1-25

1:25 is a modular, miniature artwork suggesting children’s toys like Brio, Lego and Meccano.

Based on the Hesco Bastion Concertainer, the work can be endlessly built and rebuilt to create defensive barriers across coffee tables or gallery floors. The work consists of a modular building kit of 229 individually machined scale replica Oak blocks and allows for an infinite variety of construction configurations through the incorporation of 784 half-blind dovetail joints and 392 butterfly Meranti wood joining pins. The kit is designed to be reconfigured within its own packing case for rapid deployment and dissassembly.

1:25 was produced as a precursor and in parallel with the development of Hill33, a massive earthwork, due to begin construction in the Forest of Dean, UK, in the summer of 2010. The work will recycle two thousand tons of landfill (originally taken from the Forest as the result of open cast mining) to produce a sculpture of grandiose proportions: 11.5m tall and 11m wide, emulating the formal geometry of Mayan pyramids, but employing indigenous waste and the construction materials of conflict.

In 2008, Cotterrell was commissioned by the Wellcome Trust and the Ministry of Defense to work with British Medical Forces at Camp Bastion, Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The camp itself is named for its original building materials: Bastion Bales, which are designed to be quickly moved into place, filled with local soil and act as blast-proof walls. Hill33 will be built using the same technology with the assistance of Royal Engineers.

The work references the industrial archeology of the Forest of Dean and its now deceptively ‘natural’ appearance. It is also an attempt to invert the design intention of the architecture of war – creating a contemporary folly or memorial for a population coming to terms with its role in conflict.

 

Materials:

Machined Oak, Meranti and Oak Laminated Plywood.

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