Ben Weir is an architect from Northern Ireland, Belfast. He works within the discipline of architecture, denouncing the notion of the architect as a neutral service provider. He draws, writes, researches and builds to uncover hidden spatial and material potentials.
His projects are generated through the survey of existing conditions, a process that invents as much as records. Favouring dynamism, the unfinished, the open-to-change, he reject demolition and tabula rasa. He dissects, re-presents and interrogates existing urban artefacts, seeking to express their current condition, situation, or relationship to us. Inserting new objects into this milieu, Ben is always seeking a positive contribution to a diverse, equitable and complex environment.
In the course of the residency, Ben will design and fabricate a set of heated furniture pieces. Movable objects that can be used as chairs, stools, benches or tables, whilst also incorporating heating elements such as electric radiators. Drawing inspiration from the contemporary condition of artists as transient beings, endlessly in flux, travelling for residencies and projects, on limited visas, and being forced to move out of (already insufficient) studio spaces. Heating elements are usually seen as ‘fixtures and fittings,’ permanent elements, plumbed-in to a boiler, unmovable. He wishes to free the heating element so that it can become unfixed, nomadic, a mirror to the artist themselves. A kind of daily camping, where objects are significant for survival.
Come and see what Ben is doing in Valga on April 27 and 28.
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