Final Project- Detail: From procedures to presentation

After talking to the crits, they suggested I look at using one material, or the same materials, to create both the internal and external space in order to capture this idea I had of a solid, permanent place. Concrete was a practical, realistic material, and definitely offered the properties I was looking for.

In order to get a better idea of how I might be able to portray two different areas using only one medium, I looked at certain details that represented each space. External was more obvious; the concrete itself is rough and formidable naturally, especially when it hasn’t been smoothed over and is left to shape itself. But as an interior medium, it became more difficult. Considering it was a place I would to wake up in, the roughness of the exterior wasn’t very fitting. Smoothing over the concrete was a decent solution, but I still didn’t feel it really encapsulated a typical, identifiable ‘interior’. To combat this, the desktop crit brought up the idea of using wallpaper in some manner. The only difficulty that came with that was that I wanted to work with only one main medium.

I wondered whether it would be possible to cast elaborate ornamental type wallpaper patterns into concrete, because i thought that such a pattern, or image, is an easily recognisable feature of interior design.

Eventually, after talking to my uncle (a builder!) he said there was a certain kind of cement that would make such tiny details possible, in terms of casting. From this, i created a sloping shape using florist's foam, which i covered in about an inch of clay. Into this i made a relief of the wallpaper patterns i wanted to cast into the concrete.

This was the finished project! I wanted to cast the perspex into the concrete but unfortunately this didn't work out.

The basis of my idea was that whole idea of exterior and interior being connected and intertwined - this underlies my entire overall 'waking up' idea, in which the world is viewed, but from a different angle and without the connection of scent, sound and feeling.