Exhibited work at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

January 2023 - March 2023

This is a declaration stating that this is a new set of conservation codes that supersedes the existing document.

How can the dismantling of St Paul’s dome provide more value? As mentioned by Lewis Mumford, the very value of social history lies in the act of detachment. The cycling of heritage and value through architecture is questioned. The proposal sits as a new way of understanding conservation; one that takes into account the design of a building’s death along with its birth. By designing an expiry date of the physical object, there is space to allow for a narrative to be written into the gradual erasure of materiality. The proposal is constantly evolving to the point that it is delisted.

Until eventually, the dome is dismantled. This questions what happens once an entity loses its concrete form through a generational timeline, it takes 3 generations for a glorified picture to be created.

Another 3 for you to have a skeletal outline of key events.

Another 3 for misconstructed stories to be formed.

And another 3 to change and differ, depending how society communicates them.

Bringing us to the moment of its delisting, a moment when its physical structure has been normalised and its material value is removed to put an emphasis on a narrative that focuses on its gradual erasure. This then reconstructs our historic and detachment value towards the physical.

This proposal introduces the idea of the collision of forces for its potential to generate interaction. By creating pockets of congregation where collision happens as a means of initiating interaction, these two communities will coincide rather than just coexist. The moment of collision between them will spark tolerance - it will be the moment where there is a common understanding between both sides. It will be the moment where the grey area is no longer perceived as an area of ambiguity but rather an area of congregation and assurance.

Urban thinker Richard Sennett introduces the idea of how most activity should in fact happen on the edge/border of a city or any form community. The importance of this intermediary space between inside and outside was not something developed but rather exists in nature itself. An important ecological example in Havana context would be, when water meets land. Havana extensive coastline whereby the moment of collision/edge condition is the essence of life itself, becoming an active space of exchange. Now, there are actually three components working in coherence; inside (main land), outside (sea) and the space in between.

Furthermore, the natural encounter between sea and city in the case of Havana is a moment where the rational city grid is disrupted to negotiate with the sea. Havana urban fabric is made of a sequence of grids developed through history that expands, nestling the city within it, until eventually the grid confronts a natural edge. A natural encounter, where water meets land. By placing the proposal on a natural occurring edge of where water meets land, it puts an emphasis on this idea of tolerance and negotiation; not only between water and land, grid and sea, but tourist and locals.

Landscaper Olmsted describes a nature as an ongoing project in constant evolution. Following his reflection, nature can be seen as an element that supersedes the time of both communities that inhabit its space. There- fore, nature is at the top of the hierarchy and tourists and locals will abide by its conditions. Moreover, the proposal would act as an exemplary for Central Havana to look out to its periphery, its edge condition. Instead of superimposing a grid onto the edge, the architecture and topography will work coherently in order to mediate the human living condition with the environment so they evolve together. In this case the two components are acting as one and the collision happens not between the communities but rather in events/ moments within the restricted circulation

Display of models using plaster, latex/glue and steel work that focused on conservation techniques.

AA VISITING SCHOOL, AMAZON

To design and build an experimental, emergency floating structure as a response to flooding and rising sea levels.

Amazon floating structure 2018