledge of the data. This reading was paramount to make the datasets more tangible. The text ensured my carbon literacy and enabled me to digest the statistics, and contextualise their qualitative size.
Bertolotti-Bailey S. (2015) Towards a Critical Faculty (Only an Attitude of Orientation). Liverpool: The Serving Library.
Stewart Bertolotti-Bailey’s (2015) Towards a Critical Faculty was an influential text within the Methods of Contextualising brief. The group wanted to effectively and critically challenge the role of UAL as an institution against the scale of the impact of decisions made by the individual. Our initial experimentation looked into the power structures and hierarchies within UAL, but without consideration on the relationship between the institution and the individual. This was not particularly successful as it disregarded the complexity of climate justice, and reduced the impacts into arbitrary categories.
Reflecting on Towards a Critical Faculty (Bertolotti-Bailey, 2015)encouraged a pivot in our thinking and refined our line of enquiry to more productively challenge the authority within UAL, whilst simultaneously retaining sensitivity towards the nuanced complexity of the subject. At this stage, we repositioned our project to create a critical line of enquiry that examined the role of the institution and the individual within the decisions made regarding waste management.
Calvino, I. (1972) Invisible Cities. Translated from the Italian by W. Weaver. London: Vantage Books.
Italo Calvino’s (1972) Invisible Cities was arguably the most useful academic reference in the development of our critical investigation into UAL’s waste management under the proposed Net Zero Plan. Similarly to Anna Tsing’s (2020) Feral Atlas, Invisible Cities (Calvino, 1972) is centred around world-building, in this case within a literary context. The notion of creating a complex network of fictitious cities helped establish a framework for our own line of enquiry. The introduction of creating speculative worlds encouraged our group to iterate quickly, imagining the impact of UAL’s waste management strategy through the multiple different lenses. This research relinquished our thinking from the initial reductive experiments, which utilised chess as a metaphor to examine the data, and further contextualised our investigation in the complex network of dependencies within climate justice.
Eames, C. and Eames. R. (1977) Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universe [Film]. Eames Office, Los Angeles.
Charles and Ray Eames (1977) astutely depict the relationship between scale and space through their film Powers of Ten. Throughout the group stage of the project, zooming was introduced as a critical tool to contextualise the scales of our world-building exercises. This was achieved through creating a folding publication, which zooms out in scale with each unfold. There was an motivation to put the micro scale of Central St Martins in conversation with the macro scale of the global impacts of UAL’s waste management.
The group exploration into zooming as a critical tool felt fairly rudimentary, therefore Powers of Ten (Eames, 1977) was revisited during my individual reflection of the project. Powers of Ten (Eames, 1977) was an important visual reference as it challenged the thinking around the medium in which the findings would be presented. The introduction of film unfixed the project from the staticity of the illustrations, and reframed the dialogue of the project into a space that could explore temporality, place-making and the scale of the social impact in one cohesive outcome.
Matos, A. (2022) Who can afford to be critical?: An Inquiry Into What We Can’t Do Alone, as Designers, and Into What We Might Be Able to Do Together, as People. Eindhoven: Set Margins’.
Phrasing our Methods of Contextualising exploration around a critical question allowed the work to be intentional and concise. Drawing inspiration from Who can afford to be critical? (Matos, 2022), we consolidated our initial research into the question of ‘Who can afford to be sustainable?’. The idea of affordability raises multiple different concerns that transcend above financial. We were collectively interested in the social and political repercussions of decisions.
The phrasing of our question was iteratively revised, to reflect the shift in our line of enquiry. We came to the critical question: ‘Who can afford to be sustainable? And at what cost?’. Afonso Matos’s (2022) Who can afford to be critical? was instrumental in the consolidation of our research, as the linguistic structure of the title of the book directly informed our method of approach to the group project.
The project concerns itself with the wider impacts of decisions made by both institution and individual within UAL, in an attempt to reveal, and challenge, the current systems of power and consequence.
