Charlie Spectacles

Degree Project

The Impossibility of Possession

The scarcity of agitation in today’s society is agitating. Increasingly, we seem to focus upon a process of smoothing out, perfecting and preserving rather than upon challenging, destabilising and changing established values. This leaves room for a stagnant society.

In architecture, the grotesque is often suppressed as an aesthetic category; it creates a sense of anxiety. In his article titled En Terror Firma Peter Eisenman discusses the importance of disturbing and agitating through architecture. He defines a contemporary grotesque, embodied in the idea of the impossibility of possession.

This design for a cosmetic day clinic and urban park employs this idea and intentionally agitates through denying expectation. Located on a roof top site in central Wellington, it illustrates the absurdity of striving for unnatural aesthetic perfection. Simultaneously it is a celebration of the city’s perpetual process of decay, in particular the archaeological remains of the Te Aro Pa site.

Morph Project

The purpose of this experimental project was to study elements from two designers who work in different ways and merge them together to create an entirely new design. Elements were taken from Mies Van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion and chair. These rigorously grided, meticulously proportioned designs were then combined with the distinctive garment construction techniques of fashion house Comme des Garçons; folding, wrapping and asymmetry.

The final design is an intimate interior space. It is defined by walls that loosely wrap the space but are kept within the bounds of a grided system.