Bartlett Research Conversations: William Victor Camilleri

The Struggle for Existence.

William Victor Camilleri

Supervisors: Professor Nat Chard and Dr Christopher Leung 

Abstract

The struggles for existence – popularised in Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) – are dependencies in nature with variations that profit certain beneficiaries and lead to the demise of others. Balanced with botanical illustrations, in particular Basilius Besler’s Hortus Eystettensis (1613) – a celebrated codex illustrating a sixteenth century garden in Eichstätt, Germany – this research attempts to tease out the concealed elements that are often removed from an output but remain present as ‘event-based’ relationships.

These relationships are formalised within the construct of a garden through a series of made objects that accentuate their inner workings and interactions, enabling the work to identify a halfway-mark between man and nature. In employing socio-botanical constructs that displace the garden as a wild-domesticated spectrum, the research probes the ontology of nature in the hope for the metaphor to germinate and bloom.

About The Bartlett Research Conversations

The Bartlett School of Architecture’s Research Conversations seminars comprise work-in-progress and upgrade presentations by students undertaking the MPhil/PhD Architectural Design and MPhil/PhD Architectural and Urban History and Theory. All current UCL staff and students are welcome to attend.

Held regularly throughout the academic year, the seminars are attended by the programme directors, Professor Jonathan Hill and Professor Sophia Psarra, PhD Coordinators, Dr. Nina Vollenbröker and Dr Sophie Read, and other PhD supervisors.

Image: Garden objects: cardoon, garden tulip, globe artichoke - Sarah Lever