Description:

Remembrance of Remnants is situated within the existing ruin of the 2021 Wellington Chaffers New World. This project proposes a ruin as a memorial in a speculative future, taking place in the year 2100. In this hypothesized future, Wellington is decimated by natural disasters, leaving a surviving population of people who are out of touch with the luxuries we have today.

Over the last century, humanity has witnessed the sea levels rising, and climate disasters becoming a more frequent occurrence first hand. Yet we are still to learn from the chaos we bestow upon our planet, but we have not gone beyond the turning point.

This proposal suggests a faux historical salt installation, mimicking supermarket activity and patrons inside a ruin from a bygone era. Remembrance of Remnants is a multimedia response to the permanence of inaction; consequences of consumerism, and the derealization of exploitations within the current day.

This project focuses on various stages of corrosion, decay, the historical importance of ruin and what we can learn from remnants that are still present from before our time. This speculative memorial urges the patron to consider what kind of world they will leave for future generations, tangible and intangible alike.

Stabilization of the ruin site would be achieved by using structural pillars, bolted scaffolding, and reinforced glass panels inserted within the existing ruin of New World. The space engages in a multi-dimensional experience, the patron is enticed to move clockwise through the inserted glass corridor to experience the thrill of the mundane.

The public drifts through a memoir of ‘real-life’ scenarios within a salt-preserved supermarket. Comparing the contrast between the pristine installation and the corroded reality behind the glass divide. The salt is used symbolically in the intervention to reconstruct twenty-second-century patrons and the grocery narrative as a metaphor for cultural preservation. The ingenuine normalcy of the content in the memorial is a metaphor for gluttony, overconsumption and greed. Much like the supermarket itself, contributing to the disregard of overindulgence, and consumer exploitations of today.

Each corner of the site has been hypothesized to be affected by climate change disasters differently and uniquely, the natural degradation has been exaggerated, allowing the patron to visualize the natural site reclamation in various ways while moving through the recreated space.

Decay generates new forms that can be an incentive for future intervention, or to act as a reminder of what once was. Tangible decay addresses the decomposition of architectural forms: elements of materiality and structure. Intangible decay confronts the deterioration of narratives through time that is associated with structures gradually being reclaimed by water or lost to the past.

I argue that decay is not a process that starts after death; it is a constant process that alters structure to create new forms. Decay is a process of creation, an opportunity to learn from history. A process to remember, a reminder of our past transgressions, and of our demise.