#RiversideMemories

With #RiversideMemories two students of the Canterbury School of Architecture want to create a photographic archive of people’s experiences of the Riverside Studios.

Riverside Studios is under redevelopment from September 2014, for an estimated period of 3 years.

When analysing the construction phasing of Riverside Studios, like any site, the introduction of hoarding to mark the site boundary will often be one of the first stages. Hoarding creates a visually impacting and often intimidating boundary between the site and the public. Often the connection between the public and the building/site under construction is lost due to this physical boundary – memories and connection can easily be overlooked and a sense of disconnection is created.

Aaron Bright and Emilio Koutsoftides’ project proposed to challenge the physicality of hoarding as a boundary and aim to engage with the possibilities of injecting interest and interaction with what is often a dull and imposing materiality.

The physical connection between Riverside Studios and the community is now dislocated. In order to maintain that connection the two postgraduate architecture students of the Canterbury School of Architecture created an initiative called #RiversideMemories.

#RiversideMemories aims to create a digital platform in which to collate a photographic archive of people’s experiences of the Riverside Studios and to begin a dialogue in which this proposal can engage with the audience and to develop a program of events during the various phases of its development. This phase of the project was very successful and attracted the attention of celebrities such as Keith Lemon, Jack Whitehall and Frankie Boyle, along with other actors and actresses who interacted with the twitter page each sharing a memory.

The project was a great success and they are now working in an official collaboration with Riverside Studios on the twitter page. Riverside Studios are constantly using the page as a platform to communicate the past present and future of the Studios and are using it as a key tool during the unveiling of their archives.

The second part of the proposal was designed to celebrate the last few days of the Riverside Studios’ building before its demolition. This phase was completed as a 1:1 installation at the Riverside Studios temporary offices in Hammersmith, London.

The installation was intended as gesture of awareness for the local community. Timelines of the history, posters and a twitter feed helped to engage with the public as well as artwork commissioned from the UCA art students. Bright and Koutsoftides (Studio ctrl_z) curated the event on the day and managed to actively engage with the community orally and through drawing.

Currently they are further developing the Hoarding Project with Riverside Studios and adjusting the programme in preparation for several funding applications in January 2015.

Aaron Bright and Emilio Koutsoftides are currently involved in the designing and integration of an events programme with Riverside Studios who envisage the project to eventually become a mobile events stage for the Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. The intention is for the project to begin its construction on site in May 2015.