Stephen's final year design project was an interactive stage set designed for an adaptation of two of Oliver Sack's pieces from The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat for The Yard theatre in Hackney Wick. Combined with his final year dissertation, it is a set design that is interrogative of the ways in which we conceive of space as a society, in order to build upon Henri Lefebvre's dictum that 'to change life ... we must first change space.'

 

The work also looks to combine industrial materials regularly found on site: scaffolding and plywood. These create forms that are initially faintly recognisable, but which become 'activated' by the presence of dramatic action and an audience - the set making sense only when these elements are united in the performance.

Combining three years of design work, a year in an architectural practice, and my academic research so far has led me to the conclusion that theatrical scenography is an incredibly valid place to work to change people's perceptions of how they might interact with space, and how this can therefore empower them.

 

The model combines a variety of media, including laser-cutting, laser-etching, manual craft, electronics and programming to create a model which aims to further these questions about the interactivity of space by interacting with its viewers in the production of a scaled-down play.

 

The project will be exhibited as an interactive model on 27th June 2014 at the Bartlett Summer Show, UCL for a week.