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Serjeant Award for Excellence in Drawing

Institute of Ideas

Part 2 Project 2004
Luke Chandresinghe
Ivana Petrovic
Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) | UK
Ideas begin their protected life in the storage vessel after numerous tests, examinations and tribunals. They are carefully prepared for preservation before they start their twenty year protected life. The storage vessel comprises of twenty chambers of ideas on each floor. There are twenty stories in each vessel, one for each year the idea is protected.
Protected ideas rise vertically at the rate of one storey each year until it reaches the top of the storage tower at the twentieth floor.
On the expiry date of the patent in its twentieth year, the patent is located, released and transferred to the expiration vessel where it can then be finally blown and dispersed across the terrain.
The surrounding landscape a junkyard, market and forum for discussion of old ideas where intellectual scavengers steal, recycle, sell and buy expired inventions. This is the place where invention dies and is reborn.



The year was structured as a continuous programme of research sub divided into a series of interconnecting episodes, to develop the Institute of Weight + Measure. As architect explorers students were asked to consider the current preoccupation with measurement, the seemingly endless need to quantify, verify, refine and record against a consensual set of standards. Drawings were considered as both tools of practice and sites of speculative construction, objects of manufacture, test sites, filters, employing facts, and half-truths. As thought likely with all institutes, built in imperfections and errors were discovered, suggesting possibilities for refinement and advancement, ensuring a demand for its continued necessity and development.

The portfolio displays an extraordinary level of control, consistency and maturity. Crafted and formally inventive the work evolved through the direct physical engagement with the drawing as both subject and object. Luke is an articulate, engaging and highly motivated individual.

Tutor(s)

2004
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