Reimagining Appley Tower by Designing a Sea Bench

This exhibition was the start of a student&community event as a way to explore practice-based research to be submitted for REF2028. The aim of this event is to give a platform for students to share their projects ideas on sustainable heritage with local community and reflect on the critical issues beyond the study term. On the other hand, the aim is to present the thinking of Portsmouth School of Architecture- architecture and interior design students beyond the classroom and test some ideas in a ‘real-life’ context of a small-scale event. The research explores the question how artistic interventions could be a testing ground for raising awareness about the intimate links between heritage preservation and a sustainable economy shift.

The overall theme is to connect heritage decision-making and sustainable lifestyle by means of art&architecture community interactive interventions, aiming at an adaptive reuse of obsolete buildings and their settings. My practice-based research consists of artistic installations within abandoned buildings and places as a way to trigger an awareness about their present cultural reuse value, thus connecting heritage with sustainability.
The installations are co-created with students of art and architecture and a major focus is the interaction with local communities as participants in the creative process’ unfolding.
I would use this fund as a way to test students’ ideas for a spatial installation, asking the underlying question how humans interact with nature as a process of learning from nature.
Architecture and Interior students of Thematic design module (TB2) have designed spatial installations as a way to raise awareness of global environmental crisis and the human role and responsibility toward urgent sustainable issues. Students have focused on various critical issues by research on various natural, social and cultural aspects of the site, each one developing a subjective spatial response for the historic Appley Tower.