Reaching Equilibrium (In collaboration with Rebecca Li)

2020 Fairy Tale Competition Entry, in collaboration with Rebecca Li

The prompt for Blank Space Project’s Fairy Tale 2020 Competition revolved around ‘The role of architecture in a fiction of the future’ . To me, the prompt felt very similar to 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale’s ‘How will we live together?’.

Together with my mentor and friend Rebecca Li, we explored the concept of architecture as a mental typology. We wanted to demonstrate how our minds are constructed with conversation with an unknown object. Our narrative below, is a matrix of three conversations in three scenarios, but blurred into one. We didn’t want to define how many characters there are, but rather allow the readers to flicker between texts in their own order…

*Edit: 2021 -After revisiting these illustrations and my own illustrations - I completely forgot that I was inspired by Israeli Photographer Ronan Goldman’s We Were Meant For Each Other

Reaching Equilibrium

Narrative and Illustrations by Kimberley Hui and Rebecca Li

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About Rebecca Li

Registered Architect

As a qualified architect with 5 years of professional work experience from design driven firms, and an art lover, Rebecca delivers a unique combination of creative talent and techincal expertise.

She has worked on architectural projects across multiple disciplines including public art gallery, multi-residential, and mixeduse. With a solid understanding of practical aspects of concept to construction stage, she provides design solution with consideration of quality (art + function), practicality (demand + market) and constructability (budget + technology). The work experience has allowed Rebecca to practice professional communication skills to coordinate both internally and externally. Her teaching experience at RMIT in 2019 has also provided her with a great chance to continue exploring her passion in art and architecture.

To Embrace One’s Own Requiem

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Competition entry for Fairy Tale 2018.

I’ve always been a fan of Blank Space Project’s Fairy Tale Competition. I finally decided to attempt the competition during my final year of architecture school (not sure if that was a good idea…).

The entry was inspired by my studio project Re: Reflect & Respond, where we were challenged with the notion of whether moments need to be memorialised. In this story, the protagonist is in a world where she has been tasked to design ‘monuments’ for clients. When it was finally her turn, she finds herself in a dilemma on the purpose and the importance of remembering her existence.

Excerpt:

It will be another three days before she will shut her eyes to the city.

Everything will go infinite, black and limbo in three days.

As so she was once told.

Just a few more curtain panels added to the near covered skeleton and she will be considered ‘free’ from her agile body. There was nothing left for her to miss, perhaps the house she was given to stay during her time here, otherwise the café that played dated tunes yet provided a decent milkshake.

Sentimental moments perhaps.

Yet she never imagined that designing one’s own giant structure would be the best way to leave a love letter dedicating to her willingness to depart from the community.

Everywhere was a constant build up – an apartment complex towering over one another only to be left empty by occupants who intended to stay there for a month before letting the giant monsters crumble and fossilise over time. There was already a field of statues, carved in impossible shapes to mimic odd features the commissioners were rather fond of. The gallery of manipulated marble always fascinated the girl, for she has seen far too many statues that were carved to worship various gods that she wondered if the departed have seen themselves lived long enough to deem themselves to be worthy of a marble figure.

These past two months, hand in hand with her partner they decided they have stayed long enough to leave the community. They were rather excited by the prospect of finally having the control of designing something for themselves after spending a dedicated amount of time drawing infrastructure for others.

The many years of documentation.
The many years of tasting other people’s ideals and desires.

Everything felt rather surreal to them both – when they decided that they have enjoyed a life time of happiness and witnessing enough people going to somewhere happier, they both have taken the plunge and commit to their one last ideal.

Something grand.

Something wonderful.

Something unbeatable.

Yet for the last couple of days, as she was flipping though the documents of her past clients, looking at each reason for their design, the cumbersome scale, the puzzling choices of materials, the clash of design principles stitched into a Frankenstein of an architecture, the ongoing list of creating a demanding structure has ultimately caused her to lose her rosy vision towards her own design. Where was the point of leaving a building behind when there will be no one to truly value and remember their existence? Everyone who had visited and requested their help have disappeared altogether. By the time their building is finished, they will cease to exist in another’s memory.

And their roles will simply be replaced by another.

“At least there will be this structure who will remember us.”