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Architecture (MA)

Frank Brandon

Key Image

Frank is an architectural designer based in London. Before joining the MA, he completed his undergraduate degree at Cardiff University in 2020, where he received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture. Following which he spent a year working in architectural practice in the UK. 

Through the object of the fence, his work investigates the themes of property, ownership, land-use and territory. Primarily working with video, line drawing and sculptural media his work attempts to unveil the current situation and imagine alternative realities. His practice expands through the narration of observational walks, personal experience and memory to document contemporary issues.  

At the RCA, he is researching the on-going interiorisation of the UK Suburbs, developing the idea of the offence as a device to encourage bottom up approaches to landscape. Inspired by the practices of artists such as Agnes Varda, Patrick Keiller and Matthias Weinfurter, his project, apastoral, proposes an alternative suburban context that subverts the traditional wooden fence to produce new forms of pastorality.



Land Registry

apastoral

Acknowledging a UK landscape made up of increasingly privatised plots, how can the property line, fences and offences be mobilised to produce new forms of pastorality within the suburbs?

As the city expands towards the suburbs and neo-liberal forces dictate decisions over land-use, the individual plot within the UK suburbs has become increasingly interiorised and fragmented from the next. The overlooked architecture of the fence becomes the mediator between these grounds, where currently the Land Registry determines its lines and laws, and garden centres, such as B&Q or Homebase fuel the fixed physical presence. 

Here, society finds itself at a point where the pastoral narrative is of increasing importance within suburban desires and visual culture. It has become a tangible escape from this reality, perpetuating the values for an ideal, simple life. 

The project: apastoral, proposes a bottom up approach to influencing landscape, an alternative definition of the pastoral that illustrates an inclusive concept, as well as one that acknowledges the realities of private property. Instrumentalising the overlooked architecture of the fence and transforming its fixed qualities as the offence, a series of lenses can be simulated to produce new forms of collective imagination that we consider to be the pastoral ideal. 

preramble

Preramble

This video introduces the wanderer, or visitor to a landscape, who uses framing and observation to understand and interpret. It also introduces the overlooked architecture of the fence and the UK suburban landscape as a site of study, documented through the use of the body camera, drone and aerial footage.

It also prescribes that an analogous relationship exists between the living room rug and the field I walked during lock-down, demonstrating the landscape is not only about constructing buildings and landform but also perception.

Field Notes Research Booklet

Field Notes

The Field Notes research book complies a series of observations and looks to catalogue the fence as a product. Throughout this section I establish a clear standing within the pastoral narrative, exploring: the plot, the fence and the offence.

Chapter 3: Fences
Chapter 3: Fences
Chapter 4: Fences?
Chapter 4: Fences?
Chapter 5: Offences
Chapter 5: Offences

Offences

The following 10 lenses illustrate new forms of collective imagination that we consider to be the pastoral ideal, attempting to conjure an alternative attitude towards landscape. Each titled with a different form of pastoral cliche, they are read as a continuous walk through the endless building block, overcoming the property line while still understanding where it lies. The images imagine the garden opening and transforming into the park, where new temporalities, not only of seasonal and social but also physical, become foregrounded. They attempt to portray, both the mundane, but also the absurdity that is present within these contexts. 

The vegetable allotment
The vegetable allotment
The home brewery
The home brewery
The party park
The party park
The sports ground
The sports ground
The bath spa
The bath spa
The business park
The business park
The parking lot
The parking lot
The footpath
The footpath
The nature reserve
The nature reserve
The pasture garden
The pasture garden
The tartan model
The tartan model
The tartan model

Tartan

This tartan looks to mediate a model for this alternative attitude towards UK landscape. Taking the royal stewart pattern, representative of the outright owner of all land within the UK - the crown - the rectangular grid of yellow and white lines become plots. Adapting the ways the lines are drawn, and therefore how the architecture of the fence is arranged, demonstrates the possibilities of a landscape that challenges the current interiorisation of the suburbs. 

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Royal College of Art

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