A house for Alexander Lennox Part 2 Project 2010 Jonathan Thorns University of Lincoln Lincoln | UK The catalyst for my thesis design project is the novel ‘The Bridge’ by Iain Banks. The book circulates around a man who lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident and finds himself in the surreal world of the Bridge. The Bridge is a fusion of past, present and future within his imagination; he places significance on various aspects of his life leading up to the accident, creating exaggerated juxtapositions that form the building blocks of the world within the Bridge. Using this form of analysis I began to formulate my surroundings; areas that are obvious and areas that go unnoticed that may hold significance in the subconscious when constructing a representation of the environment in which I live. Particular interest was placed in highlighting the gaps, voids, left over spaces. I began to exaggerate these by constructing a code like representation, resulting in creating juxtapositions by fusing together the fussiness of hand drawn studies and precise computer drawings. Like that of the Bridge where precise moments in the characters life are fused with the fussiness of others, thus creating a distorted construct of an environment and a mechanism for architectonic language.The real protagonist in the Bridge is Alexander Lennox, he never truly wanted to awake from his coma but his natural curiosity led him to leave the Bridge unwillingly. My building is a continuation of his unhappiness within reality fused with the architectonic language of the analysis and characteristics of an endless, desolate landscape.A house for Alexander Lennox is set within the surreal location of Dungeness, a place for expression and amalgamations of clutter that have been collected and displayed. Endless qualities of the site will enhance the feeling of retreat, a place for reflection and expression, and the surreal construct that formed his happiness within the Bridge.The design explores the notion of fusing materials, objects, landscape, artefacts and memories into a house that expresses Lennox’s happiness in a world that was created from an accident that typified his life of regret. Jonny’s project uses as its starting point the idea that landscapes can be constructs of the mind and that they can become material through the desires of their creator. His initial investigation began with an exploration of his own environment, which produced a series of drawings, inherently hinting at an inner world shaped by extreme perspectives and dominated by the notion of a never-ending vista. A vista that collects within its view fragments of the environments it travels through, allowing them to hang in space without scale or context.This notion of endlessness is the theme that runs through the project with the building proposal being a collation of observed fragments, which contort themselves into a building form within a seemingly endless landscape. The success of this project is its ability to disconnect and yet simultaneously connect to its environment. It sits in its landscape and like the main character in the book (The Bridge by Iain Banks) for which it is designed seems to occupy that place between consciousness and unconsciousness, blinking in and out of the place it purports to physically occupy. Tutor(s)Mr Richard Wright