Site Review

Site Survey:

The first impression I got of this place was that of being on the set of a sci-fi movie. The architecture is really futuristic and modern. The area gives u the feel of being in a concrete space spaceship that is floating on water.

In my personal journey through the whole site the most important part of this space was the festival terrace/ riverside terrace. This terrace is like the center piece of a jigsaw puzzle. It connects all the buildings that form the Southbank Center. Namely- Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Hayward gallery, BFI and Purcell Room.

My second visit to this site was during the late evening. It was this time when I realised how deep the idea of this site being in space has been carried out. Odd lighting i.e. when on the terrace the only lights you have is the one's on the side wall of the terrace, then there was the bit that was reflected out through the glass windows in the restaurants and cafe's and finally the few huge spots and LED tray's next to the names of the buildings pointing towards the terrace. This then completely hide's the architectural beauty of the space.

Imagine a car coming towards you with its head lights on dim in a dark thick forest! The size of the vehicle would be impossible to guess in that kind of a situation.
Bearing in mind the above example the beauty of the Southbank architecture suddenly disappears after dusk due to the poor lighting conditions.

Returning to my research on expanded cinema I wanted to survey the terrace as if it was being watched by a moving CCTV since the idea of the watcher being watched was quiet intriguing for me. Adding my experiment with scratch film to the cctv footage gave it an interesting look generating a new outcome.

Scratch film:

CCTV Site Survey with Scratch Film Effect:

My research on CCTV footages from online resources: