WHEN THERE IS NO LAND - THE GREEN OAK TREE

Using the transcending history of the textile industry in Brick Lane, Forming Fabric explores the potential of laminating scrap fabric using beeswax to create foldable structural pieces. Expanding to house two heads, the object creates a private moment within the public weekend activities of the market, remembering the importance of fabric in clothing and feeding the community. Continuing the idea to find sustainable natural building materials, The Green Oak Tree explores the restoration of Greenock’s historical shipyard through an aquaculture farm. Providing a contingency for rising sea levels, seaweed and oysters from the farm help to sequester carbon and are processed into tiles, thatching, and boards. Workshops, hatcheries, exhibition spaces and community facilities are built through materials grown from the farm, questioning how we build and what we can build within a possible future whereby there is no land. The revealing of the shipyard is informed through traces of the warehouse, shipyard, platform, rail, and edge. The landscape becomes a historical palimpsest of the collective urban memory of shipyards past, revealed during low tide. Exposure of industrial pieces of the aquafarm creates a walking museum of the site, whilst seaweed channels restore the historical edge, helping reinstate the importance of the River Clyde to the community of Greenock.