ASA-Com-120770119303

Videshiiya Videshiiya , Stephanus Suhendra

Indonesia

Barbie World - Fragmented Dystopian Vernacular

“I’m a barbie girl live in barbie world, life in plastic, it’s fantastic...”

-AQUA

Abstract. Lewis Mumford pessimistically argue that current urban living and infrastructure are inhumane and heading towards abomination.

The city is never-ending paradox, its potential of guaranting better quality of life always brings chaos along with it. Yet, our civilization thrives in the city. With 54% of the world’s population living in the city, our tradition and environment has changed, this means our collective primal landscape has also changed, consolidating our sense of place. With this being said. It is safe to update our nativity, thus recreating the new vernacular. We should represent 21st century “qualities”; destruction of natural resources and the rise of artificial/cheaper material: plastic, our ignorance and fragmented society, and human’s ability to survive and inhabit anykind of space. We encounter plastic everywhere, whether on land or in the sea (12,7 Million Metric Ton plastic contaminating our sea). We experienced it through things we carry as small as smartphones, sometimes, we devour them too! (25% of fish in United States were found to have plastics in their guts, In other case, the average European seafood consumer could be eating 11,000 microplastics every year.) No wonder, plastic’s durability is legendary, designed to last foverer. It surrounds us and has become part of our life.

The Construction of Barbie World

Barbie world is an architecture discourse in a dystopian future, a pessimistic and satirical one where we live as extremely fragmented species, when plastic becomes the only material we can develop architecture with.

Defining the spectrum of design within ugliness instead of beauty, The Barbie world is where dualism getting worse, architecture then can be displaced (if not reduced) into small fragments? Art Installation? Experienced as spreading parasites like an infectious organism, refflecting the origins and nature of its material and society.