Victoria Si Wah Dong

Victoria Dong is a UK based designer working in the field of architectural practice, installations, exhibitions, and community projects.

Prior to her postgraduate studies at the RCA, she completed BA(ArchStud) at the University of Hong Kong in 2018 and was selected as an exchange student in Rome with the University of Waterloo. Having spent two years working in Hong Kong and in Heatherwick Studio, her work focuses on installation design, most notably the “Game of Light” installation at K11 with AaaM Architects which won the Korean Design Award in 2019.

In 2022, Victoria decided to continue her pursuit in multidisciplinary collaboration. She has been collaborating with textile artists and sound designers for her project, exploring the unknown possibilities across architecture, textile and sound.

As Korean Pop music has become an unmissable rising culture, with catchy beats and colourful music videos attracting fans from around the world, this research intends to reveal the reality behind (i.e. the notorious idol schemes), and seek possibilities for spaces of resistance against the institutes of idol manufacturing in Korean society, challenging the existing modes of fabrication of identity and desires. The project aims to use textile as a medium to create a temporal, continuously updated and improved framework, as a bottom up approach to resist the monopolisation of infrastructures.

This project reacts to the existing manufacturing process of Kpop idols, and learns from the Random Play Dance community. The project envisions itself to be a festival, to provide an alternate method of idolisation for the general public, allowing them to explore and define their own identity.

Korean idol trainees, despite its grueling trainee system, countless aspiring performers are recruited from a young age(around 13-15), generally spending five years or more living together, following a straight routine of practice, learning to sing and dance in synchronized perfection. Idol trainees collectively live together in the same dormitory provided by the talent agency, for the convenience of the daily routine practice. and have a straight daily 8am -12am routine of practicing.

The Kpop Idolisation is a prescribed routine.

Under the hierarchical and promised success model, it gives a false belief to aspiring idols that becoming a celebrity can be achieved through years of hard work.

A routined way of living that extends into the bigger consumer groups, persuading the public to follow a similar identity.

Left Top to Bottom: (yellow) Digital Knitted on Shima Seiki machine, using elastomeric, polyester and polypropylene. (red, blue, white) Knitted on Double Bed Domestic machine, interweaving corset strips. (white) Knitted on Dubied Machine, using Grillon yarns which solidifies with heat treating. (green) Knit mounted on plaster, with tufting as a base. Right Top to Bottom: (multiple knits) swatches of samples (red) Knitted on single bed domestic machine (pink) Digitally Knitted, drop stitches

The project will be an urban intervention of a collective camping space, a temporary and light weight tent structure shared by 200 “new artists”, primarily used at night times and weekends. Artists and performers are invited to live, eat and rest together, perform and produce novel music, choreograph, dress up together and construct their unique identities, and continually update and reconstruct their training space into their functional needs and taste.

In Collaboration with:

@moimoto

Credits to Vicki Zhiwei Hong, RCA MA Textile, Soft System student in 22' cohort

Selecting a site at Gangdong Family Campground in Seoul, it is an existing car camping ground which is converted from military encampments by mega institutions like Hyundai, to promote their campervan business, and similarly prescribing a desire to the public of camping on a weekend.

Breaking down the repetitive site, similar to the repetitiveness found in the kpop culture, the site is broken down from its militan configuration into one, continuously open space, allowing multiple happenings or one big festival to take place. The 200 meter long, 50 meters wide tent space follows the existing boundary of the site, and creates access points facing to the existing routes and smaller trails.

There are 6 repeating modules of structures. With their central axis aligning with the axis points defined by existing routes, forming a S shaped path, Between each module, they are interconnected by other cross bracings, connecting all other modules as one unit.

An array of sub-structure is hung horizontally underneath the bracings, breaking the division of structure into vertical strips between 1-3 meters, a typical width of a mass produced fabric. Different textiles can be collectively sewn, layered, edited and attached, with different textile performance qualities that deal with sound, light and colour conditions.

