ADS6: The Deindustrial Revolution – Garden of Making
Alex Boyce
Originally from Liverpool I began studying for my Architecture BA at the University of Liverpool in 2013 and graduated in 2016. While at
Liverpool my work revolved around the social realms of architecture; Housing pressures in Liverpool, the dilapidation of seaside towns and a speculative future for the NHS. In my final year of my undergraduate degree I was awarded the John Rankin Prize for Drawing, the SOTA Academic Achievement Award, was nominated for the Future Architects Exhibition and twice had work featured by Architectural Review Magazine.
This year my work has been an exploration of how infrastructure is continually shaping the rural landscape and natural environment. Focussed on the role of national scale development in Norway, the work proposes a speculative alternative to pre-existing formats of roadside development across the country. Working primarily in film through the year has allowed for an interrogation of these proposed spaces with an emphasis on the atmosphere they produce within their context, their effect on the immediate surroundings and the creation of an experiential narrative. Oljevegen: The Oil Road, is a critical examination and response to the relationship between landscape, traditional culture, and the emergence of infrastructure along Norway’s western coast.
It is through the Natural that we can begin to expose the roots of an architecture and suggest how building can provide a response to this naturally given environmental landscape.
The project explores these ideas and themes in relation to the E39 Highway, Norway's largest infrastructure project and poses a series of questions;
How can infrastructural development become the starting point for a new type of building project, one that acts simultaneously as public building and infrastructure?
How might a project of this type be developed over time within the context of the rapidly developing Norwegian coastal landscape?
Through digital reconstruction is it possible to convey the climatic environment and intangible atmosphere of Norway’s landscape character?
Medium:
Digital AnimationSize:
3:30min
The E39
The E39
The Festøy Ferry
The Festøy Ferry
Emerging Roadside Infrastructure
Atlanterhavsveien (The Atlantic Ocean Road)
Medium:
Line DrawingSize:
297x420mm
Allmannsrett I
Allmannsrett II
Allmannsrett III
Allmannsrett IV
The proposal develops a form and materiality that sits between the vernacular and the infrastructural, creating a new regional aesthetic for the length of the E39.
Internal spaces are rich and warm, exposed plaster walls designate the internal core of the building, housing communal respite, cooking, and eating facilities.
Split across five distinct volumes, residential rooms provide privacy and shelter to the weary road traveler. The steeply sloping timber roof acts as a veil over each of the building’s volumes.
Positioned parallel yet removed from the E39 highway this large timber building sits at the foot of the Ulla-Forre, a hydropower complex in Suldal municipality.
Medium:
Animation StillSize:
384x216mm
The Folk Infrastructure Museum I
The Folk Infrastructure Museum II
The Folk Infrastructure Museum III
The Folk Infrastructure Museum IV
Navigable only by vehicle and designed to elevate visitors to roof level the proposal offers an alternative perspective on these iconic structures.
Returned to the rural west coast from Norway's city-based open-air museums and nestled in Haugsvær, a secluded and sheltered valley are the nation's last remaining Stave churches.
Medium:
Animation stillSize:
384x216mm
The Platform I
The Platform II
The Platform III
The Platform IV
It is here in the Vatsfjorden, where one is invited to position themself out into the heart of the environment. This is the final fjord that the recently decommissioned Oil rigs will pass through on their way to be dismantled. As North Sea oil is no longer viable its infrastructure is removed and returned to its origin, the small town of Vatne to be razed to the ground.
The platform acts both as a place of solitude and as a navigational tool in the notoriously treacherous Vatsfjorden. Its illuminated lantern marks the entrance to the Vatsfjorden for the team of tugboats shepherding these structures back home to slowly mark the end of Norway’s age of oil.
Kvardag: Composite Animation
The four thematic ideas, the natural, the domestic, the regional and the foreign that form the core of the project were initially explored instinctively through this short film. This short film is constructed from a set of digitally manipulated images, handmade paper models, on-location footage and digitally manufactured scenography.
The film sought to test ideas relating to the creation of atmosphere using both static and dynamic elements each layered over one another to augment the still image and enhance the on-location recordings. The use of designed scenography and on-location recordings seek to blur the boundaries between the actual, the probable, and the possible.
Through this methodology each scene becomes a device through which an atmosphere and mood can begin to emanate. This practice became foundational in defining the process through which each aspect of the project was evaluated. Location, scale, material and climatic conditions were all tested and considered as part of this emerging projects visual language.