DYSTOPIAN DREAMS: SAMENESS

DESIGN STUDIO ALPHA 2023

The University of Melbourne

1st year Bachelor of Design

Project Type

Landscape

Micro-infrastructure

Location

Lincoln Square, Carlton

As a speculative project, the challenge was to envision a futuristic dystopia and devise a landscape and micro-infrastructure intervention in an urban park. My imagined dystopia was a homogenised society, stifling individualism under the control of those in power. My intervention served as a metaphorical escape, offering a refuge for individuals to rediscover and express their identity in the face of enforced conformity.

Exhibited in MSDx Winter 2021

CONCEPT SITE PLAN

"SAMENESS"

We’ve all become the same, clones
Blandly grey, cold and soulless
Vibrance, culture gone from everyone.

Here is different, exciting and hopeful
We can find whoever we want here,
Themselves, ourselves, protected.

A REPRESENTATIVE POEM OF THE IMAGINED DYSTOPIAN WORLD

EXISTING SITE CONDITIONS AND CONTOURS

"JOURNEY AND BARRIER"

“GUARDED AND SLICED”

“TOGETHER BUT SEPARATE”

CONCEPT SITE SECTION

I see this project existing as a piece of living art that one physically experiences as architecture and landscape. Entering, you are given the space to come into one's own self. As you traverse from the square’s entrance towards the reflection dome, privacy is afforded and the large retaining wall evokes a sense of strength and support. The journey back out of the square is then progressively more exposed. This upper wall is made of layers of steel mesh that peel away incrementally until you reach a point of celebration. The intention being that you can show your new-found individuality to the world.