Port City Colombo partnered with AOD to launch a first of its kind Design competition!
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Designer Rochelle Fernando
‘Envision the Future’ a student design completion was set to showcase young creativity to narrate Sri Lanka’s story through public art. The competition invited Sri Lankan students from all around the island to design a Beach Sculpture with the theme ‘Dream’ and an Interactive Wall with the theme of ‘Vitality’. Amongst over 300 submissions received, Rochelle Fernando of AOD emerged as a finalist in the Beach Sculpture Competition.
AOD supported the Port City Colombo initiative to engage young talent in an island-wide competition to choose the most outstanding work in sculpture design. The winning work will become part of Sri Lanka’s largest landmark development project—Port City Colombo, bringing creative expression to play a central role in making Sri Lanka’s future-city. The design competition is a reflection of how the Port City Colombo itself as a futuristic vision is coming alive today & the importance of engaging with it and making it our own. Hence, AOD supported the project with it’s design networks for the finalists through mentoring their feasibility studies, technical assessment, material research and selection, as well as contextual studies. AOD will also be supporting the winner in implementing the sculpture and the interactive wall, in everything from technical design plans to managing the process. Congratulating all young designers who took part in the competition on the journey of embarking on this process with fascinating research, challenges, and engagement with great mentors. For the winner, the resulting reputation and exposure will offer the opportunity to have their design produced and given the magnitude of the sculpture, it will be a feat for any young designer to be selected, whilst the competition itself looked for the city’s best cultural representation capturing its emerging future.
Port City Design Competition Finalist, Rochelle Fernando, speaks about her experience as a participant.
1) Rochelle, what made you apply for this competition?
I heard about this competition from Aod, and we were all urged to join. AOD always encourages us to participate in competitions, both local as well as international, and it is always such a great experience and a learning curve.
2) What do you think about the competition itself?
Being the first of its kind in Sri Lanka, it was quite exciting to have an opportunity to have a voice in one of the biggest projects in the country, and to create work that would potentially become globally identified local monuments. It was nice to be given a platform to tell a story of our country and portray the dreams of our community. Good design gives solutions, and in the process, opens up new paradigms of thinking through its ingenuity and it is a great representation of a country’s creative and intellectual wealth.
3) Tell us a little bit about your concept?
I submitted a proposal for the ‘Dream’ Beach Sculpture competition. I believe that dreams are somewhat similar to an X-ray of your body towards your inner self, thus nothing to do with some magical premonition. It has nothing to do with any faith or belief in my opinion.
‘The stairs’ – you can climb or descend in the pulse of the inner movement, as the dream tells. However, according to Carl Gustav-Jung, one of the fathers of psychoanalysis, the stairs represented a moment of change in life, of ascent or even of descent, depending on the direction headed. The main target is to leave a lasting emotional memory to whoever explores the sculpture. This is not just a sculpture but it’s an experience. It is like a journey, the journey of a dream. In this design, the key element of “the stairs” sculpture takes you from a physical state to psychological state and then to a spiritual dimension.
4) What was your experience like being a part of this competition?
It was a great experience participating in this competition as a whole and the feedback by the amazing jury and also the mentoring sessions by Aod & the Port City, were absolutely helpful in refining our work for final submission. The whole mentoring and judging sessions were conducted online, and it is great to see how far we have all come and to successfully conclude the competition. I would also like to take this moment to congratulate the rest of the finalists. Having gotten this far in the competition amongst the many submissions, is such a great feeling and I would also like to thank AOD and my lecturers for always pushing us beyond our limits to achieve greater heights.
5) Tell us your thoughts on projects like the Port City?
As a Designer, I find this to be an amazing project with so much potential and really excited to see how it turns out and to experience this whole new city in the future.
AOD is co-hosting the Virtual Award Ceremony, together with the Port City & Artra Magazine, and invites all to watch this digital event on the Port City official Facebook page on the 16th November 2020 at 6pm (https://www.facebook.com/PortCityLK/).
If Creativity is your calling and you want to know more about Design & Creative education, and opportunities in Sri Lanka, give us a call on the AOD hotline – 077 572 7772.