I came across this thread on pushpullbar, and I find it one of the most intriguing academic projects I’ve ever seen. The thing is, where I came from (NUS ARCHI), we are interested in serious building, and narratives and personal touch is almost always absent. I think UK projects do have a lot of that and that’s why they are so memorable, and you wonder why it isn’t built. Then again, probably because it doesn’t make any commercial sense. NUS works make tremendous commercial sense.
Basically, this project is by Nicholas Howett. It kinda is like a library of bricks collected from a disintegrating fort close to the site, sorted out by BOB (the Brick Organising Bot). And he included a very interesting narrative of a brick thief as well.
HERE IS HIS CRIT WRITE UP:
The Brick Accumulator.
The fort unruly, wayward, neglected for hundreds of years stands on the edge of the River Medway, incomplete from years of abuse, more recently teenagers have taken away bricks but the River Medway has always.
Wyllie a painter, his house Hoo lodge overlooks the Medway, he used bricks from the fort to repair his dining room. The fort is now distributed across the site, bricks strewn into the Medway, some removed by vandals, others by Wyllie. No one wishes to repair the fort, nor even hold it in a constant state, soon it will be no more.
Across a long bridge from the hill side you cross above the tree tops to reach the tower, inside the bricks from the fort are to be found collected and re-assembled as one again. Stored in conditions which replicate that of where they were found. The dark black bricks of the Medway emerged in water in a pool at the towers base, the better preserved bricks towards the top. The tower becomes the bricks new mortar.
Walkways cross the tower branching out from a staircase that transcends the tower allowing visitors to emerge themselves within the bricks. The staircase allows visitors to view the permanent collection on there way down.
The Permanent Collection.
Bricks, every type of brick imaginable will be kept here, archived by size, colour, shape, weight, condition and age. The will be stored in a shelf like location upon the walls of the tower, visitors after they have descended the tower can ask to see a brick and ‘the robot’ which organises and reorganises the collection will deliver one to the table at the base of the tower. Scurrying up the walls to find the brick removing it from its slot and placing it on the ‘reading’ table below for the visitor to inspect. Along with each brick is delivered its history and relevant information. The visitor is allowed to examine the brick before it is replaced within the archive.
The collection can be used for reference for people trying to reference a brick, find a certain type of brick or people researching a certain period in the history of bricks. This is a library of bricks if you like, however no bricks are loaned out.
The Temporary Collection
These hulks out in the Medway store the bricks and components of buildings which for whatever reason have been dismantled, arriving by boat they are help here until a new location can be found and the building reassembled, not accessible from the land visitors can only see the hulks from the shore.
site and the brick towers
site plan. the reds are where the bricks are collected. the greys are the intervention
the white bricks. i think it is done in sketch up and rendered in v-ray
check out those bricks. he did a model of the floating bricks and the frame as well.
the red bricks
another of the red brick render
BOB unleashed his fury with plummeting bricks on the trespasser!
model of the floating bricks and concrete frame. he did the bricks from a 3D printer. where can I find that in singapore?
to the main thread for more pictures and explanation.
