Now that I have a clearer idea about what my design intervention is going to be, I can refine my positioning statement once again. Diving in and just getting ideas to paper has really helped me organize my thoughts and has allowed me what is and what isn’t important to articulate my concept and aim. Below is my latest version of my positioning statement.
POSITIONING STATEMENT
Reconnecting two separate worlds separated by structure and a social concept.
This project is focused on the reconnection of plant life on the inside and outside of the Wintergarden walls on both a physical and conceptual level. The inspiration of this concept derives from my fascination with the way the plants in the Wintergarden space, specifically the glasshouses, expressed a sense of entrapment and displacement through their testing and challenging of the physical constraints of the structure. This led me to investigate how humans placing these plants in a particular structure gives them another context and it projects human social concepts onto plant life. Ultimately, we subconsciously view the plants inside the glasshouses to be superior or of higher importance than those that grow outside the walls just because of their physical context.
My project will focus on an interactive exhibition experience with educational qualities that reconnects these two separate worlds of plant life and creates a shift of subconscious perception. The project will articulate how a plant’s importance is not defined by the structure it is homed in. It will shift viewers’ thinking to an understanding of how their presence and intervention influence the meaning of a space and also how plant life, both “encased” and “free”, are always connected through a larger ecological system.
My aim is to explore this concept through lighting qualities and effect combined with reflection. Something that articulated the dark undertone of the plant life inside the glasshouses being trapped and trying to escape was the soft looming shadows and blurred images of the plants pressing against the frosted glass on the exterior of the glasshouse. The soft horror lighting quality was very intriguing in the way it told this story of entrapment, and it was the physical quality on the site that I was most drawn to. This inspired further research where I discovered how reflective qualities would also help in articulating the reconnection of plant life.
Spatial Design by Ciara 