Sweta Solai Sanker uses sophisticated tablet representations of ideas to empower children through architecture
Sweta Solai Sanker
Royal College of Art, London
‘Through a collaborative approach involving ideas of fictional world-building or collective gameplay, ‘Kid Fiction’ focuses on ideas of how we can better understand, value and empower children as individuals in their own right, using architecture as an intermediary body of communication.’ So Sanker goes rogue, collaborating with primary school pupils to identify issues and solutions for the world around them. And, boldly drawn on a tablet with extreme colour and sophistication, Sanker feeds us scenarios of a Tube system reimagined as a network of slides and Hyde Park as the site of a form of electrolytic conversion that generates energy from microbial fuel cells. Jes Fernie ‘loved the magical references to children,’ while artist Begum and architect Power pored over the child-like playfulness of the images, which nonetheless stood up to interrogation. Begum added, ‘Colours are seductive and reflect the subject, but there’s such density and thought here too which you only see if you keep zooming in.’