Rendering the Dungeness Percept | Dungeness, UK | Unit 21 | 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Awarded Distinction for Design & Distinction for Thesis<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The iconic image of Dungeness \u2013 the totemic object sited within a barren landscape \u2013 is synonymous with the mechanistic production of the Architectural Photograph. Disseminated by sites such as The Modern House and Dezeen, the imagery shapes our collective understanding of the place, imposing a romanticised fiction upon a working landscape. Dungeness is rendered as a backdrop to the Architectural subject; compliant, malleable, representationally inert. Using gaze-tracking to reveal the structures of this photographic simulacra, the project seeks to restore the act of seeing in Dungeness, in order to restore agency to the seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lying at the threshold of a new territory, the Visitor Centre acts as a calibration device, confronting the Dungeness percept through the staging of directed seeings. Conceived as a product of tracking data, the building may be understood as a mirror, encouraging the visitor to examine the relationship between place and image through the unconscious wandering of the eye. Visual mechanisms are deconstructed within prescriptive internal encounters, establishing Dungeness as the active-subject of the Architectural Photograph. Simultaneously, the layering of translucent space generates unorthodox perspectives for the external observer, restoring viewing-agency in the presence of the image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n