ADS6: The Deindustrial Revolution – Garden of Making
Ausra Kamicaityte
I am an architect and designer with a strong interest in research-based design. The first chapter of my career was spent in Lithuania and the UK, putting my original degree in business management to use. However, after moving to London, I began to crave a more creative outlet and decided to pursue a career in architecture. Changing profession felt like a daunting prospect, but I was driven enough to make the leap.
Before completing my MA in Architecture at RCA, I received a BA (Hons) in Interior Architecture at Middlesex University. During the BA course, my work was shortlisted at the Free Range exhibition for the most innovative, comprehensive and well communicated final degree studio project. In addition, between these degrees I was able to hone my skills by working at design practice in London.
Throughout my studies at RCA, I have been exploring the theme of memory in relation to architecture. My work – a multi-modal approach that involves photography, film, animation and experimenting with physical forms - addresses a series of conditions that are anchored to a particular memory, private and collective. In my thesis, I question how the destruction of the physical environment (the home and the landscape), and its substitution with new architecture and spatial constructs, affects the material organization of daily life and, therefore, the human condition. The interplay between architecture and the human condition remains one of my key areas of interest.
Previous Degrees
BA Hons, Interior Architecture Middlesex University, London, UK
MA, Business Administration and Managements, Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas, Lithuania
BA Hons, Business Administration and Managements, Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas, Lithuania
Exhibitions
Mexico Art Fair. ADS6 Exhibition, Seminario 12, Mexico City, 2020
RA250, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2018
Free Range. Interior Educators, Truman Brewery, London, 2018
My project explores the themes of memory and societal trauma in Lithuania where, during its occupation by Soviet Russia, a large portion of population were intentionally displaced with the aim of altering the pre-existing society and its traditional culture. This erasure of memory was a goal in itself, which manifested in the simultaneous erasure of memories, history, and identity attached to architecture and the place. Destruction of the physical environment – the home and the landscape – that had provided links to the past, swiftly extinguished the notion of identity and blurred the memory of the homeland. And as Milan Kundera might say ‘we perish if we forget.’
The living memories of just a few of those displaced people were captured through a series of research interviews, films and photography. Those recorded memories then became a central component of the project. Those who were displaced experienced a trauma which has never been properly dealt with: if memories are not moved from an individual to a broader social level, it prevents the healing of this unspoken collective trauma. Grief is characterised by an attempt to regain power of the narrative; it, therefore, became important to re-enact these traumatic moments based on the narrative truth of those who were displaced.
The project explores the idea of healing in relation to this specific societal trauma through a journey, a walk in the landscape and the choreographed encounter with a series of landmarks. Walking is one of the most important ways to understand a place and its’ landscape. It offers a personal, direct and intimate experience of our relationship with the earth and in Francesco Careri’s words:
‘Through the walk the physical structure of the territory is reflected on the body in motion.’*
The project proposes a walk within the landscape that was once prohibited. In this condition the landscape is evocative of identity and a connection that can provide solace, but is also where the darkest of the memories are stored. Each of the encountered landmarks are anchored to a specific memory, private and collective, and discuss the altered human condition and material organization of daily life in relation to displacement. By looking at the use of domestic tools and textures the project evokes a specifically domestic materiality with the memory of the home. In this project, texture is isolated from its origin, but the relationship with the home and its memory remains as an ethereal trace.
* Careri Francesco, Walkscapes. Walking as an Aesthetic Practice (Ames: Culicidae Architectural Press, 2018)
