Andrew Gibbs

The nation state has withered to its point zero. Greater interconnectedness between people and places is bringing about seismic shifts; from the overarching political order to the communities in which we aggregate. Consequently, a plurality of identities is emerging that are no longer predicated on geographical proximity. 

With the dissolution of nations, citizenship is reconciled as an affiliation to a multitude of political domains and interest tribes. Stacked, these constitute a citizen identity unique from all others; subject to constant redefinition and in perpetual flux: your citizenship is a daily referendum and is up for grabs.

Without borders, the social and cultural landscape fragments into a patchwork of domains of increasingly complex hybridity and isolated self-interest; all with a parity to trade in order to survive. As loci of political sovereignty shrink increasingly into a dense tapestry of city-states and county principalities, corporate, institutional and even prominent individual identities, uniqueness is militarised for territorial presence: an urbanism derived from immediate borderlands, distinct typological uniqueness and proximity to a world maintained for your immediate pleasure. 

The scenario is explored through two facets: the first, a sister campus to UCLA in Weston-super-Mare, derived from the repetitive constellation of spatial typologies inferred through American high school cinema, in which the exchanging of stereotypes generates potential for the invention of new archetypes.

The second; a toy gun factory on the Grand Pier, also Weston-super-Mare, exploits a loophole that facilitates the manufacture of real-looking fakes.