Thanh Tam Bamboo Ecopark

Introduction

Imran Perretta: I studied it at school around the time the Twin Towers came down and it was also around that time that my body was growing at this exponential rate and I started to be seen as a public threat. I think reading the story about these young boys and how they were marked for their capacity for violence chimed with me because that was the way in which my body was also starting to be seen and it was a very uncomfortable realisation. The boys in the story were seeing this man’s house in a time of devastation just after the Blitz and I was interested in the parallel with the beginnings of the war on terror around the same time. So there were all these cultural and historical markers that meant that my narrative had this sort of eerie symbolic relationship with the narrative in the short story and this has always stuck with me.

Overview of 1/2000 Master Plan

I was interested in talking about a specific experience of structural oppression and Islamophobia in the hope that, if I spoke very lucidly about some of the things I’ve seen, then it would resonate in one way or another with people who had seen or heard something similar. I was reticent to talk about political forces like austerity and the war on terror in generic terms or just as pieces of legislation when what they do is affect families and individuals in a very intimate way. So what I was trying to do was to use very intimate and personal experiences of having been wronged as a way of aiming upwards at the state and authoritarian politics. I’m coming from a position of trying to critique power structures that have laid a path for me, and I can only do that in an embodied way, otherwise I’d be a commentator rather than someone who has actually experienced these things.

Site Analysis and Context

The building is a community centre that is slowly falling into disrepair because the local council budget was under austerity measures. I wanted to draw attention to its slow decay and the fact that if you erode social provision, what you are eroding are communities, families and real people and so the building becomes a protagonist in the work. You see liquid and gas entering the space as this sort of ingress, these insidious outside forces creeping in as well as drawing attention to the fact that the building is porous and falling apart.

Vision and Planning Principles

The core interest for me is how to reference images from conflict and war without actually having to show them—how you reference violence, especially state violence and material devastation, without having to show the people or the places that have suffered in reality. That is really important. We have become so accustomed to seeing black and brown deaths on television and to seeing certain bodies treated with a certain sort of callousness and coldness by the camera. So for me it is how can you show and allude to violence and conflict without actually having to show its real-life effects? How to talk about the things we’ve endured without having to further endure them, that is part of the mission, the political strategy of the work.

I also have an interest in magic realist literature, particularly that which references colonialism, like Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. It has this sense of the uncanny, of something that is very close to real life but is in some way extraordinary and abstracted and of using that distance, that suspension of disbelief to talk about things that are historically or culturally traumatic. For me visual effects tap into that idea of the uncanny and how you can create a slightly otherworldly scenario that is actually concretely rooted in the real world, and is almost truer than the truth.

Precedents Study

My background is really in sound. I’m interested in how sound, regardless of context, can give a very embodied or visceral response in a viewer or listener. In that sense it’s a tool you can wield in very interesting ways cinematically. It relates to VFX in that I’m interested in the kind of soundtracks you find in war films and horror and thriller films and using them not to talk about espionage and grand action sequences or people running through the trenches, but for someone talking about their anxieties about the world or the situation they find themselves in. It’s this really affective, effective tool for personifying anxiety and depression but also love and joy and care. So for me sound becomes a way of creating both dissonance but also consonance in the work. In a lot of ways the writing comes first, the sound comes second and the image comes last in my thinking, it’s definitely a very important part of what I do.

Master Plan Proposals

Site Plan

The site plan is conceived accordingly to the natural setting of the park

Existing Site Levels

The proposed site is composed of about 100 hectares inland and an island of about 60 hectares. The inland area has the lowest level of 24 meters above sea level, while the Bai Doan island has its lowest levet set at 20 meters above sea level.

Prosposed Site Levels

The goal is for the inland area is to work with the existing levels as much as possible by maximising land use while minimising cutting and backfilling, while adpating the flood events for the island.

The concept for the island is to set minimum level according to the annual mean flood water level and the collected data of flood events in recent years, especially in case of sudden flood from releasing water from the … dam. The designed levels will be also determined later by the designs for road grading and storm water drainage requirements.

