Alexander Chapman - Copywrong
The UNESCO Historic Centre of Macau becomes the modern Euraserie; a catalogue of the ‘reversed Chinoiserie’.
Macau, the East Asian island 40 miles west of Hong Kong, has accumulated new wealth through its rapidly growing casino industry. However, this has seen a marginalisation of the UNESCO protected territory, with casinos expanding into its elected buffer zone. This project creates an exportable series of architectural extensions to each UNESCO monument, using the notion of ‘copywrong’ – replicating its heritage architecture and ballooning its process into an ‘UNESCO resort’, whilst protecting the original component in situ using a ‘Wardian Case’ structure. This deals with the wear and tear damage due to cultural tourism, whilst also creating a platform for Macau’s heritage to rival the casino skyline using the outlet of the ‘gashapon’, a collectable fad of gaming machines in East Asia.