The brief
The question behind the work.
The final year undergraduate project produced by Merza called The [Re]Construction Museum looks at reestablishing a lost community, in a heritage site that has been abandoned. St. Paul's church has slowly disappeared and is no longer the center of the community, nor able to provide the help needed nowadays. Through material manipulation and traditional brick making, the new building will pay homage to the church whilst benefiting the community in this contemporary world.
The [Re]Construction Museum acts as a ground to practice skills necessary for the construction industry and, allows others that are less able to explore more traditional ways of making, display the work they produce and sell them. This allows the users of the building to slowly integrate back into society by using the technical facilities made available by the building constructed and the temporary accommodation provided through a program called the [Re]Integration Cycle.
Introduced as the new pillar of the community, The [Re]Construction Museum challenges its current status as a Grade I Listed Heritage site and argues that reclaiming ownership of the design by having the local community contribute to constructing the building in the contemporary world is a way of preserving the heritage of the place and becoming attuned to change in the future.
