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Sana Tabassum celebrates all things shopping after lockdown

Words:
Jan-Carlos Kucharek

Sana Tabassum is commended, student, for a celebration of the mall’s shopping, eating and leisure activities in what seems a reaction to pandemic privations

Playing Shop. 594mm x 841mm, render with post-production.
Playing Shop. 594mm x 841mm, render with post-production. Credit: Sana Tabassum

Student: Commended
Sana Tabassum
University of Greenwich

Tabassum’s project, situated in her fictional food court ‘Metro Mela’, feels like a reaction to recent pandemic-induced societal privations. ‘Garden of Eat’n’ celebrates these spaces’ ‘extravagant nature and atmosphere, bringing back shopping, using objects and furniture as the basis for its architecture, creating an ornamental fabric devoted to all things shopping.’ In another image, even the closing of the mall, with shutters simultaneously drawn down around its exterior, is celebrated as cause for a ceremonial event.

  • Grand Shutter Ceremony. 594mm x 841mm, render with post-production.
    Grand Shutter Ceremony. 594mm x 841mm, render with post-production. Credit: Sana Tabassum
  • Garden of Eat’n. 594mm x 841mm, render with post-production.
    Garden of Eat’n. 594mm x 841mm, render with post-production. Credit: Sana Tabassum
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For the judges, while Niall Hobhouse, trustee, Drawing Matter, was drawn to these two representations, it was ‘Playing Shop’ that most intrigued two of the judges, with Ana Luisa Soares, co-founder, Fala Atelier, feeling that scale plays going on in the mall’s hypothetical creche had a sophisticated intent: ‘It shifts from the image in the background to the ‘toy’ subject in the foreground - and so mixes things up a bit.’ Kester Rattenbury, professor of architecture and cities at the University of Westminster, agreed, adding that the work ‘showed a level of compositional and technical skill that’s well above average'.

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