‘Shelf Life’ emerged from a personal and material investigation into the historical and functional identity of ceramic. As one of the earliest materials used by humans, clay carries deep associations with both utility and ritual. Traditionally rooted in domesticity – crockery, hygiene, and vessels – it raises the question: what does it mean to ‘undomesticate’ ceramic in the modern era? The project imagines an alternate reality in which, as a desperate response to climate collapse, the supermarket adopts ceramicware as a universal, sustainable material embedded within its infrastructure.

Since 1999, Do Ho Suh has been working on Bridge Project, a speculative exploration that imagines his 'perfect home' as the centrepoint connecting the three key cities in his life. Phase 2 which includes London, locates this home at just over 700km from the nearest Arctic Ocean coastline. The project brings together expertise from architecture, engineering, industrial and clothing design, philosophy, anthropology, and biology – informed by Suh’s own migration experiences and reflections on globalisation. 

Chinese guardian lions, or fu dogs, traditionally stand outside palaces and tombs across Asia. Chinglish Guardian Lion – a portmanteau of “Chinese” and “English”—reimagines the lion through a diasporic lens, inspired by Chan’s family, who immigrated from Hong Kong to London in the 1980s and brought these architectural ornaments to guard the exterior of their London suburban homes.

Inverted Monument – Plaza visualizes an anti-monument—an idea Suh has been engaged with since the beginning of his career. Suh associates the vertical orientation of the monument with the violence of imperialism, here it is subverted and becomes a burrowing vessel. The figure sits at the center of a classic civic square or plaza before it is pulled in on itself to create a hollow form. The work reveals the emptiness of human history, a history of gaps, erasure, and selectivity. (Text courtesy of Art Sonje Center)

Every Nook and Cranny combines video and sculpture to interrogate the rigidity of the spaces we occupy, exploring the possibilities of an alternative methodology of space-making and inhabitation. Following a research and process-led approach, the project draws upon existing methods of garment-making in questioning our acceptance of western traditions of monolithic structure-building that render our architecture immovable and unadaptable. Through this lens, the work imagines a hyperbolic fragmented world of fluid fabrics and garment as architecture. 

A dialogue between the methods of the architect and those of the garment-maker, the project explored the possibilities of creating space using fabric as its medium and architectural plans as an intuitive starting point.

Study Model I was developed as part of a series of experiments that explored the dichotomy between space-making and garment-making. The model, pinned to a plywood frame, displayed both the interior and exterior folds, creases and spaces created by this sewn piece. 

Casting a Space explored the possibilities of space-making through the process of pattern-making; a back and forth dialogue between the analogue and the digital and back again as the liquid plaster is poured into fabric formwork to create a solid state. 

Using digital software typically attributed to that of the architect, the analogue process of pattern-making is reframed beyond its traditional limits whereby both the pattern pieces themselves and the pattern as a whole blur the boundaries between the amorphous shapes of the body and the more rigid forms of architecture. 

Ford Homes inhabits a future of electric vehicles in a greener Britain that has reached its 2017 proposal to ban the sale of all petrol and diesel cars. Increasing land value and lack of affordable housing have made the traditional suburban model of semi-detached houses with smaller front lawns, private driveways and larger back gardens, next to impossible. 

Software Version v.5.1 received an honourable mention in Blank Space’s Fairytales Competition 2016. The project imagines Instagram in its physical manifestation – the original logo is used as the basis for the factory’s blueprint. Every process within the app is translated back into an analogue process; taking the image, processing the film, archiving and so forth.