Eden Day: Figures within a Framework

Eden Day - Diploma Project, London Metropolitan University, 2024

Tutors: Alex Butterworth, Jennifer Frewen-Mobsby, Katherine Nolan, Paolo Pisano and Takero Shimazaki

Despite the ever-deepening influence of immersive computer simulation in the practice of architectural design, collage techniques remain compellingly effective tools for interventional design projects. There’s something about the ‘crudeness’ of collage that resonates with adaptive reuse projects; the juxtaposition of elements captures something of the plural quality of working with existing buildings.

Below we present a selection of drawings made by Eden Day, work made for her diploma project completed last year while studying at London Metropolitan University. These drawings, using several media and done at different stages of the project, all possess a quality of ‘collage’. While the sense of detail and plausibility increases as the project develops, the drawings always possess the character of having brought distinct things together. Although in many instances the choice was made to involve different ‘analogue’ media, digital techniques weren’t rejected but are rather themselves juxtaposed with other methods.

The distinction between digital and analogue techniques is an important one, but perhaps drawings like these demonstrate that we might instead think of a demarcation between image making that is totally digital, totally immersive, and drawings that remain recognisably constituted of different elements (even if it’s in fact done on a computer). There is a trace of Freud’s repressive defence mechanism at work in the totalising atmosphere of the hyper-realistic digital render, whereas collage seems always to allow for some recognition of a gap between the designer’s will and the world at large.

Although only a ‘paper project’ the work here betrays a strong sense of tolerance, not just in its openness to different drawing techniques, but in its forward-looking and civic ambitions for a specific urban site. This tolerance and openness is its strength.

To explore Eden’s project in more detail you can visit the RIBA President’s Medal website here.

The subject of collage is explored in several other posts in our archive: Hannibal Wasser: Coalitions, Tamara Stoffers: Working Together, Luca Galofaro: Writing by Images, Thinking by Images, COSMOS Reverse Perspective, Marmot: Collage Collection, Anne Misfeldt: Collage Collision Collection.

NOTES

Many thanks to Eden Day for her help in compiling this post.

Posted 12th February 2025.