Museums worldwide are facing an existential crisis as they confront their often violent colonial histories. This project addresses the unresolved question of what the role of the museum becomes as collections are repatriated. Rather than simply shifting efforts, it proposes an expansion of possibilities through a process of layering—blurring the boundaries between institutional space and the “other” within the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. The proposal introduces a residency program that provides both private and communal accommodations for visiting source communities and their diasporic counterparts in the city of Oxford. Over time, the Pitt Rivers evolves into an assemblage of fragments—highly domestic, active, diasporic, and hybrid spaces that upend outdated notions of museological accumulation. By reimagining this typology, the museum returns the (re)production of material cultures into the hands of the communities whose agency it once stripped.
Institution
The Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA)
Year
2022
Accolade
Nominated for the Social Innovation Prize at the AA
Fragment Model (1:20)
Existing & Intervention Models (1:50)
82 Layers of a Log
Hooke Park Prototype: A 1:1 facade model independently crafted in the Hooke Park workshop, using hand-cut veneer of log offcuts to explore material imperfections and shifting transparencies
Veneer Process Drawing
Oxford-Cambridge Arc Map
Area Plan (1:500)
Plan-2020 (1:50)
Plan- 2025 (1:50)
Plan- 2030 (1:50)
Catalogue of Elements: A detailed inventory containing hundres of existing building fragments, documenting their geometry, materiality and context to guide their adaptive reuse
The kitchen serves as a living archive where artifacts, traditionally confined to vitrines, are activated through daily ritual. This recontextualization blurs the line between preservation and use, embedding historical narratives within everyday domestic practices.
