Apastoral

Frank Brandon

Acknowledging a UK landscape made up of increasingly privatised plots, how can the property line, fences and offences be mobilised to produce new forms of pastorality within the suburbs?

As the city expands towards the suburbs and neo-liberal forces dictate decisions over land-use, the individual plot within the UK suburbs has become increasingly interiorised and fragmented from the next. The overlooked architecture of the fence becomes the mediator between these grounds, where currently the Land Registry determines its lines and laws, and garden centres, such as B&Q or Homebase fuel the fixed physical presence. 

Here, society finds itself at a point where the pastoral narrative is of increasing importance within suburban desires and visual culture. It has become a tangible escape from this reality, perpetuating the values for an ideal, simple life. 

The project: apastoral, proposes a bottom up approach to influencing landscape, an alternative definition of the pastoral that illustrates an inclusive concept, as well as one that acknowledges the realities of private property. Instrumentalising the overlooked architecture of the fence and transforming its fixed qualities as the offence, a series of lenses can be simulated to produce new forms of collective imagination that we consider to be the pastoral ideal. 

Frank is an architectural designer based in London. Before joining the MA, he completed his undergraduate degree at Cardiff University in 2020, where he received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture. Following which he spent a year working in architectural practice in the UK. 

Through the object of the fence, his work investigates the themes of property, ownership, land-use and territory. Primarily working with video, line drawing and sculptural media his work attempts to unveil the current situation and imagine alternative realities. His practice expands through the narration of observational walks, personal experience and memory to document contemporary issues.  

At the RCA, he is researching the on-going interiorisation of the UK Suburbs, developing the idea of the offence as a device to encourage bottom up approaches to landscape. Inspired by the practices of artists such as Agnes Varda, Patrick Keiller and Matthias Weinfurter, his project, apastoral, proposes an alternative suburban context that subverts the traditional wooden fence to produce new forms of pastorality.