Lost City
Sommerset House
London, UK
This is an immersive installation exploring the challenge of climate change by staging an extreme flooding disaster. The concept is designed to simulate the future possibility of a flooding disaster taking place within a major city, in order to manifest it into the forefront of urbanite consciousness. Despite the pandemic, London is a multicultural city that attracts visitors from across the world, therefore the Lost City is intentionally ambiguous in its representation, and so could be any city anywhere, with its overall circular structure representing the globe. It is a lost world possible to all.
The audience will begin their internal experience of the installation with the pathway and bridge that crosses an overflowing river, built of transparent glass to allow an unobscured view of the entire space. This enhances the immersive experience of walking through a flood. Using frosted glass models to represent skyscrapers, which are universal symbols of metropolitan areas, enables the audience to imagine such formidable buildings, that usually appear indestructible, to be altered into an uninhabitable state. Water will be used for the flooded floorspace, which will be sustainably sourced from the River Thames, located in front of Somerset House. The design includes projection mapping that will be used to cast video images onto glass wall panels. The video will be a loop of a dark, cloudy skyline with heavy rain, to create a visual concept of how the sky would appear over a flooded city. Using water atmospherically complements the dark sky projected onto the glass walls, creating a complete visage of a bleak space, void of life and abandoned by humans.
The audience will begin their internal experience of the installation with the pathway and bridge that crosses an overflowing river, built of transparent glass to allow an unobscured view of the entire space. This enhances the immersive experience of walking through a flood. Using frosted glass models to represent skyscrapers, which are universal symbols of metropolitan areas, enables the audience to imagine such formidable buildings, that usually appear indestructible, to be altered into an uninhabitable state. Water will be used for the flooded floorspace, which will be sustainably sourced from the River Thames, located in front of Somerset House. The design includes projection mapping that will be used to cast video images onto glass wall panels. The video will be a loop of a dark, cloudy skyline with heavy rain, to create a visual concept of how the sky would appear over a flooded city. Using water atmospherically complements the dark sky projected onto the glass walls, creating a complete visage of a bleak space, void of life and abandoned by humans.