GLADSTONE’S LAND
2022
A project for a combined house, studio and private screening theatre for a pair of twin animators. Undertaken during my Masters within a studio themed around animation in architecture, the design was developed from the narrative of a short stop-motion film I created, and responded to the “conservation” of the National Trust Property, Gladstone’s Land, situated on the Royal Mile, Edinburgh. My research investigated the 1920s conservation to be driven by narratives of historical fiction, conserving ideas of the past rather than realities. The project then supplanted the narrative of historical fiction for the narrative of my stop motion film as architectural impetus, exploring ideas of authenticity, narrative and evolution within architecture.
The projects imagines the building had been demolished as had been scheduled in the 1930s and places fragments of the old building in positions on the site per the spatially located narrative of my film. An architecture of armatures then arises to hold these fragments in these newly assigned positions and relationships to one another.
The building explores the setting up of complex inter-relationships between these fragments and the different character of spaces throughout the building, with the theatre space excavated out the rock in a reflection of the ‘holding’ architecture above.
