YEAR 1
A Cast Of A Room
Westgate Community Dance Center
A Cast Of A Room:
Rachel Whiteread Inspired
In Year 1, expanding our knowledge on existing artists and architects was fundamental to our design development. Being allocated with Rachel Whiteread, I learnt that space isn’t as we should perceive it and that wasted space does not exist. Whiteread’s ability to cast rooms and houses in full, allows the public to recognize what isn’t there in the alternative world. Her conceptual strategy to art, speaks louder than the work she exposes and shows a deterioration in the reality of which we perceive value of space and how we take what we have for granted.
Using this theory I applied her logic to an unused room in the university that represents wasted space in comparison to the rest of the building, but the negative cast induces a different reflection. What was once wasted has now been defined and the value of the space, is rebuilt.
WESTGATE COMMUNITY DANCE CENTER
The brief identified that there was a disconnect existed between the historic Oxford University buildings – that provide the foundations for the city – and the people living in modernist times.
The Westgate Community Dance Center was developed as a theoretical bridge between the city and the new development buildings dedicated to the public people of Oxford. the Center therefore acts as a bridge between the diametrically opposed functions while providing a between the new and the old precincts of Oxford. The center is designed as both a physical connection and an activity space that uses the performing arts to attract and encourage community interactivity. This inclusive environment encourages strangers to learn, perform and explore the dance with each other to create a different social bond over a dance interaction.
