Nikolina Georgieva
nikolina.georgieva.19@ucl.ac.uk
The project is an Archaeological and Material Centre on the coast of Stonar Lake, Thanet. By establishing an understanding of ever-lasting translation in archaeology and geology, it explores alternative ways of reading the land on which we built, such as soil pigmentation, enactment of ground excavations, and uncovering of ethnographic traces.
Analytical ground surveying drawings and materially charged models create a dialog between the spatial, and anthropological relationships in an ecology of land economy. Building construction and inhabitation negotiate the transition between enclosed spaces and open terrain, newly built form and preexisting landscape, activated through human occupation.
The lake coastline becomes a stage for communal acts of building over time, beginning with x-raying the ground and uncovering its sediments. Processing local clay deposits, gathering ashes, producing ceramic glazes, assembling timber scaffolding for kiln construction, and firing ceramic modules and tiles create a canopy over three contemporary longhouses. Both excavating (enfolding) the land and tiling (covering) laid floor platforms and roof cladding mediate the space between earthworks and roof-works. This open-ended system of interlocking ceramics, fired clay and raw soil, growing as a mosaic of earthworks, is built as inhabited architecture today and imagined as archaeological artifacts of a future landscape.
