Gold Assays
Live Project
2018-19 MA cohort
A sphere one mile in diameter, reaching above, below, and outward from the roundtable of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London
Explore the project here.
Resources:
Data Stories: Depford
Goldsmiths Union “The Gold Paper”
The 2018-19 MA cohort set out for the Live Project with a
predetermined site–a sphere defined by a one-mile radius with its center in the
middle the CRA’s anchor, its roundtable. We collectively dispatched into the
surrounding area, including the neighborhoods of New Cross, Deptford, Brockley,
and Peckham in Lewisham, Southwark, and Greenwich boroughs. Concerns around
regeneration, surveillance, air quality, infrastructure, and the origins of our
college quickly became evident; it also became clear that our position as
students required a particular level of critical engagement, and so we inverted
the investigative lens and used what we had learned of the area to focus our
analysis on Goldsmiths itself.
The concept of a spatial investigation rapidly expanded from the surface of Goldsmiths’ campus into geologic, atmospheric, technological, and financial domains revealing that no single object or site could be contained or analyzed without exponential complexities, from its material qualities to its embodied implications. What daily material experiences embed themselves within the life of a student and how can rigorously considering objects such as coffee cups, beds, ID cards, campus green space, and a coat of arms reveal the larger conditions in which they are enfolded?
What resulted was “Goldsmiths as Method,” a series of investigations into the phase shifts that higher education is undergoing today: Bed Assets: Disassembly Manual, Notice of Proposed Development, What is the Cost?, “It’s not Big Brother stuff”, Geese Will Still a Common Lack, and Day62/.
The concept of a spatial investigation rapidly expanded from the surface of Goldsmiths’ campus into geologic, atmospheric, technological, and financial domains revealing that no single object or site could be contained or analyzed without exponential complexities, from its material qualities to its embodied implications. What daily material experiences embed themselves within the life of a student and how can rigorously considering objects such as coffee cups, beds, ID cards, campus green space, and a coat of arms reveal the larger conditions in which they are enfolded?
What resulted was “Goldsmiths as Method,” a series of investigations into the phase shifts that higher education is undergoing today: Bed Assets: Disassembly Manual, Notice of Proposed Development, What is the Cost?, “It’s not Big Brother stuff”, Geese Will Still a Common Lack, and Day62/.