Alternative Domesticities
07 Jun—22 June (15 dates)
Edinburgh & The Lothians Exhibition
Event Summary
An exhibition of drawings and photographs, reading reciprocities within three experimental housing projects in Scotland.
Time
Saturdays & Sundays 11:00 - 18:00 Mondays - Fridays 11:00 - 18:00
Date(s)
07 Jun—22 June
Location
George Brown & Sons Engineering Works
Shore, Leith, Edinburgh EH6 6QS
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Organiser
Callum Geddes Symmons & Fredrik Frendin
Alternative Domesticities is an exhibition and accompanying public discussion which presents three mid-century housing projects across the central belt of Scotland: Cuthill Housing in Prestonpans, Park 3 West in Cumbernauld, and Southfield Housing in Barnton.
These projects are all associated with the Housing Research Unit based at the University of Edinburgh during the 1960s and collectively propose experimental reconfigurations of domestic space, at both the scale of the individual home and the neighbourhood.
The work is recontextualised through a new series of images, by the architectural photographer Fredrik Frendin, documenting the buildings as they exist today. This contemporary photographic survey is exhibited alongside a series of drawings of the originally constructed designs.
Various reciprocities are present in the reframing and reconsideration of these projects: between their original construction and their current occupancy, between their inhabitants and their designers, and between the medium of the drawing and the photograph.
These considerations - as well as the historical background, relevance, and significance of the work - will be discussed in a public dialogue with the historian Alistair Fair and the architect Fiona McLachlan.
