Wake: Interzone, ESALA Graduation Project, Architectural education drawings, Scottish uni design

Wake: Interzone, ESALA Graduation Project at Edinburgh School of Architecture

Architectural Education Work Progress by Daniel Lomholt-Welch & Lewis Murray, Scotland

31 July 2024

e-architect are following the progress of architecture student Daniel Lomholt-Welch during his degree studies at Edinburgh University.

Daniel Lomholt-Welch & Lewis Murray

Wake: I am in the Interzone

Tangier building design and thesis investigation
Perceiving Tangier through an investigation of William Burroughs’ dreamlike writing and Brion Gysin’s technique of cut-ups, the city manifests itself as a parallel, as an other. This thronging sea of relations between, across, and through the urban fabric become permutations of Tangier’s material reality; a pin-cushion of imperial flags, camouflaged and flecked with the wear of its fluctuating history. The undertones of colonialism reverberate in its streets, in its language, in its law.

shudders the frame,
shackles the heart,
respite denied
with brutal consideration.
masks slip and veils flutter above
paternal ornament
secretes scarlet whispers,
change revolution mutiny
they assert to what they know,
another is yet,
to be once more

Tangier’s siting at a confluence of narratives is exemplified in the Petit Socco, a tightly bound square which played host to a multitude of international institutions during the mid-20th century. Western nation’s legations, post offices and hotels rose high above the street, before crumbling in the wake of the International Zone’s collapse in 1956. The Petit Socco exemplifies the technique of the cut up, the rapid shuttling of one to another.

debts wracked against the wall
surge like shoots through cracks,
whip the back cleaving one from self,
over the boundary into the embrace
tender is the flight,
reborn liquid again
dear life sold another conspires,
profit nicks the heels
stumbles the never,
makes worthy the lie of the land

A manipulated legal framework provides an opportunity to reclaim territory in a move against the zeitgeist. This series of chance operations becomes a form of cut-ups that projects back onto itself simultaneously. Opportunistic architectural interventions cloak themselves in the historic narratives present in the Petit Socco, addressing a wide range of issues that affect modern society in Morocco.

Hidden in plain sight, the architectures play with their histories, revealing and concealing certain aspects via a series of exposed seams. Collectively, they form the Interzone.

Wake: I am in Interzone

over the night drift
the heartbeats of an eternal memory.
through a cross over
under worlds and within one,
blanket the earth tempered
to be finite.
come forth the murmur
the cry, the look.
pale white it is encircled in her arms

Host and guest switch roles with increasing acceleration, the parasitic visitor corrupting the former only then to be corrupted themselves. The architectures operate in the intersections, folds, convolutions. Occupying buildings within tightly controlled incisions, they blend with the existing function below while gaining the horizon above. The historic seeping of parasite into host generates a novel architecture by way of palimpsest. It draws in, extracts, and imitates its architectural setting.

darkness fills the void
the ascent has left right down below,
pearls bleed over the iris
grasping visions
now and for the being it is no more.
spectres flicker pass shudder
they weep,
sailing through endless skies,
the crimson has kissed clouds,
vapour mists around ankles
chained no longer

Bolstered by their endemic presence across the city, the parasites begin to embed themselves in aural, visual and textual forms of representation. The liminal threshold of entity and relation buckles. Using representation as a conduit to creation, the parasites embed themselves in the urban fabric of their conception – Chambers Street. The fleeting encounters across it instigate further proliferation, taking root both in the studio and in public space.

in dreams of mercury
the star glints
an eye,
the rope slips a grasp
tears stream from the stars falling upon us,
falling down never to reclaim
it is gone,
bound and loosed,
not of one but of all,
the haze drifts lazily on,
for all

Year 6, Semester 2: Para City
Site: Inner Medina, Tangier
Proposal: Digital Stock Market, Free-Press Publishing House, Hydrological Laboratory, Telecommunications Hub

All work by Daniel Lomholt-Welch & Lewis Murray

Graduation Projects at Edinburgh School of Architecture information / images from Daniel Lomholt-Welch

Address: 74 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh, EH3 9DF
email: eca@ed.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)131 651 5800

Saint Peter’s Seminary Cardross Study

28 Jul 2018

First Year Student Projects at Edinburgh School of Architecture

e-architect are following the progress of British architecture student Daniel Lomholt-Welch during his degree studies at Edinburgh University.

image courtesy of D L-W
First Year Student Projects at Edinburgh School of Architecture