The Absence of Presence

Abstract

This project is a vehicle to develop a specific response to a specific site, namely the strip of land along Kent and Cambridge Terraces. It develops a direction of inquiry into the absence of presence as a means of revealing traces held within the landscape. "Research by design" is the research methodology employed to engage and articulate the specific conditions of the site. The allure of research by design is that - through drawing - it can offer an experience of the unspoken. In that architecture acts as a medium for visually and experientially resolving thought, this methodology enabled an exploration to conclude with a physical manifestation that can best be represented through the act of drawing. As these words pass away, and the architecture is required to stand alone, this loneliness can be the truth of a project. The project proceeds by asserting the presence of the entire site as it is today within the city and to give a voice - no matter how silent- to the memorials that have been lost within. The most obvious approach would be to create a unified podium upon which the memorials are re-sited, unifying them through a surrounding commonality. This assumes that the memorials have a homogenous language, and speak of the same things. But this approach is too brutal; and in fact the memorials speak of many different ideas in different ways, in a multitude of voices and narratives. Instead the podium is is made absent; this inversion creates a commonality of absence around the memorials, rather than a presence. The absence begins to erase the many islands, trees, and unthoughtful pockets of shrubs, which have been planted, allowing the memorials to gradually assert themselves with the gentlest of touches. It creates a space of silence between the memorials and a narrative becomes possible in both time and space, whose presence was made absent by the everyday. In acknowledging these multitudes of voices, the project becomes multi-narrative by definition.