This year, I am just about to return to campus to study for a master's degree. It is also the annual graduation season. Recently, the graduation exhibitions of major art academies have begun to be held. I would like to share some stories from the past with you and hope to bring you some new inspiration.
In 2019, I completed my graduation project "Phantasisland" with the thinking of architectural narrative.
Through two narratives: one is that I conceived a fictional garbage city story in 2199, and the other traces the birth and development history of the garbage playground in 1943.
I put forward a vision through the illusory structure and the real past, but this imagination is also a response to the inner world of children. At the same time, it uses the medium of waste materials to play and lead to questions to think about. If we can use some means to help children and allow them to create, explore and take risks more freely, what kind of reaction will occur in such a world, and I also respond to this result through a beautiful assumption. In this mixed world, children are free and experience an unprecedented adventure. Without the supervision of adults, their inner strength is amplified, and they return to that free and fearless state of mind. The use of waste materials is created by children to help them realize their dreams. Creation can be material or spiritual. Adventure and exploration are also a kind of creation, a kind of creation that only children can understand.
This is an open proposition, and perhaps the answer should be interpreted by more viewers.
At that time, I studied the narrative architecture theory of "Short Stories" under the guidance of my mentor, which inspired me a lot. The length is too long, and I can analyze the content of this book with you next time.
I have summarized three points on how to grasp this kind of project.
- Abstraction and sensibility: Try to open your heart completely, think of yourself as a novelist, put yourself in the world you want to go to most, and describe it with text or by adding some abstract collage.
- Objectivity and rationality: Look for objective events in the world. History, news, etc. are all your theoretical basis. Remember that you are exploring phenomena from the perspective of a designer, not an artist playing freely.
- Superposition of rationality and sensibility: Return to the current life again and find the connection point. You wrote a fictional novel. You are conceiving some "pain points" from the perspective of a "party involved", and you have found the objective existence of some "pain points". At this time, the redesign is a tenable point of view. Usually, this kind of subject matter is more suitable for an open reflection topic. We must be clear that designers cannot solve all problems, but we can give the audience space for reflection through the designer's thinking.
