The Distant; Unsettled Land in Britain

Georgia Hablutzel, MArch (Year: 5)

Today, the reality of an eroding coastline reveals the dichotomy between the productive and non-productive image of Britain. It is assessed through conservation frameworks and maintained through private ownership of land. The Distant is an organisational framework to reveal the hidden conflict of production along coastal regions through time. As a tool of landscape conservation, it puts conditions of land through a timely process of destabilisation- where the individual can be framed within spaces they would never usually access. Spaces of production become blurred by the passer by as they are no longer occupied by one from of exchange. The Project provides a framework to challenge the Single Farm Payment subsidy for agricultural land along British coastlines. The proposal of a 12 Acre Right of Way Agreement destabilises landowners receiving subsidies for the ownership of large stretches of private land. The framework imagines the accumulation of subsided land, redirecting funds to individual maintainers of the landscape. By enabling the publics right to roam over private land, a new gravel path audibly marks a new public territory. Within the distant, the 12 Acre Right of Way Agreement wishes to reshape our image of the countryside.