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Home Zone 2

Part 2 Project 2004
Katherine Leat
Oxford Brookes University Oxford | UK
An interpretation of Homezone as a reinstatement of a residential life involving the ephemeralities of a changeable, tidal world.

The River Thames rises and falls, a watery erosion etching traces of this movement. Inhabitants participate in the minute changes that cause monumental alterations in this silent and subtle environment. Homes traverse the realm of the public and the inherently private river, emphasizing erosion and traces. Liquid momentum is measured in the floating workspace movement between public and private environments. Ground strata left by the river are preserved in diaphragm concrete retaining walls. Worn fixtures leave polished traces and ply-surfaces erode through habitation.

Katherine Leat


Katherine's work is idiosyncratic and challenging. She completed two
linked projects in Diploma Design Studio One; WorkZone and HomeZone.
For the former, Katherine took the programme of ' bookbinder' and, in
responding to her observations of the decline of the hard copy form,
and with it the dying art of the bookbinding craft itself, confronted
the issue with a book destroying machine in central Oxford. In a
sophisticated, yet conversely Heath Robinson-like contraption, covers
are stripped, spines broken, pages torn, and the resultant pulp
celebrated as symbolic sculptural residue.

The HomeZone project followed the 2004 Corus student competition brief.
Katherine chose Potters Fields as her site (potently, under the shadow
of the GLA) and sliced new access ways through the embankment to small
houses which hang like parasites over the 'beach'. Associated
transluscent floating workshops rise and fall out of the upper ground
plane with the tide, so providing kinetic markers of the river motion
from afar. The central ingredients of Katherine's project - material,
erosion, tracery and vibration - contributed to a highly original
proposal; one which lifts the spirits both in terms of satisfying the
brief as well as successfully combining digital media with more
traditional representation through full scale model-making, collage,
montage and hand-drawing.

2004
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