Irrelevance
Dhruvi RajpopatIrrelevance considers the events that have shaped the present in order to reflect on the mistakes we have made as humans. Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 speech of the Four Freedoms was given in the midst of two World Wars and two decades after the Great Depression from which the country was still facing repercussions. At the time, the Four Freedoms (of Speech and Worship, from Fear and from Want) were the absolute ideal: To express and be free in choosing faith were to be granted to all; We would escape war, death, and economic frailty.
Today, the world is different. We are battling climate change, sea level rise, population density, inequality, and the inevitable and eventual end of the human species. We have come to realize that nothing we do will catch up to the pace at which the planet intends to erase us. Acknowledging its place within this timeline, the Museum is birthed from the very element that will consume it in less than a century– the sea.
The user starts their journey in the Gallery of Fear– our current state–and either follows the procession through the Gallery of Want and into the Gallery of Worship, or decides to climb up to the Gallery of Speech. The Museum’s Speech and Worship galleries are cantilevered over either end of the island using a truss system and are the only ones that will remain accessible as the water rises, repurposed into platforms for visitors to the Island’s ruins. This speaks to climate gentrification–the displacement of minority populations by wealthier ones in the face of climate change. The Galleries of Wants and Fear, in contrast, are made of a concrete that uses a gneiss aggregate found on the island. At the end of the experience, the user comes to terms with the reality of being subject to nature.
Our focus needs to change as the freedoms that we fight for change. Using our voice to advocate and relenting our power to greater forces is the best way out of this mess. Eventually, the museum will return to Nature, existing only as a ruin, an emblem of what went wrong, and a reminder of how we can move forward.
Dhruvi Rajpopat is pursuing a Bachelor of Architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. This project was originally prepared for ARCH 595 taught by Jeffrey Stevens in Spring 2023.
This project was published as part of Transect Volume 5: Pedagogy (2024), Jacob Swanson, Daniel Girgis, Dhruvi Rajpopat, Fatima Fardos, Jimenna Alcantar, Elizabeth Kowalchuk, eds.