The Bartlett
Summer Show 2021
Explore
About the show

unit-code



Close

Forgetting Whitehall; Casting Blackhall

Project details

Programme
Unit PG12
Year 5
Award
  • Distinction

Blackhall proposes a building which subverts methods of physical and non-physical preservation, to fold time through a site in pursuit of a kind of rewilded London.

The project moves through themes of redaction and the veil, transience and the cast, and ideas of the counter monument to arrive at an architecture which opposes contemporary thought and practice around conservation.

Blackhall is a small building in Whitehall, whose construction is grounded in the ephemeral qualities of the site. The project asks how concrete can be used to remember things which are formally forgotten: protest placards are employed for seat cushions, footsteps and hoof prints are visible in the cast walls, and the plinths of demounted statues prop the building up in a kind of historic present. Poetic methods and mediums of construction are pursued to remember material and invisible histories.

A Black Blight

Blackhall is a modest, but assertive building which recalls forgotten histories, and forgets traditional preservation methods. It sits in Whitehall in order to dismantle Whitehall as we know it.

Forgetting Histories

Memories are held within cast negative walls and rubble collected in gabion walls, as well as the granite plinths of demounted statues, which hold Blackhall aloft.

The Debate Chamber

In the debate chamber, the space is rich with the traces of construction. The back wall registers the debris and pigment of the road outside and the cushions are cast from spent protest placards gathered from Parliament Square.

The Black Veil

Blackhall shrouds the existing Banqueting House in a dark veil, made of spent construction tarpaulin, stitched together and dyed black, harking back to the erection of the Cenotaph.

Share on , LinkedIn or

Close

Index of Works

The Bartlett
Summer Show 2021
23 July – 07 August 2021
Explore