The natural world has long acted as a hospitable host to humans and their creations, however insatiable human intervention over the last two centuries has damaged the future of its hospitality. As a new ecological equilibrium unfolds, not only does a physical transformation occur, but so too must a cognitive transformation.
'Combobulation Station: Uncanny Architecture for Uncommon Objects' proposes a cognitive re-orientation in the ecological visions at neighbourhood scale architecture. Both real and surreal consequences are challenging the complex and star-crossed interrelationship between humans and nature.Taking note of the prevalent and imminent imperative to incite structural shifts in our material cultural change, this theoretical investigation and neighbourhood-scale intervention represent a series of compound explorations, object experimentations and architectural projects, where the transformation of everyday domestic objects are re-portrayed.
Offering an uncanny and surreal narrative to the project, a recycling depot in Point Chevalier village seeks to induce meaningful self-reflection among the suburb's residents, regarding the recycling and reshaping of fossil-fuel and fast food stations. This project encourages the exposition of the waste cycle which have been sanitised from our elemental experiences, an act which hopes to bring back to consciousness the intricate ties through human action.
Representations of the new ecology are explored through the various facets of Surrealism, a movement finding its way back into this new reality - the Anthropocene. The eerie yet familiar combobulations of this future help with the portrayal of conflict between the artificial built environment and nature, finding itself in what one might now consider second nature.
