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Eleanor Hill
Eleanor Hill
Show RCA work
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Show RCA 2015, Eleanor Hill 2015
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Structural Model , Eleanor Hill 2015
Wood, blue pigment
500mm x 700mm x 200mm -
Structural Model , Eleanor Hill 2015
Wood, blue pigment
500mm x 700mm x 200mm -
Wessex Downs View, Eleanor Hill 2015
Collage
Photographer: Eleanor Hill -
Plan, Section and Model of Portland House proposal, Eleanor Hill 2015
Drawing on Paper, wooden model
3m x 1.2m print; 500mm x 700mm x 200mm model | Photographer: Eleanor Hill -
Untitled casts, Eleanor Hill 2014
Mixed Media (Flax fibre, plaster, sand)
500mm x 500mm x 1200mm | Photographer: Eleanor Hill -
Field Pattern Scarf, Blue, Eleanor Hill 2014
Jacquard loom woven linen
1200mm x 500mm -
Field Pattern Scarf, Green, Eleanor Hill 2014
Jacquard loom woven linen
1200mm x 500mm -
Grandmother and I at Portland House, 2015
Agriculture
Photographer: Andrew Hill -
Flax Roof prototype, Eleanor Hill 2014
Raw Flax Fibre, fabric dye
500mm x 700mm x 600mm | Photographer: Eleanor Hill -
Wessex Downs in Art, 2015
Foam; Norwegian Spruce planks
0.8m x 0.8m x 0.2m; 3m x 1.2m x 0.7m | Photographer: Eleanor Hill -
Wessex Landscape, Eleanor Hill 2015
CNC cut and etched timber planks
3m x 1.2m x 0.1m | Photographer: Marina Andronescu
Major project:
What's That Blue Crop Growing in Your Field?
This is a proposal to reignite a productive landscape across 70 square miles of the English countryside – the project uses the cultural significance of the productive landscape as its driver, rather than solely for a yield of produce.
We’ve always been tied to agriculture – the fact that our words ‘culture’ and ‘cultivate’ share the same stem tells its own story. However, life is becoming increasingly difficult for farmers – so if we’re not going to grow food in our countryside, what exactly are we going to do with it? What are the cultural and political forces tugging at our hedgerows?
One of these forces is the preservation of landscapes – with 50 percent of our landscapes preserved, and 25 percent deemed an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The criteria for an AONB is simply ‘beauty’ itself, a subjective decision made by Natural England – yet how are they positioned to tell us what is beautiful or not?
In order to be relevant, we have to change the way we work with our landscape. The project proposes a new use: agriculture to new ends, that of culture.
Situated in the North Wessex Downs AONB – a dramatic landscape of open fields and rolling hills – the project proposes the cultivation and curation of flax fibre. Flax fibre is the raw material used to make linen – it’s chosen as an agent for culture, for its beautiful qualities both as a crop and material to be used. Its cultivation will re-identify the landscape as a locally characteristic cycle of production, marked every July by colourful fields of blue.
The design of the landscape and the structures within it have been driven by the processes needed to cultivate the material, to enhance it visually and experientially – it's been a constant negotiation between production and culture.
This is not supposed to be an agricultural theme park. This is a new, constantly changing, English landscape – that filters back into our society and culture at a variety of different scales. For those experiencing the landscape, that could be by foot, nonchalantly by car or train, even scrolling through Google Earth you’d notice the swerving plough lines, or new found sea of blue. But you don’t have to experience the landscape to appreciate it: new products will be made with it, and it’ll be represented in artwork in galleries around the world. For this could be the English landscape – and like all the Hockneys and Constables across time – it’s one to be portrayed in art to come.
Info
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School
School of Architecture
Programme
MA Architecture
Specialism
ADS6
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Contact
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Previous degrees
- BA Architecture, University of Cambridge, 2011
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Experiences
- Artist in residence, Swatch Art Peace Hotel, Shanghai, 2014; Architectural assistant, David Chipperfield Architects, Shanghai, 2012-13; Architectural assistant, Haworth Tompkins, London, 2011-13
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Exhibitions
- "Faces and Traces" Group Art Exhibition, SAPH, Shanghai, 2014; Open Studio, Shanghai, Shanghai, 2014; ArcSoc Exhibition, The London Dairy, 2012
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Collaborators
- Guan Lee; Marina Andronescu; Jessie Lee; Callum Perry; Anne Jackson