1/ Identities | Yee Miao Portfolio

This project will investigate how elements within a space can establish an interior’s identity through the consideration of structure, materials, form, detail, colour, pattern, texture and finish. The final outcome will be a large-scale detail that will inform an interior design scheme.

Background

Introduction

This academic year we will examine the notion of Babel through the lens of the interior and the questioning of gender, language, power, inclusiveness, misinformation, totality, sustainability, human greed, doomed spaces, etc. These issues could also be explored by comparing individuality vs collective, nature vs artifice, the minute vs the grand, etc. Babel is described by scholars as the cradle of civilization. In the book of Genesis, we find the narrative where a primal unit of humankind – with single spoken language –is shattered and scattered around the world into a multitude of languages. The narrative follows the deluge, and describes how humans, in their pride, decided to build a city and a tower to reach up to the heavens. The Akkadian name of such city was Bab-ilim, meaning “gate of God.” Parallel narratives are found in many cultures around the world (Assyrian, Sumerian, Mexican Toltecs and Aztecs, the Tharu of Nepal, Cherokees, etc.) and closer in time, Babel has been interpreted in many fictional stories and even used to name a JavaScript compiler. Often with connotations of language, totality, coding, construction and human ambition, the many tales of Babel remain current and particularly relevant. The task is to enquiry on how its many aspects translate into an interior space?

The Site

The Overlook Hotel from Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining (1980). - The GoldRoom

Identities: Babel's Portal

The concept of the project is a dark allegory about human

greed and desire, and its inevitable progress toward excess

and violence. The proposal is for a suspended ‘trap’ which lures

people with the glitter of fools’ gold. The design is a suspended

net accessed through a metal tube from below.