The Extraordinary Everyday was born from a conversation with a neighbour whilst I was studying in Venice on Erasmus, who felt that by hanging out my washing at ground level, I was upsetting the ‘Urban Decorum’ of the city. This intrigued me and grew into an observation of the behaviour of people in the spaces of Venice compared to other cities and the project has grown to form a rebuttal against the popular idea of Venice as a historic artefact to observe, instead presenting it as the ultimate human experience. The extraordinary potential of everyday spaces has been analysed across a journey through the city and this project proposes a model for the 2020 Venice Biennale which consists of a series of interventions which encourage humans to interact with their surroundings, ultimately unlocking the potential for the built environment to stimulate our senses and ground us in a beautiful reality, resulting in a redefinition of the Venetian identity.
The intention of the project was to go to Venice and create the interventions at 1:1 scale in the fabric of the city whilst documenting people’s interactions. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I had to change my method of presentation and therefore used model making and stop motion animation to recreate the experience of walking through Venice (Please watch the video uploaded to this website).
I am ultimately interested in the creative process, and power of architecture to make our lives better; more beautiful, interesting or fun.
