caspar bhalerao

Since completion of the text Parkour, Play, and the Neoliberal City the thesis has been developing further, manifesting in physical form and intervention into public space. This has begun to be enacted in Unmake + Make, which sees the repurposing of a ‘found object’ into a piece of street furniture. Inhabiting the fringes of the Aylesbury Estate, south-east London, the project is an act of experimental reclamation; taking a discarded item and creating a small red bench; mirroring the abandoned blue palettes it accompanies, it contributes to the patina of the public realm. The aim is to explore how objects and spaces could become more play-able, and realise how the ‘unmaking’ of space can contribute to the overall looseness of the urban fabric. The Aylesbury Estate itself is often cited as once the largest council estate in Europe; today it stands in turmoil, with many residents displaced to make way for a new gentrified and commodified development. An area that was once a keystone of Tony Blair’s plan to regenerate “no-hope areas” remains fractured; spatially uncertain it is part of the perpetual change of the city – the red bench is another mark on the palimpsest, soon to be re-written once more.