Here, yellow indicates a more porous, single layer of fabric, creating openings for ventilation and light. pink deals with two layers of fabric, allowing service and infrastructure to be embedded in the fabric. Red indicates a thicker fabric, for more layers of fabric to be overlapped.

The substructure also enables the hanging of service infrastructures such as lighting and sound system, indicated in white and yellow. Different lighting systems, such as strip laser lights, moving spots lights, and festoon lights are installed in different locations, giving a variety of lighting conditions from dark, soft to strong party lights.

Sound wise, different configuration of speakers are placed across the roof to project regular to strong audio for the space beneath, at a height that varies from 6 meters to 18 meters from the ground.

The ample height of space (6 to 18 meters) allows sound to be contained and amplified within the structure, and the space not to overheat from the crowd of visitors. The tent is constructed by multiple layers of fabrics. With a layer of external fabric that consistently cuts through the overall space to provide shading and weather protection, it drapes down and allows the fringes of the fabric, a default by-product of woven textiles, to touch the ground, acting as a threshold.

Internally, multiple layers of fabric can be attached underneath to provide a secondary surface, for the preference of the performers or spectators using this space, defining their own theme, creativity, and performance of the space.

Going inside the tent, one has to brush through the 1 to 2 meter fluffy fringes, or enter through the grand openings, which responds to the site route, creating a 3 meter fringe curtain that can be opened or closed.

The Tetrahedron are all 2 meters above the ground, allowing more infrastructure to be attached in the middle of the space, forming a surround sound system. As well as allowing users to construct a more intimate space underneath the tetrahedron.

At the Ground cut line, following the existing topography of the site, a gently stepping ground is sculpted to create moments of flat and undulating zones for performance and practices, allowing both smaller and bigger performances to happen.

The usage is defined by performers and spectators. They are free to roam, perform, practice, chat, eat and relax, in opposition to the predefined, rigid idol training routine set by the higher institutes, allowing the public to reclaim their rights in the process of idolization.

But as a general thumb of rule, the central space is where most active performance takes place, whether it is in small clusters or in a big group. Spectators congregate not only along the periphery of the tent, but also filtrate inside the middle of the space, as well as the outside of the tent for people to barbecue, eat and rest.

The users and objects' placement and movement is ongoing, ever-changing and unpredictable.

From sound mapping to sound absorbing. Patterns generated were woven on a digital jacquard machine, with elastomeric, mercerized cotton, un-mercerized cotton, monofilament yarns.

It is an open festival, where idol enthusiasts, costume makers, music producers, set designers can join and collaborate and mutually benefit from each other. Is it an open place for both learning and leisure, and to provide resources and testing ground for creatives to test out ideas, and find new ways of entertainment. They will debut their product by the end of the festival through the architecture, creating new forms of Kpop music.

It is a zoom in reflected ceiling plan view that pictures 3 scenarios of conditions where coloured fabrics are being attached and overlaid in different densities. With the loose one taken from the central spine of the space, it has fewer coloured fabrics; yet with the most vibrant movement; with the medium density one that transitions and shows the organic arrangement of tables; and the highest density that allows users to practise music, refuge and meditate.

A combination of these three scenarios creates a symphony of fabrics, movements and sound conditions across the whole site, all reflective to the performers and spectator’s personal desire, and is no longer defined rigidly by mega institutes in their idol making process, that asks the public to follow the same identity for its own commercial benefits.

Knitting Iteration of tent, media item 1

Knitting Iteration of tent, media item 2

Knitting Iteration of tent, media item 3

Knitting Iteration of tent, media item 4

This project is a weak and loose system that gives agency to the public, kpop enthusiasts and aspiring performers. Using fabrics as a medium, the public stitches and constructs their own ideal, utopian space, that grows organically and independently, forming a self-organised movement that occupies the existing kpop industry, bringing in like minded people together to claim their own definition of idolization.

In Collaboration with:

@zoe_daley

credits to Zoe Daley, RCA MA Textile, in 24' cohort.

Victoria Si Wah Dong

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Royal College of Art