(EXP)
CASTOFFS AS ARCHITECTURE
‘Castoffs as Architecture’ is an experimental research and design project that challenges architecture's traditional productivism, which is driven by market forces. Instead, it explores a model centered on repair, reassembly, reincarnation, reuse, and reconfiguration. The project asks: How would we build if extracting new materials were prohibited? How would we create using only what we have, with a child-like curiosity?
As capitalism stretches to the planet's furthest reaches, architects are left to salvage its remnants. Fortunately, the global economic engine leaves behind a trail of castoffs: shipwrecks, decommissioned airfield hangars, cribbing blocks, archival data, landslide debris, propane tanks, transmission towers, freeway columns, and even unrealized patents. ‘Castoffs as Architecture’ defines these overlooked artifacts as the castoffs of modernity.
How might we build with them? This series of drawings utilizes found patents as a starting point for ad-hoc architectural representation.
(EXP)
LEFTOVERS
‘Leftovers' challenges the consensus that for architectures and landscapes to be valuable they must have a manufactured novelty. This project takes rubbish as its medium -- that which emerges not from newness, but rather from long standing duration.
Just as the log cabin comes from the trees of the forest, the leftover dwelling is conceived of using the rubbish of the cataclysm -- fractured freeway asphalt, fallen concrete artifacts, defunct drainage troughs... The tectonic measures necessary to juxtapose the residual castoffs of the earthquake with quotidian design methods may render visible resilient and unforeseen ways of living.
(EXP)
METAPHYSICAL COLLAGE
Following the rise of scientific objectivity, buildings and spaces began to be categorized based on function and economic value, rather than interpreted through their physiognomic traits or sense of wonder.
Metaphysical Collages challenges this shift. Instead of treating buildings as isolated spectacles, it reimagines them as assemblages of harvested memories and observations transformed into constructible forms. Dreams, memories, and found conditions are hybridized into a collective expression. At the core of this series is the intersection of the real and the imagined, the metaphysical and the mechanical.
Inspired by the early 20th-century metaphysical painting movement, particularly the enigmatic works of De Chirico and Carrà, the series resists functional categorization by use-value. It asks: can we reimagine form through auratic value instead?
(EXP)
RESOLVED ERRORS
In ‘Resolved Errors', materials salvaged from the jobsite are given a second chance, transforming construction mishaps into unexpected pieces of functional art. In this particular instance, an incorrectly specified ship ladder stair, dismantled from its original purpose, is reimagined as landscape furniture—seats, benches, easels, tables, and sculptures. Each resulting piece carries a residual reflection of its previous ontological state, bridging the gap between its original function and its newly imagined role.
The artifact’s misinterpretation and displacement reveal its potential for transformation, illustrating how errors in specification can inspire unforeseen creative possibilities.
(EXP)
GARDEN OF CASTOFFS
The Garden of Castoffs is built from intellectual and physical detritus, challenging both the ego of the designer and the relentless extraction of materials from our fragile earth.
An early 20th-century electrical patent is reimagined and rescaled as a series of garden walls, constructed from chunks, blocks, and panels of reclaimed concrete artifacts.
Standing at a height of 150 cm, the walls invite visitors to walk through and experience the tactile sensation of discarded debris, now elevated and presented as valuable artifacts.