Tsing, A. (2020) Feral Atlas. Available at: https://feralatlas.org/ (Accessed: 18 February 2026).
Feral Atlas (Tsing, 2020) successfully communicates the complexity of the ecological network, whilst maintaining the ease of the data consumption. The academic papers and statistics are hidden within a intricate index of ecologies, allowing the viewer to form their own journey through the platform as they access and interact with different data sets and information. Within the group project, there was an impetus to consider the viewer within the context of the work, and from the outset we imagined how the work could be meaningfully interacted with.
Feral Atlas (Tsing, 2020) acted as a key visual reference, due to the strong sense of world-building within the illustrative style. Within the graphics, space and scale are distorted, creating a speculative reality with a reordered hierarchy of ecologies. The themes of hierarchy, world-building and speculative realities remained central within our group exploration, as we critically investigated the role of the institution and the individual within a wider network of environmental and social consequences stemming from climate change.
Similarly to Ray and Charles Eames’ (1977) Powers of Ten, Feral Atlas (Tsing, 2020) utilises zooming as a method to contextualise space and scale. The viewer is invited to enlarge the illustrations to reveal further details about the ecologies. This method of contextualising was touched upon within our group project, and further examined within my individual restructuring of the body of work.
Reference List:
Berners-Lee. M. (2022) The Carbon Footprint of Everything. London: Profile Books.
Bertolotti-Bailey S. (2015) Towards a Critical Faculty (Only an Attitude of Orientation). Liverpool: The Serving Library.
Calvino, I. (1972) Invisible Cities. Translated from the Italian by W. Weaver. London: Vantage Books.
Eames, C. and Eames. R. (1977) Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universe [Film]. Eames Office, Los Angeles.
Matos, A. (2022) Who can afford to be critical?: An Inquiry Into What We Can’t Do Alone, as Designers, and Into What We Might Be Able to Do Together, as People. Eindhoven: Set Margins’.
Tsing, A. (2020) Feral Atlas. Available at: https://feralatlas.org/ (Accessed: 18 February 2026).
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Manifesto! // Reflection
Stephanie Jin’s cross year studio Manifesto! offered an opportunity to reflect on how my practice has developed since I started at CSM. The workshop felt aptly timed within the course calendar, as I have been taking time to critically reflect on what I have learnt during Unit: 1 Methods. The manifesto I produced during the cross year studio was a reflection on my understanding of my own positionality. I decided to illustratively convey my manifesto, rather than leaving it purely textual. It drew inspiration from Mill & Jones (2019) Exile’s Letter in both form and colour palette.
My interest lies at the intersection between graphic communication design and architecture. Prior to this course I had not considered how that may materialise into a critical practice.
Throughout Methods of Investigating and Methods of Cataloguing I applied my architectural skillset onto the field of graphic design, with an impetus to communicate complexity through mapping. This cultivated a wider interest in the practice of social cartography, which I hope I can revisit in the future whilst studying at CSM.
The first two briefs primarily investigated architectural mapmaking as a graphic design tool. To further entangle the two disciplines of graphic design and architecture, I decided to translate an architectural theory onto a graphic design process during Methods of Translating. This was a pivotal moment in the development of the position of my practice, as I visually illustrated practical methods to intertwine my interests.
After tentatively exploring my position as a designer in the first term, I began to break down the defined boundaries of graphic design and architecture within the Methods of Iterating project. Through the process of bookbinding conventional architectural drawings, the line between graphic design and architecture became even more blurred. I started to consider the disciplines as indistinct; I lost the ability to discern where graphic design finishes and architecture begins.
The Methods of Contextualising project aided the consolidation of my position as a designer. The speculative world building reflected my new-found understanding that architecture and graphic design are one in the same: where both disciplines are acts of world building, construction, communication, placemaking and speculation. I look forward to consolidating, warping and reimagining my position as a designer next semester.
Reference List:
Mill, A. and Jones. L. (2019) Exile’s Letters. Oslo: Mill & Jones.
