Mount Utopia

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Exploring the Test Subject’s passion for skiing and desire for a warmer climate.

The project has tested the concept of cognitive displacement by bringing skiing to an urban environment, creating a new building typology. The key components to the Subject’s Utopian desires
were influenced by their love to ski and socialize.

This Utopia has been arranged as a day in the life of the Test Subject, where they will find 24 Utopian spaces throughout the building section which allows for an experience every hour of the day. The Subject has total control over when to ski. The project is represented as a section, the slope acting as the cut line through the complex tower. The design acts as a beacon for the Subject which stimulates senses associated with the sport through cognitive estrangement. Each space evokes a specific feeling or emotion which the Subject experiences while skiing.

The design objective established for the unit was to consider what Utopia was and to use one medium to represent this. With this experiment, digital painting was an appropriate response to explore different techniques to represent and sell Utopia to the Test Subject.
Throughout Part I of the experiment specific techniques were discovered to be particularly “Utopian” by the Subject after testing multiple styles and receiving critical feedback. This style was then taken forward and developed as a skill in conjunction with the design proposal.

The outcome of this project diagrammatic section coupled with illustrations of the internal spaces, portraying the Test Subject in their Utopia.