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The Wasteland // Paper, Canvas, Lens

Part 2 Dissertation 2015
Christopher Jones
Oxford Brookes University Oxford | UK
The Wasteland is a provocative landscape that has an engendered much curiosity about it. Labelled ‘terrain vague’ by Ignasi di Sola-Morales, it is defined by a lack of boundaries and fluctuating, chaotic characteristics documented and explored by artists and architects alike.

Through a series of chapters and artistic experiments introducing, researching and exploring the use of ‘Paper, Canvas, Lens’ – a method of interdisciplinary processes to conceptualise, produce and represent ‘terrain vague’ – wasteland architecture was designed. Writings by philosophers and historians such as Sola Morales and Vittoria Di Palma shape the prevailing theory of the wasteland as a cyclical process through uncultivated wilderness to Re-inhabitation, Deconstruction & Reconstruction, Deterioration and Dereliction & Abandonment. The processes and methods of representation behind the drawings of Giovanni Piranesi, paintings of Marcus Jansen and films by Zarina Bhimji & Andrei Tarkovsky provide a platform for the author to artistically experiment and practically/visually develop the theories in collaboration with the written research.

Architectural intervention upon the wasteland delves into the realms of imagination. To be questioning, optimistic, pessimistic or simply dreamily fantastic is to interrogate, discover and define ambitions of this uncultivated landscape.

Christopher Jones

Tutor(s)
Dr Igea Troiani
2015
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