Unit B

This year we explored the tension between the pragmatic and the poetic via the dichotomy of environmental responsibility and human desire, specifically the use of shading for passive climate control versus the use of shadow for dramatic effect.   Our approach to this dichotomy drew upon both Eastern and Western philosophical ideas.

Responding to the climate emergency, we studied our environment as an extension of the self and used the transposition of psychoanalytic theory to generate design hypotheses in an attempt to heal our environmental design processes.

In dealing with notions of darkness and the unknown, we departed from structuralist value systems to explore beauty inside shadow, where silence and the inevitable exist on a haptic and perceptual spectrum within darkness itself.

All these investigations were carried out with a particular emphasis on expressed componentry and material logistics that is characteristic of Unit B.

Tutors: Brian Hoy, Erika Suzuki, Ricardo Assis Rosa

Students: Doug Major, Ed Rowbottom, Guy Pope, Hettie Tollit,  Jessica Rozario, Katherine Wright, Nikita Norris, Shalom Osuchukwu, Sina Jebraeili, Tchinossanda Costa

Guests: Aditya Aachi, Edward Norman, Jochem Hamoen, Tim Bedingfield, Ludka Majernikova, Melissa Kinear, Christopher Pendrich, Christopher Fulton

SkateTheatre

Doug Major

A theatre embedded in a multi-activity landscape which makes connections with the existing by extending the existing skate park into a flowing terrain inspired by the folds of the himation.

Adaptable Theatre

Ed Rowbottom

A theatre to accommodate multiple sizes and formats of performance, predominantly music, where evening sun enters beneath the main volume illuminating the performance below.

Feather Theatre

Guy Pope

A theatre inspired by feathers where the audience arrives at the performance via a series of delicate interstitial spaces that transition into a shadow garden where fragments of light skip across the water.

Laboratory Theatre

Hettie Tollit 

A theatre that frames everyday activities so that they become performances whilst facilitating and protecting special theatrical events through a series of views and sequencing.

Migrant Children's Theatre

Jessica Rozario

A theatre forming part of an educational and play centre for refugee children where daylight enters through a central courtyard allowing improved privacy along the perimeter.

Circus Theatre

Katherine Wright

A theatre for an aerial circus where a constellation of stars generated by the apertures in a tensile membrane envelope accentuate the drama of the performance.

Political Theatre

Nikita Norris

An assembly hall that aims to bridge the gap between government and community by providing a theatre for the performance of politics.

Festival Theatre

Shalom Osuchukwu

A theatre that animates a desolate site by opening up to support the annual Apokries festival and providing a shaded refuge for inhabitants and passers-by.

Youth Theatre

Sina Jebraeili

A theatre serving the local demographic of disenfranchised youths left behind by the commercial development of the area.

Graffiti Theatre

Tchinossanda Costa

A space that elevates the act spray-painting to a theatrical performance, encouraging the local youth to protest and generate their own mythology.