In preparation for a return to normal everyday life, The Great Reset proposes a strategy for preparing the isolated, paranoid and mentally numbed architecture student for a reintegration into the physical world.

The project develops a working process to explore and escape the uneasy interaction between the body and the computer which has defined the consumption of information and rhythms of existence for many in lockdown.

To begin, the topographies of north London are re-learned through the production of a series of Google Maps-based derives, using a series of facial devices that heighten or impair the senses.

Using the resulting aesthetic associations found, a physical prosthetic apparatus is added to the computer desktop layout. The ‘Diorama’ mediates between computer and user, information and emotions.

Seeking to re-enter the physical world, the body inhabits the diorama through the proposition of a series of architectural follies allowing the mind to move between the scale of the room and the city, regaining agency over the physical realm. By seeking to integrate the body and the mind with a prosthetic, digital conception of physical reality, is one re-connecting to the outer world or falling deeper into a virtual vacuum for evermore?