Christmas is a period of time during which people could celebrate it with their family having a reunion dinner throughout the year. But there are a huge amount of people that they could not go back to their home to meet with their families in this perfect, beautiful, charming period of time for some working reasons or different places, so they can not go back to their home immediately. And I experienced the first Christmas here round Europe. And I found that during Christmas day or Christmas eve, every store is closing and there are only a few people on the street, some are on the way home while others are alone to celebrate Christmas here. Also, Christmas is something that happens in a house based on amount of people gathering around. Everything is about gathering, reunion and sharing. So my concept is from the first impression of Christmas, and the mean structure is from where the Christmas is really happening inside this space. And it represents the main feature of the Santa’s Grotto, a house, a cottage, also this site used to be a stable for keeping horses. So, it is also a place for those gathering and like a shelter.
While walking on the street, I noticed the really warm, strong, charming yellow lighting coming out through every window of the house, and also the Christmas decorations and that really gave me a strong feeling of being inside of Christmas. Another feature for it for me is like I enjoyed every traditional Christmas market here. And my concept also includes that I would like to create a pop-up store or market for Christmas. So this is my concept into the final piece and the structure here.
Another thing I want to create the space about is that during ancient Europe, it was dark and cold even no sunlight there during winter period for a long time. So people gather to celebrate winter solstice to pray for better life, good future, health for themselves, hope and light. At the same time, during which happened with like lots of people dead because the diseases, natural disaster, coldness, darkness hopeless and homeless. There are negative side of Christmas as well. Because of those problems people have chances to gathering for praying for better life. Also, Christmas day is the born day of Jesus in the manger and the shape is kind of a shelter for God Jesus. So it represents a new starting point to the future. What I create is an open ceremony for Christmas and the climax of it is inside of the museum area. And because of both positive celebration of Christmas and negative side of it, it could be complete. So, what I did was to cut the complete cabin structure into half one to represent the broken side or another side of Christmas, like darkness inside, and the complete ones for people to celebrate inside.
Also, I put the soft material like the haystack in the stable, and by layer by layer, it tells you that the real climax of it is coming. And every light aims at one specific entrance. I also add the interactive experience between light and people, so they could have their own intervention with the space through light to create their own journey and different feeling on Christmas.
#Royal College of Art #Proximity #Christmas Market #106 Commercial Street
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