‘Apartment #5, a Labyrinth and Repository of Spatial Memories’
Hybrid: 3D Model printed on paper + Graphite on paper. 2020.
The main Drawing and Project was awarded
"Overall Winner + Hybrid Category Winner of the 4th Annual Architecture Drawing Prize 2020” from the WAF, Sir John Soane Museum, Make Architects
"Recipient of the Fitzroy Robinson Drawing Prize 2020” from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
In this frightening period of the lockdown due to the pandemic, travel has become difficult, unsafe, and restricted. The future bears uncertainty, if and when we may travel to experience new places, and re-visit places of our past. Places which once drew people to experience their spaces are now “indefinitely” and “temporarily closed”, with no certain opening date.
We are isolated in our homes…left with our memories of those faraway places, with only our photographs to recall them. Locked in our dwellings, we long to be able to escape to a past before the lockdown, to places far away from here. Residing in London, the dwelling curates spatial experiences from a recent voyage to India. Set both in real space and imaginary space, the project seeks to re-create those atmospheres and spatial conditions of the places remembered through memories. The following question arises: can the dwelling become a ‘repository’ of curated spatial memories of places which can no longer be accessed ? a way to re-experience those places within the space of the apartment?
The memories are rekindled, by manipulating scale, forced perspective and atmospheric phenomena of the places. However, they may become embellished, corrupted, re-imagined; a labyrinth of memories...
‘Tucked up away on the third floor, lies Apartment #5. A quaint little place, which I’ve learned to call home these past two years. Though in these last few months, it’s become my shelter, my hideaway, my haven from the outside world. A world, plagued by uncertainty… fear… and the virus. Inside here, I remain safe… and alone with my thoughts. Up here, hidden away from the prying eyes of the outside, an entire world exists… a secret, known only to me. I have yet to rid myself of the fear of what lies beyond my apartment, so I remain here. Life seems stuck in a perpetual loop… routine habits have spanned from the daily into the weekly, and the weekly into the monthly…
One day, after many months of this, I had a most particular experience…
As I made my way to the washroom, I suddenly found myself transported to another place entirely. It was dark, and each step I took echoed on the stone floor, resonating within this cavernous space. I felt a cool breeze, running through my legs as I walked on. I could hear the sound of water crashing up ahead. Afraid to slip, I placed my hand on the damp wall, where instead, I found the light switch. Now with the lights on, I found the familiar sight of my own reflection in the mirror: I was back in my apartment… For a moment, I thought I was walking through the sunken and dim spaces of the stepwells in Ahmedabad…an experience that dated about seven months ago.
Another time, I found myself walking, in the sun this time. My hands, slowly running across the smooth, warm sun-kissed tiles of Doshi’s Sangath roofs. The gentle curve of the surface inviting me to press my weight against it, resting upon it. The sudden sound of traffic along Hampstead Road brought me back. I was standing in my living room, clasping my warm coffee mug with the morning sun in my eyes. Odd…
Sudden flashbacks of past times… memories of my recent voyage to India suddenly came back to me. I would have thought that as time passed, my memories would become hazy. Instead, they became more vivid. I have come to find that any reality holding my memories in time and space had dissipated, letting my imagination take over: hallways stretched endlessly, stepwells delved deeper, even the mild wind which I had not noticed then, has turned into a breeze so gentle it felt like velvet.
I experienced the feelings of the past, in the present. Spatially, mentally, and physically, I was in two places at once. I indulged in these moments, going wherever my memories took me…
…my memories had allowed me to escape from my apartment.’