The Swimmer

This work started with a question, how can we experience a building before its construction is complete or even before it is built all.

This idea led to thinking how imagery in architecture is used to propose structures via the CGI image. The render is a tool of the architects, one that gives a resolved vision of the future in the present, the building and its surrounding certain in its final form often expressed in images which stress a photorealism in their depiction.

Such speculative images often act as a tool of commodity and commerce, selling the expectations and associations of lifestyle rather than the structure. These depicted set in the surroundings of gentrification in London, jar with wider social concerns around housing. The Swimmer is based on one such image, extrapolated from a large London development in a part of the city undergoing gentrification and redevelopment,.

The image is removed from its purpose and space it was designed to inhabit, suddenly disoriented, reused and pushed past its native resolution. Away from the digital surface of its previous existence now present in a physical mass which enables it to share the same space, allowing for interrogation and a presence in the here and now.