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Rock, Rococo, Roko’s Basilisk

Part 1 Project 2023
Isaac Simmonds-Douglas
University of Cambridge | UK
01- *Master planning* - A discriminate act, prioritising the perseverance of antiquated and often religious spatial forms as fixed Urban ‘objects’ rather than ‘concepts’.

02- *The City* - A mediating ideal of disparate timescales and identities: -e: ROCK, ROCOCO, ROKO’S BASISLISK – urban/social dialogues of the primal, opulent and technological.

03- *Urbanism* - A theatrical past sublime, a memento mori of antecedent theoretics and morality.

The project is a provocation to the urbanist, the planner, the gentrifier, to a system mandating utopian communal ideals and set modes of architectural depiction. The square, the church, the home - stigmatised supposed institutions of traditional neighbourhoods and subsequent planning guidelines, unrepresentative of Queer, secular and non-western existences. Ergo, reinvigorating cultural folklore and ecclesiastic whimsy as characteristic approaches to space rather than decaying artefacts within it. Saintly namesakes guide a narrative of ‘Urban Martyrdom’, promoting a building to *die* in form, for the benefit of the wider city – a proto ruin. A sanctity and opulence to depiction with theatrical portrayals of a spatial narrative reclaiming religious iconography and tools from the triptych to the fable, as more compelling translations of an urban identity than a masterplan. Not only a structural proposition to the site, but a methodology of approach.


Tutor(s)
Sarah Hare
Richard Lavington
2023
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