SOUTH FORELAND UPCYCLING TOWER
TEAM: Sam Coulton (British) Bartlett School of Architecture – Fin Charleson (Swedish) – Manchester School of Architecture
Capitalising Upon Increasing Activity Within the Upcycling Home Furnishings Market
“Dear Investor,
A new opportunity awaits you on the beautifully dramatic Dover coastline. Set amongst the chalky headland of South Foreland, Blue Bird Tower is the Headquarters of Cycle-UP Ltd. With your support and our contacts in the flat-pack furnishings industry, we can ‘Up-Cycle’ your portfolio to new financial heights!”
Our submission for Making, draws upon the phenomenon of do-it-yourself furniture up-cycling, epitomised by the myriad of online tutorials currently available. Capitalising on this trend, South Foreland Upcycling Tower facilitates the monetisation of this process – commenting upon what could be to come, or indeed what might already lurk, behind the seemingly innocent culture of thousands of web-viewing hipsters re-creating their own ‘unique’ Nordic flat-pack piece; upgrading it at their own expense.
South Foreland Upcycling Tower is unashamedly dystopian; we have taken the standard model of Mass Production and literally up-ended it, allowing the ‘Making’ to take place on ‘Mass’ elsewhere. The process’ input at the base/port brings containers, a selection of veneer-clad chipboard parts into the Tower – the primary service core – which itself allows for transferal of goods between Assembly, Workshop and Studio’s; where the process of ‘Up-Cycling’ is recorded and streamed across Europe from the Broadcasting Centre.