Lex Liew Y5
The British Overseas Territories Exposition is an opportunity to celebrate the fourteen British Overseas Territories. Individually they are a series of intriguing communities and landscapes, which form a fragmented global patchwork of British territory. They remain physically and culturally remote, whilst signifying a history of colonialism and the British Empire.
The project references the format of the Worlds Fairs to bring the global patchwork of territories together into one site, highlighting their diverse communities and landscapes, while re-linking them to Britain.
The Exposition is sited within a garden of Ladbroke Grove, one mile from a cluster of Embassies representing the foreign territory in London, creating a contrast between the Expo and private London gardens and the houses that surround them. A hybrid of Pavilions and Embassies are situated within a constructed exposition landscape to represent both permanent and temporary overseas territory conditions. A new garden landscape is crafted to represent the territories landscape features and they provide the backdrop to the exposition, while visitors navigate the site.
An interplay between landscape and built form develop side by side throughout the project, eventually allowing the garden of Ladbroke Grove to reappear within the exposition and in turn forming a new, tightly woven patchwork of British Overseas Territories.