The above image is one of the 60 hand drawings that are part of Luke Chandresinghe’s proposal for a patent office to be built on a site in East London. They were originally part of his diploma project titled the ‘The Institute of Ideas’ at the Bartlett school of Architecture.
The awe inspiring Sri Lankan won the Bannister Fletcher Prize for his Diploma and the Serjeant Award for Excellence in Drawing at the 2004 British Architects President’s Medal Students Awards for the project.
Luke explains his project as:
The institute consists of two hundred storage towers and expiration vessels which dominate the site of the Lea Valley in East London. It houses all registered patents or ‘ideas’ in the UK for 20-year periods, continually expelling expired ideas and receiving newly registered patents. On the expiry date of the patent, it is released and transferred to the expiration vessel where it can be blown across the terrain. The surrounding landscape is a junkyard, market and forum for discussion of old ideas where intellectual scavengers steal, recycle, sell and buy expired inventions.
Read PingMag’s interview with Luke for more images and details.
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