The Urban Orchard was a meanwhile use pop-up garden located on a disused site
at 100 Union Street, SE1. Part of the London Festival of Architecture, it hosted workshops, talks, performances, screenings and events. It also played host to installations that were created through various collaborations, one of which was an exhibition I designed about cider-making known as ‘The Scrumping Shed’ described later below.
On the Urban Orchard project, I worked with Wayward Plants and the Architecture Foundation on the curatorial aspects. I worked closely with Wayward Plants, and Moira Lascelles (then Curator of Special Projects at the Architecture Foundation) on all matters concerning the curation of the site.
Our team spent the Summer of 2010 on site producing the experience. My role covered everything from developing the interpretive strategy, designing visitor interactions, inputing on aesthetics, developing wayfinding solutions, producing graphics at all scales, writing interpretive material, aiding with installations to more asides.
Towards the end of the project I contributed my first article for the book published by the Architecture Foundation entitled: “ The Union Street Urban Orchard - a case study of creative interim use.”
Click here to watch my interview with Moira Lascelles on the curatorial approach - produced by Openvisor.
https://vimeo.com/27654559 (link to video)
THE SCRUMPING SHED
The scrumping shed element was an exhibition I designed and curated in collaboration with the writer James Wilkes, researcher and cider-making hobbyist Charlie Tims and artist Harky Matossian.
Based on a post-structuralist story shape (like the original Dracula which consisted of a box of letters that could be read in any order) the visitor was free to explore the shed and gather clues like a detective, in an aim to uncover information about the absent protagonist - the fictional Charlie Henchard - and cider-making.
Within the orchard, the visitor discovers a shed, clearly home to an obsessive of some kind where recipes, clippings and postcards are nailed to the walls and fermentation tests are displayed alongside bottles of cider, cider-making and apple-picking tools. The story unfolds in the visitors imagination within the space where the absent protagonist's presence is felt, brought eerily close by the presence of his shoes. Visitors commented that they felt he would walk through the door at any minute. This is the atmosphere I aimed to create whilst fulfilling the brief - to educate the audience about cider-making.