GREENwichFORUM

01-11-08

Growing a Hidden Architecture

This project is concerned with how man’s ability to control his surroundings is intimately linked with his advancing capabilities of using technology. We have reached a point in our evolution where we are now capable of creating design criteria to manipulate natural growth and development. This project explores the possibilities of a symbiotic relationship between two different systems of organization, technology and nature. The technology is designed to theoretically alter newly planted trees in the last remaining Yew forest- Kingley Vale. By controlling the manipulation of refined armatures, calibrating devices and designed corsets; the system is capable of controlling the growth of a ship inside the forest. The ship will grow over a period of 200 years and will exist as a hidden architecture inside the trees. The ship growing in the forest is the ship from the ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, a tale of man’s relationship to mortality. For the evolution to last without human intervention, the artificial system harvests resin from the trees to measure time passing. The hourglass is designed to a volume of two hundred years, as the resin passes from the tree the clock slowly fills. Ultimately the hourglass volume is filled, jamming the clock signally the completion of the system. By creating this architecture within the trees the artificial system itself extends new possibilities into man’s relationship to ‘Future Natures’.

sap measure

spirit level

plan with timeline

hull section

callibration collars

timelapse carving

tree canopy

rudder navigation

elevation