2012

A Scenario Generator for Clandestine Building in Africa

Works

This automated archive produces scenarios for ‘clandestine building1 across Africa, a practice of illegally expanding on ones’ living or working space. The system uses actual examples of Modernist architecture from across the continent as source material – buildings which show potential for enlargement, in order to maximize usage of space. Reconstituting a given building as a kind of façade portrait or composition, the machine uses wooden building-blocks to describe the particular negative spaces suggested for exploitation.

Negative Space: A Scenario Generator

Beckett takes a rich yet little-known African Modernist tradition as a point of departure for his work Negative Space: A Scenario Generator for Clandestine Building in Africa (2015). It consists of an automated storage and retrieval machine (such as those used in warehouses and pharmacies), reconfigured to arrange wooden building blocks to create portraits of specific Modernist buildings across Africa. Beckett takes a rich yet little-known African Modernist tradition as a point of departure for his work Negative Space: A Scenario Generator for Clandestine Building in Africa (2015). It consists of an automated storage and retrieval machine (such as those used in warehouses and pharmacies), reconfigured to arrange wooden building blocks to create portraits of specific Modernist buildings across Africa.

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