Set on the island of Formosa, where foreign nuclear material has repeatedly been buried, the proposal investigates how architecture might expose the political and cultural narratives surrounding nuclear disposal.
Year 5
Location
Collaborator
Unit 24
London, United Kingdom
Gabriel Cooper
The project draws on the fabricated accounts of Formosa produced by George Psalmanazar in the 1740s, whose fictional descriptions of the island shaped Western perceptions for decades. By revisiting these invented histories, the proposal seeks to loosen what has been described as the “corset of evidence production” - the rigid frameworks through which land, history, and legitimacy are typically documented and controlled.
Architecture becomes a medium through which these narratives are re-staged and questioned. The project takes the form of a quasi-theatre / nuclear waste facility, where storage infrastructure and performance space coexist. Instead of burying nuclear material in silence, the architecture transforms the act of containment into a public ritual of remembrance.
At the centre of the proposal is a carefully choreographed spatial sequence titled “The Solemn Ceremony of the Formosan Seven Feasts.” Visitors move through a series of performative architectures that combine elements of theatre, landscape, and infrastructure. These spaces draw on traditions of aboriginal performativity, allowing indigenous cultural practices to navigate and reinterpret the architecture of nuclear containment.
Through this filmic spatial narrative, the project exposes and critiques the systems through which land is measured, claimed, and governed - particularly the cadastral frameworks that reduce complex territories to administrative grids.
Architecture becomes a medium through which these narratives are re-staged and questioned. The project takes the form of a quasi-theatre / nuclear waste facility, where storage infrastructure and performance space coexist. Instead of burying nuclear material in silence, the architecture transforms the act of containment into a public ritual of remembrance.
At the centre of the proposal is a carefully choreographed spatial sequence titled “The Solemn Ceremony of the Formosan Seven Feasts.” Visitors move through a series of performative architectures that combine elements of theatre, landscape, and infrastructure. These spaces draw on traditions of aboriginal performativity, allowing indigenous cultural practices to navigate and reinterpret the architecture of nuclear containment.
Through this filmic spatial narrative, the project exposes and critiques the systems through which land is measured, claimed, and governed - particularly the cadastral frameworks that reduce complex territories to administrative grids.