Occupying Wasteland
Occupying Wasteland is an architectural project examining the condition of East London, in the wake of the London 2012 Olympic development. The official developer’s line deemed East London to have had little worth preserving – it was deemed a ‘wasteland’. However, Iain Sinclair, who has spent decades documenting London declared that the Olympic development has ruined one of the capital’s most magical patches of wilderness. This wasteland had contained all kinds of human possibilities – a place of industries and wilderness that was once treasured by the locals. More importantly, Fish Island, which has a long tradition as a home to artists and art communities, was being marginalised by the fast growing commercial developments adjacent to it.
In finding a new ‘wasteland’ to accommodate and cultivate the art communities from Fish Island, I am also searching for an alternative to these reductionist approaches of modern developments, to reclaim architecture and the city as a form of art and to emphasise the role of the esoteric, and the mythical.
William Blake, the 18th century poet and artist, once described London not only as ‘city of imagination’, but also Babylon ‘city enslaved by material necessity.’ The rapid urban growth of the industrial revolution had made London into a wealthy city, but with this growth and power came massive social inequality and the mythic ‘Babylon’ became a metaphor for this condition.