Study Trip 2

Museum of London

The museum organizes exhibitions in a chronological order and the way they display artifacts predetermined how we are going to physically navigate through the space- follow the signage and travel through time. However, personally, I found myself was naturally drawn to the artifacts that were the evidence of lives of inhabitants who lived in this space before us. Climate change forced human to move to a more inhabitable place or adapt to the environment by changing the way they live. We alway think that we are the one that manipulates the environment but it is the environment that shapes how we live. Those artifacts are the most vivid evidence of lives revolved around the complex routines of human movement.

The trace of a city is what’s left of it, if it weren’t for the need of urbanization/modernization, lots of artifacts and traces of human activities will still remain buried underground. I recalled the sculpture I made last year while I was in Jingdezhen. The broken shards I found evidenced the history of mass production of porcelain ware in Jingdezhen which defined the city’s identity to the rest of the world. I started to wonder what our section of the museum will look like in the future. What do we have left for archeologist in the future to exam and display in the section that is labeled 2019?

Most of the artifacts that survived time are made of stone, ceramic, metal and glass-materials does not decompose over time or can be easily destroyed by external force. Following that logic, it is not very hard to anticipate what might remain underground from our civilization. Concrete, steel, plastic, rubber and polystyrene foam…

Barbican Center

Brutalist Architecture-what an interesting name. I have never heard about this term before today, however, the moment I saw Barbican, it made sense to me. Exposed concrete structure and geometric design give it a very futuristic look. We started wondering around the barbican complex. Again, I paid extra attention to what breaks my movement and redirect me to a different space. It is quit dark inside the barbican center. The warm and inviting light coming through the window lured me outside to the lakeside terrace. I couldn’t figure out a way to cross to the other side so I decided to take a break on the bench by the lakeside. As I started looking for a way to cross to the other side of the lake, I spotted the stairs on the right hand side. I followed the stairs and entered another plane…