Water Features: While the Chu river is a natural integration of the site, manmade water features are populated throughout the project, from the “king river/ pond” to the 1.7 hectares ecological lake in the resort area, as well as other small lakes and ponds in the sub-zones and complexes of the park. These multiscalar system of water features necessitates different edge treatment and landscaping requirement strategies for each sites. Figure… shows some typical cross-sections at the ponds, lakes and rivers.

Slope design:

• Soil conditions and ground settlement:
• Subsurface conditions:
• Ground settlement:
• Soil Improvement:

Earthworks:

Broad Planning Parameters

Development Density:

Land Distribution:

Land Use Concepts and Options:

Land Use Distribution:

• Residential Areas
• Park Center
• Religious Areas
• Agricultural Experience Areas
• Hospitality Areas
• Commercial and Mixed-Use
• Open Spaces, Park and Garden Spaces, Green and Blue Trames
• Entertainment, Playground and Sport Facilities
• Bamboo Workshop
• Administration and Supporting Facilities

Proposed Land Use Plan:

Proposed Open Spaces/ Green and Blue Trames

• Overall Landscape Concept
• Open Space Objectives
• Open Space Types
• Water Feature Types
• Proposed Tree List
  • Park Tree
  • Street Tree
  • Waterside Tree
  • Accent & Landmark Tree

Proposed Road Network Plan

Grid System Study/ Follies Program

• Grid
• Grid & Block interchange
• Lot
• “Folly”

Proposed Development Density (Plot Ratio) and Building Height

Sub-zones, Land Parcel and Floor Areas of sub-zones

Urban Design Concept

• Urban Design Concept and Principles
• Main themes vs zones (3)
• Main Zones and sub-zones
  • Entrance and temporary hotel
  • Commercial Areas
  • Residential Areas (inland and island)
  • Ecological Resort
  • Sports and Entertainment (inland and island)
  • Park Center
  • Religious Zones
  • Agircultural Experience Zone
  • Bamboo Museum and Bamboosetum
  • Bamboo Workshop Facilities (main workshop LSBC and other facilities throughout site)
  • Natural Preservation Areas
  • Green Hotel
  • Villages
• Landmarks
• Main Parks and Connectors
• Park and Zones’ Perimeter
• Waterfront Areas
• Site Profiles

Road and Transportation System

And I happen to belong to one that has been surveilled the most in a post-9/11 context. So my sense of self is invariably conditioned by the way I am seen by the state: I am hyper-visible and have been since I was 14 years old, the first time I was stopped and searched by the police. So part of me going on this long and winding road to becoming an artist film-maker is about trying to find a visual language for my own visibility but one that tries to resist the dominant or normative forms of cinematic and state visibility. I’m trying to find something else that can reference my visibility but also critique it. That’s really my mission, so to speak.

Infrastructures and Utilities

And I happen to belong to one that has been surveilled the most in a post-9/11 context. So my sense of self is invariably conditioned by the way I am seen by the state: I am hyper-visible and have been since I was 14 years old, the first time I was stopped and searched by the police. So part of me going on this long and winding road to becoming an artist film-maker is about trying to find a visual language for my own visibility but one that tries to resist the dominant or normative forms of cinematic and state visibility. I’m trying to find something else that can reference my visibility but also critique it. That’s really my mission, so to speak.

Development Strategies and Phasing Concept

And I happen to belong to one that has been surveilled the most in a post-9/11 context. So my sense of self is invariably conditioned by the way I am seen by the state: I am hyper-visible and have been since I was 14 years old, the first time I was stopped and searched by the police. So part of me going on this long and winding road to becoming an artist film-maker is about trying to find a visual language for my own visibility but one that tries to resist the dominant or normative forms of cinematic and state visibility. I’m trying to find something else that can reference my visibility but also critique it. That’s really my mission, so to speak.

Appeared in Kecho Journal, 321 March 2020

More Interview Topics Chisenhale Gallery Whitworth Art Gallery
Baltic Centre Imran Perretta