"Untitled, 2014, Mixed Media" presents a critical design project that interrogates the United Kingdom’s dependency on its creative economy. This work questions whether the continued application of financial mechanisms to the Creative Arts and the increasing co-alignment between our economic and cultural sectors is ultimately devaluing their inherent worth.
© Mike Lim.
Jury
Kent Jackson
John-Paul Nunes
Rik Nys
Andrew Philips
Patrik Schumacher
2014. January. The Department for Culture, Media, and Sport announces that the UK’s Creative Industries are worth £8 million/hour to the economy. Placing such a definitive value on our creative resource recognizes its potential to be lost.
February. The Worshipful Guild of Arts is granted its livery status within the City of London. Its founding council consists of a lawyer, two bankers, and Lloyd Grossman. Situated on Austin Friars Passage, the Guild sits within a preexisting network of curated, cultural objects throughout the City.
Projecting a massive shift in our creative values, this work offers a cautionary tale of over-cultural quantification. Taking the Guild as the Monster of a regulated future and documenting its growth across a fictional timeline, we see the formalization of this cultural network as an architecture that is characterized into an emotional response.
© Mike Lim.
The City of London, Creative typology. © Mike Lim.
88 Threadneedle Street. © Mike Lim.
The city of London. An existing network of culture. © Mike Lim.
Left: Absent Sky (Composition 1). View along London wall. Right: Landscape with highly visible figure (Composition II). View down Austin Friars. © Mike Lim.
Monuments of the beautifully unoriginal. © Mike Lim.
The inevitable monster. © Mike Lim.
Mike Lim
Royal College of Art
School of Architecture
is originally from London. He spent three years working with OMA in Hong Kong before returning to complete his master’s degree at the Royal College of Art. Lim joined the firm of Matheson Whiteley in London in 2015, where he is currently employed. His career aspirations as an architect include one day setting up his own practice—but figuring out how to do it first.
