Lizzie Osborne

Lizzie is winner of the RIBA President Medals 2020 Dissertation Medal

CESSPITS OF FILTH

This project is a speculative project what was there, what there is, and what could be. A starting point for me in this project of ‘Re-imagining Huddersfield’ was to contextualise my own understanding of this place as it is.

Through the uncovering of the history of Huddersfield’s iconic 80s gay club, The Gemini, I was able to relate my own identity to that of my place in history. My research into the Gemini club, its patrons and stories, helped to uncover an aspect of Huddersfield’s identity that is somewhat obscured from public view.

What came to be apparent was the way in which state surveillance intertwines with working-class British vernaculars in such a way that violence and hostility is expressed through its structure and architecture, its dissolution of space.

'Cesspits of Filth' aims to propose a series of immersive tactile spaces based on the fabric of the Gemini Club, what happened there, and what parts of that story we are choosing to continue with into our future. The project aims to reappropriate British vernaculars in a way expresses the subliminal coding of desire and expression as was played out between the various characters within this story.