Serjeant Award for Excellence in Drawing
Set 250 years into the future, books have become virtually obsolete. The digital age has deemed the paper book unnecessary, the art of paper making, lost with it. An excavation has taken place at a site in the Grunewald forest, where the Berlin British School previously existed. The first book was discovered in the forest by Wilhelm, a descendant of the famous folklorist Franz Xaver Schönwerth. Schönwerth was a collector of fairytales around the same time as the Grimm Brothers.
Each of the excavated books was found sealed in a plastic bag, some of which had been severely damaged. Wilhelm endeavours to salvage and preserve the books which remain, the scheme develops further to restore the printing and archiving of paper books in a library. The monumental scheme glorifies the lost art form of paper making and is a hub for the lost books of the past and the present. The base landscape constitutes the heavy structures: the paper marsh, the bridge, the altar - for the first excavated book, the entrance gate and stairs as well as the library and paper-making workshop. In the workshop, visitors can collect pulp from the paper marsh, make the paper and then hang to dry. The paper marsh surrounds the landscape echoing the nearby lake. The infinite fragile and tensile canopy disappears into the sky above.
Razna Begum
Tutor(s)