TO THE DESERT; IN PRESENCE OR IN ABSENCE

To the Desert; In Presence or In Absence

For Bedouin poets, the desert is not an arena of war but a place of community. It isn't not a site of alienation and exile, but a location for self-fulfilment and meditation. They don't see it as a devoid of nature but consider it full of life. The desert in its presence or absence is power, a nomad source of power that's always shifting and changing forms.

This research speculates the notion of camouflage which is, the means of obscuring, screening objects so that they are lost in their surroundings. The location is the outskirts of any busy city, in a site that by its nature is isolated and of a desert nature. I was fascinated by the desert and how one can’t easily lose the sense of direction, space and views.

My intention is to create architecture, landmarks that people can relate to in the massive scale of the desert. Where the desert is again a place that allows new life possibilities and a destination for protection and shelter like the Bedouins have always considered it. I'm inspired by the dunes’ pattern and how it poetically creates a dialogue between each grain of sand. The way sand grains sit to shape a fascinating body of sculpted compositions that is nicely viewed is also very inspiring. I looked into transforming this lyrical natural scene into a spatial and rhythmical experience. During the process of experimentation, one would discover that the potential found in the grain of sand are beyond one’s expectation.

The design was structured, firstly, around several prototypes, built to investigate the potential ways of applying an adhesive to solidify the structure and therefore the outcome created .The narrative starts when those robots start to move and walk in the desert leaving behind traces that I intend to solidify. Those traces provide a temporary habitat for people to inhabit and as time passes, the settlements begin to erase themselves going back to their initial state. Due to the time lapse, one undergoes a different experience every time due to the natural build up of the dunes towards the frozen architecture. The narrative underlies that these robots keep building settlements as they move where the notion and position of habitat is in constant change relating to the journey of path that is followed by the robots. The project is about constructing a path where the desert starts to build and erase by the factors that are naturally surrounding it. The internal spaces of the frozen structures sit in contrast to its rough external setting. Where it inspect the lighting quality in relation to the grains' density/sparsity over a surface. Wind passes through the perforations that are caused by the grains’ nature that questions the relation between the temporary and permanent habitat. This was done to explore the potential of building off nature without interrupting the natural poetic journey but rather freezing these harmonious compositions which will evolve throughout the year reflecting the changing state of the desert.

Part textual, part speculation, the project reflects on sites and people abandonment of an existing area but at the same time celebrating the cultivation and life of hope through acoustic lyrical apparatus.