CINEMATIC
LANDSCAPE
EXCHANGE
Title: Notes on the Neolithic
Institute: Oxford Brookes University
Studio: Unit K
Maintaining that the experience of time passing
is fundamental to human existence and therefore inseparable from architecture, Unit K aims to create clearly defined spatial arrangements that have the capacity to enrich the monumental depth of the practice of everyday life. We are concerned with landscape; not with shallow generalisms of ‘nature’, but with the systems and processes that give rise to the organisation of an environment. Our main narrative and investigative tool is film, with its unique ability to capture, resequence and recreate time, space and experience.
We will assess, address and renegotiate the relationship between humans and landscape. We will reflect on the increasing detachment of people from their natural origin and the fact that they pose an existential threat to the natural world. We will do so through a cinematic exploration of the most respectful of typologies of human interaction with the landscape - the village.
The village is in existential crisis, both as a form of socio-economic organisation and as a form of human engagement with the landscape. While the global economy revolves around urban centres, the future of villages is uncertain, owing to declining populations and changing modes of agricultural production. Is the future of villages purely to cater for the social needs that outgrow urban environments, turning villages into retirement communities, empty second homes and daybreak tourist spots, or is there an opportunity to renegotiate our relationship to nature by finding an alternative form of existence for the village?
Institute: Oxford Brookes University
Studio: Unit K
Maintaining that the experience of time passing
is fundamental to human existence and therefore inseparable from architecture, Unit K aims to create clearly defined spatial arrangements that have the capacity to enrich the monumental depth of the practice of everyday life. We are concerned with landscape; not with shallow generalisms of ‘nature’, but with the systems and processes that give rise to the organisation of an environment. Our main narrative and investigative tool is film, with its unique ability to capture, resequence and recreate time, space and experience.
We will assess, address and renegotiate the relationship between humans and landscape. We will reflect on the increasing detachment of people from their natural origin and the fact that they pose an existential threat to the natural world. We will do so through a cinematic exploration of the most respectful of typologies of human interaction with the landscape - the village.
The village is in existential crisis, both as a form of socio-economic organisation and as a form of human engagement with the landscape. While the global economy revolves around urban centres, the future of villages is uncertain, owing to declining populations and changing modes of agricultural production. Is the future of villages purely to cater for the social needs that outgrow urban environments, turning villages into retirement communities, empty second homes and daybreak tourist spots, or is there an opportunity to renegotiate our relationship to nature by finding an alternative form of existence for the village?