Simone Tchonova - Terra Nullius

Aerial View of Interlocking Parts

Can physical space promote self governance? Terra Nullius is the disruption to standardization. The project searches to create a fissure in our quotidian lives and provide the possibility of a new way of living as autonomous individuals. It searches for the extents of what architecture’s influences could be on extracting us of the preconditioning of the everyday framework through the emergence of social encounters. A system was created that would allow for user participation in its construction and could be easily propagated into vacant plots of land. It can be quickly assembled and dismounted in the course of a few hours on site. The combination of low-tech materials(hemp and bamboo) and a high-tech construction process using robotic automation attempts to eliminate the need for physical labour. The design methodology allows for many self-similar yet different large parts to be mass customised. The interlocking chunks nest into one another as a synthesized assemblage. Thus creating a gradient of spatial taxonomies through part to whole relationships of the concave and convex surface articulations, compressions in space and accessibility. The relationships between spaces and their visual, audio and tactile parameters forge a spatial field of possibilities of various levels of socialization and types of activities on the multi-directional surfaces. From the narrow passages with high walls providing directionality to wide openings with low walls where larger groups of people gather for longer periods of time. The project tries to challenge the aims of current construction methods and allows for the individual person to be actively involved in the environment which they inhabit. It protests the emphasis on optimized and efficient design proposals and attempts to eliminate the differentiation between architectural elements of the wall, the floor, the ceiling and the column.These principles precondition our notions of space and place a limit on possibilities of spatial use.